Pharisees are so interesting. Their religious beliefs were quite
similar to Jesus, which is the irony of the stories about the
Pharisees. Members of this political and religious party believed in
an afterlife; they believed in the Resurrection. They were intensely
interested in applying what they learned from the Word to everyday life.
Their emphases were distorted, and the spiritual abuse they inflicted
on others as a result, were the object of Jesus' wrath. You can
gain some insight into Jesus' attitude toward the Pharisees by
reading Matthew 23, a passionate judgment against them.
As we read this familiar parable, in which the Pharisee clearly is
the "bad" guy, we ask, "What exactly is his sin?"
Could it be his judgmental attitude towards the tax collector? You
could just hear the sneer in his voice as he claims himself not to be
like that one over there. Or is it his pomposity and his
arrogance? We get the sense there isn't a person on earth this
Pharisee looks up to. There is no hero for him. There is no model.
There is no one in whose footsteps he is walking. He is the first,
and his footsteps are so large no one else can fill them.
In fact, we have evidence in the Gospels that the Pharisees could not
recognize the righteousness of Jesus himself. In the Gospel of
John we have two occasions, in Chapter 8 and Chapter 10, where
Pharisees hear Jesus say, "Before Abraham was, I am." And
they heard him say, "I and the Father are one." In both
instances, it was Pharisees who raised their arms to throw rocks at
him for blasphemy. They could not recognize true righteousness
staring them in the face.
What does Jesus identify as the Pharisees' chief sin? Let us
follow these two men into the temple to find out. If his sin is
our sin also, may those who have ears to hear, hear the Word of the Lord.
Both the Pharisee and the tax collector "come to the temple to
pray." This phrase might imply that they have come privately for
prayer, for a personal devotional time. In fact, it means they
come to the temple for corporate worship. Twice a day an atoning
sacrifice is offered at the temple, and it would be on one of those
two occasions in the day when these two gathered with the faithful at
the temple.
The Pharisee takes a position aloof from the others. He stands apart
from the crowd to avoid brushing against the common people who most
certainly were not so scrupulous in their attention to the Law. He
was probably convinced that he was blameless before the Law, that he
exceeded the requirements of the Law and did not want to jeopardize
his ritual cleanness by getting too close to any common people. If he
just brushed an elbow or a hand against the robe of someone who was
not as clean as he was, he would be defiled.
Take a look at his prayer - an audible prayer, which was not uncommon
- people generally did not pray silently in that tradition, but
prayed out loud. His attention-getting device was more the content
of his prayer. He preached through his prayer, putting down the
people around him. We get the feeling that his voice was a little
louder than it needed to be, to be sure that the one in the back
got the message.
A usual Jewish prayer on such a day would include praise to God for
God's gifts and specific petitions. The Pharisee does neither. He is
rather a self-congratulating, self-advertising, pompous oaf, holding
a big banner before the crowd that says, "How great I am"
He negatively stereotypes those around him, referring directly
to the tax collector, literally looking down his nose at these
society has passed over. He doesn't know the man, we don't think,
although the tax collector undoubtedly has a reputation. He knows
nothing of his spirit. He stands in the same room with a genuine
demonstration of repentance and devotion and is blind and cold to it.
So he attacks the others, and then he extols his own virtue. He fasts
twice a week - twice what was required - and he gives tithes of
everything he possesses, as opposed to just the produce from his
land. So he is really making a very careful PR play here to make sure
everyone understands how superior he is.
We don't respond well in the presence of someone like that, do we? We
want to find the chink in the armor. I'm not sure we'd actually find
it in this Pharisee, as to the letter of the law. But it isn't the
letter of the law that Jesus will be commenting on. It will be the
spirit out of which his "obedience" comes.
We can identify with the Pharisee because it's possible, it's even
probable, that we too have been wired by our upbringing and our
socialization to believe that one is praiseworthy and privileged only
if one earns it. Our parents are happy with us when we obey, and
they're stern with us when we don't. And if that strictness on the
one hand is not counter-balanced by forgiveness and unconditional
love day to day in a family, a child can grow up believing that love
is earned, not given.
At school we're rewarded when we portray ourselves or perform as
though we are competent and accomplished. If we can work hard and get
the grade, accumulate the points, then our reputation is boosted in
front of the whole school.
In the work place, high performance is rewarded and failures are met
with dismissal slips. To win, you've got to make everybody believe
that you're the perfect person for the job. Competition, earning,
deserving, are so much a part of our culture, that we can resonate
with those who doubt that God would simply love us without us earning
it first.
Our lives are full of earning. It's no wonder we have a hard time
understanding that righteousness before God is not something we
earned but something we receive. This gracious, undeserved,
merciful gift from our heavenly Father is at the heart of the Gospel.
Back to our story. At the other side of the temple, again
separated from the crowd, we have the tax collector. Because people
hated tax collectors who worked for the Romans, the expectations of
their moral and religious purity were very low. They were
considered "no good." The expectations of the crowd
Jesus is addressing are very, very limited . . . what could a tax
collector or a Samaritan or a prostitute ever teach us? they are
thinking.
In corporate worship his position is not aloof in a self-righteous
way but afar off, set apart out of humility. He does not feel worthy
to stand with the other congregants in prayer. He recognizes that his
own sin is so deep that he might defile the others in the room if he
got too close. He is demonstrating this by a gesture that is
extremely rare among men in the Middle East.
Ken Bailey, who wrote some very fine books interpreting the parables,
lived in the Middle East for 43 years and worked specifically to
interpret the cultural nuances of the parables. He comments on this
detail that beating your chest in this way is highly unusual: first
of all, men almost never did this. Only under the most extreme
conditions of anger or remorse or grief would a man beat his breast,
and it is very rarely seen, even to this day.
So here's a man beating his chest, which symbolizes an understanding
that what is bad and what is evil is coming from the heart, from
inside. This gesture beats it out of me. I cannot accept evil and I
reject it. That's what this gesture is about. The only other place in
the New Testament where we see this gesture is at Golgotha at the end
of Luke's Gospel when the crowd saw Jesus die, and they beat their
chests in remorse.
What is the content of the tax collector's prayer? Well this
one is a real prayer; the other one was just spam off the Internet.
But this one was a real prayer. The translation, as we have it, says,
"Lord, have mercy on me," right? But the word "have
mercy" here actually points to the concept of atonement. Ken
Bailey and others believe that what he's really saying as he says,
"Lord, have mercy on me," is, "Lord, make atonement
for me. Lord, create the sacrifice that would pay the price for my sin.
Lord, would you please propitiate my sin?" He sees the depth of
his need and his complete inability in his own power by his own
actions to atone for it. Jesus is planting the seed, introducing the
concept, of atonement that will be unveiled with his own death later.
Now as we watch in embarrassment as this poor chap admits his own
guilt, we realize that we have to get over the idea that God will
save us only if we earn it. It seems counter-intuitive to us to admit
guilt in order to be right with God, doesn't it? I mean, if you
really want to impress somebody, if you really want to make the best
case and put your best foot forward, you would be avoiding an
admission of weakness or guilt. The ideal was holiness and
perfection. God has said in the Old Testament prophets, "Be holy
as I am holy." Yikes! That is an impossible standard. Wouldn't
admission of guilt be the last thing we would want to do if that is
what God is calling from us? It would be the last thing we'd do if we
believed like the Pharisee that we have to maintain a perfect image
in order to be forgiven by God. But, if we believe as the text
collector did, that our holiness comes only as a result of God's
atonement for us, then admission of guilt makes sense.
A clergy colleague shared how this hit home to him about a year ago
after reading a banner headline across the Chicago Tribune
last August:
"The headline said, 'Guilty plea sets inmate free.' The picture
showed the freed man embracing his sister, and the article told how a
man imprisoned for eight years cut a deal with the State's Attorney's
Office in which the time served satisfied his sentence so he could leave.
What struck me was the headline. And my first reaction was, 'Grrrr!
Another criminal gets off with a plea bargain.' And then I realized
that that was precisely what had happened to me, spiritually
speaking. Guilty plea sets inmate free. Freedom is not in a plea of
innocence, but in the admission of guilt."
Now our stories, our life stories are different, but the headline
fits perfectly in Christ. We have not earned God's righteousness,
this right and unhindered relationship with God our heavenly Father.
We haven't earned God's favor, and the sooner we can admit that, the
faster we can benefit by God's remedy. This is the painful part of
the Gospel. Just as an accurate diagnosis of illness is required
before effective treatment can be administered, so we must bravely
face the judgment that we are sinners before God's atonement can be
applied to us.
If you're sick, but you won't admit it or go find out what's wrong,
everybody tells you you're nuts. "Get thee to a doctor!"
There's help for you. Right? But spiritually, people avoid diagnosis
all the time. We've sinned. We need God's forgiveness. "Get thee
to the Great Physician!" But we don't, right? One can't get the
remedy (forgiveness of sin) until the diagnosis (Jesus' gracious
assessment of our spiritual condition) has been determined, so that
we can receive the correct medicine.
Now, that admission of guilt is the big stumbling block for us, a big
wall for our culture. We just don't want to admit that we aren't
spiritual, or that we don't have a relationship with God, or that we
have flaws, you know? So often we talk around our guilt. "Oh,
yeah. Well, of course. I make mistakes." Yes? And? Where do
those mistakes come from? A sick heart. A sin-sick soul. They come
from spiritual deficit, from that flawed spiritual gene. But
admitting that, it looks like our life is over.
This is the reason why Jesus and the cross are called the great
stumbling block in Scripture. We trip over this half-hidden boulder
on our path and fall flat on our faces, spiritually speaking, because
admission of our sinfulness would destroy the carefully-perfected
image we have constructed over a lifetime.
But our claims to righteousness apart from the atonement of Jesus
Christ are bogus. We can't claim perfection. Who can? The most
perfect people I know are the most willing to say they are the most
flawed characters on earth. We can't claim holiness. There isn't bath
water deep enough to wash away the grimy residue of sin in our soul.
We can't even claim to be an exception to God's righteous demands. We
live in a place, in an area and in a culture, where we have enough
privilege that we think, "Well, there is an exception for me. I
know the rules are there for the general good, but I'm an exception.
You can let me in on a special waiver," or whatever. But before
God, on what basis would anyone be considered special such that sin
would be overlooked? Nobody. It's not even necessary because the
remedy for sin is there in Jesus Christ, if we believe in him and
recognize that his death on the cross was for us, for me. The hard
part is admitting sin. The easy part is receiving the remedy which
has been given freely. We can only admit the truth then;
"Lord I am a sinner."
It would be interesting for a while to be like a 12-Step meeting, and
every time we greet one another, "Hi. My name is Mary, and I'm a
sinner." I think that could be kind of helpful, because it's
true. And by doing so, we commend ourselves to God's mercy. "Make
atonement for me, Lord." Then that wall of embarrassment we
keep bumping into lifts, and ahead of us is eternal life, new life in
Jesus Christ, a restored relationship with our Creator and the power
to overcome those very actions that confirm the fact that our
spiritual gene is flawed.
But the beginning step is the step that the tax collector took.
"Lord, I recognize my sin. Would you make atonement for me?"
Max Lucado, a wonderful Christian writer, in his book In the Grip
of Grace, puts it this way: "Confession does for the soul
what preparing the land does for the field. Before the farmer sows
the seed, he works the acreage, removing the rocks and pulling the
stumps. He knows that seed grows better if the land is prepared.
Confession is the act of inviting God to walk the acreage of our
hearts, to prepare for the seed, which is the Word of God. 'There is
a rock of greed over here, Father. I can't budge it. And that tree of
guilt near the fence, its roots are long and deep. And may I show you
some dry soil that is too crusty for the seed of your Word?' God's
seed grows better if the soil of the heart is cleared."
God's seed would take root and bear much fruit in the life of the tax
collector because his day began with a confession of his sin and a
recognition of his dependence on God for everything spiritual in his
life.
What kind of banner would you hold up today? Would your banner say,
"How great I am," or would your banner be quietly held up
in the back, "How great God is! And how much I need him!"
The first banner, "How great I am," belongs only to God,
who alone is worthy to be praised. When we recognize that God's
Spirit has been bearing fruit in our lives in the form of change and
repentance and a new heart and new love, we give praise to God for
that. How great God is, to have become so real in our lives that
change has been possible! Change is even possible today if you would
confess what God already knows. Get thee to the doctor and ask
him for the medicine. Receive freely the result of his atonement:
redemption, eternal life in Jesus Christ our Savior and Lord.
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