Enemies of the Cross

Sermon for 2 Lent (C RCL 2/28/2010), Offered by Nathan Ferrell for Trinity Episcopal Shared Ministry

Texts: Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18; Psalm 27; Philippians 3:17 – 4:1; Luke 13:31-35

Please repeat after me: “I am - a disciple – of Jesus Christ. I follow – no other. He is – my life – and my future. I love him – and follow him – where he leads – now and always.”

My friends: it is so easy to become distracted. In the hectic busyness of life, we are bombarded by a plethora of messages from the outside. Circumstances in the world, in society, seem to move in ways that can make us feel trapped. And inside of ourselves, a variety of emotions swim and move around, often-times without having any idea from where they come. When life feels chaotic or beyond-our-control, when anxiety dominates our minds, it can become so very common to gravitate to one of the old stand-bys in human life, one of the common mindsets of human beings. And that, of course, is the approach of legalism.

This is what happened to the Pharisees, after all.

But who exactly are the Pharisees? It is important for us to understand who they are. In the Gospels, in our Lord’s teachings, the Pharisees are one of the key reference points that he uses to make his points. If we want to understand what Jesus teaches us, then we need to understand what it is that the Pharisees represent.

During the days of Jesus’ life, the Pharisees were one of the groups who taught in the synagogues and represented a specific school of thought. They were the ones who maintained the traditions of the elders who strict devotion. But it was the Sadducees and the Temple priests who were dominant, because the Temple in Jerusalem served as the clear, visible center of their world. It was the teachers of the Temple who guided the spiritual life of the Jewish people.

That is, until the Romans came and leveled Jerusalem entirely to the ground in the year 70 AD. Once the Temple was destroyed, the Jewish people were devastated. The center of their world was lost and there was an enormous power vacuum. Who would lead them? Who would teach them? It was the Pharisees who rose to prominence as the primary teaching Rabbis. And, as is so often the case when you have anxiety-ridden leaders, the Pharisees moved decisively to consolidate their authority.

The disciples of Jesus, the first Jewish followers of the Way, remained as the primary challenge to their authority among the Jewish people. The apostles were offering a very different interpretation of the Scriptures than that of the Pharisees, and the apostles hoped, of course, to become the dominant teachers in the synagogues.

The finale of this conflict came with the Birkat Ha-Minim, the Twelfth Blessing of the Amidah, one of the basic prayers recited in every synagogue. This Twelfth Blessing was added by the Pharisees in order to root out “the sectarians” as they called them, Messianic Jews who followed Jesus as the promised Messiah.

And so everyone in the synagogue became required to speak this following blessing, which actually reads more like a curse: “And for sectarians, let there be no hope; and may all the evil in an instant be destroyed and all Your enemies be cut down swiftly; and the evil ones uprooted and broken and destroyed and humbled soon in our days. Blessed are You, LORD, who breaks down enemies and humbles sinners.”

For Jesus and for the apostles, the Pharisees represent those who stubbornly demand strict adherence to tradition while ignoring that which is of the most importance of all. Paul refers to this as having a mind “set on earthly things.” For ease of reference, we call this mindset legalism. And don’t you think for a minute that it is one bit less prevalent now than it was 2000 years ago!

Tony Campolo tells a funny story of a man mowing the grass on a Saturday when he was brashly interrupted by his neighbor who happened to be a Seventh Day Adventist. Adventists, by the way, are a group who maintain the Sabbath and who insist that God has always intended the faithful to gather, to worship and to rest on Saturdays, rather than on Sundays. So his neighbor stops him while mowing and says with obvious disapproval, “It’s the Sabbath. You’re cutting grass on the Sabbath!” The man rather sheepishly tried to respond by saying: “Well, Jesus picked corn on the Sabbath!” The angry neighbor was not thinking too clearly, I suspect, when she responded by saying: “Two wrongs don’t make a right!” (Campolo, Let Me Tell You a Story, P. 155).

You see, unfortunately, many Christian people remain proud of their legalism: their strict observance of the outward form of tradition, although it is often obvious that their actions do not flow from a heart filled with love and joy.

In the Gospels, the Pharisees are always presented as the enemies of Jesus, those who oppose him and challenge him at every turn. Just before our Gospel episode today, in Luke 12:1 Jesus warned the people against “the hypocrisy of the Pharisees.”

This hypocrisy of the Pharisees reminds me of folks we knew when we lived in the country of central Virginia: polite, old-time Virginia people. One woman we lived next door to was always smiles and politeness, a true Southern lady who grew championship-quality daffodils. But it just so happened that her 5 year old son had not yet learned the art of Southern charm, and so when he used to come over and visit our busy young family, with two babies frolicking around, he would let it slip about how his mother truly felt. “My mom wasn’t too happy when your son was peeing in her daffodils!”

Smiles on the outside; but steaming mad on the inside! That, my friends, does not make for a good combination! Jesus lambasted the Pharisees for being so precise to make sure that their dishes were always cleaned exactly right, while neglecting justice for the poor and growing in their love for God.

The hypocrisy of the Pharisees remains a very real danger for us today.

It’s Lent now, as you know! Think about one of the traditional church guidelines for fasting, as an example. For centuries, people have avoided the eating of meat during Lent, and also on Fridays throughout the year. The idea – the end goal – has been to eat more simply as a type of fasting, and red meat was always gourmet fair. But let me ask you this. Which one of these meals accomplishes the goal more clearly today: A gourmet lobster feast or a fast food hamburger?

You see, the practice of avoiding meat is simply a means to an end. The problem with the Pharisees is that they have always confused the means with the end. But the goal of our discipleship – our training with Jesus – is that we become able to always keep these in the right priorities.

And this is one of the difficult things about being a Christian, living as a student-disciple of this Teacher, Jesus Christ. We are not given a manual on how to live. We have directions, yes, in the Scriptures. We have the example of Christ and those of the saints. But all of this needs to be translated and molded and shaped into a real life today, and that can be confusing.

Besides being baptized in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, there is nothing else that we HAVE to do. But what we DO have to do is make sure that the Pharisees don’t win!

To be sure, the Pharisees are still with us today! The temptation to legalism is very much alive and well today. Let us remember that the goal of this journey that we are walking together is about our BEING and not our DOING, about the kind of people we are becoming.

One of the great preachers of our time, Fred Craddock, gave this simple summary recently about the trajectory of his life now that he is growing older. He said this: “Now that I am older, I want more than anything else to be a Christian. To live simply, to love generously, to speak truthfully, to serve faithfully, and leave everything else to God” (Craddock Stories).

Now that is a plan for life in which the Pharisees do not win! Let’s not make it any more complicated than that. Amen.

Have Salt in Yourselves

Sermon for Proper 21 B (RCL), offered by Nathan Ferrell at HS, Bellmawr & St. Luke’s, Westville

Texts: Esther 7:1-10; 9:20-22; Psalm 124; James 5:13-20; Mark 9:38-50
Title: Have Salt in Yourselves

There was a priest who was kneeling at a roadside shrine just outside of a town in Ireland. He was there praying when a young woman passed by right next to the shrine and so distracted the priest.

“You insolent girl,” the priest shouted out. “Can’t you see that I’m saying my prayers? Why do you have to disturb me when I’m praying?” “I’m very sorry, Father,” the young woman sincerely said. “I didn’t notice you. I’m on my way to see my young man, and I was thinking about him.”

“Well, I was thinking about God,” the priest replied very piously. Now there happened to be an elderly man who was traveling along the road at the same time, and he heard this entire exchange. He stopped and spoke to the priest: “This young woman was thinking about her man, and didn’t notice you. You were thinking about God, but you noticed her. If you loved God with the same devotion as she loves her man, you both could share this place in peace.” (Celtic Parables, Robert Van De Weyer, p. 110).

My dear friends: it is so very easy for us human beings, whether ordained or not, to get distracted from that which is of the upmost importance, and it is very common for us to place the blame for our challenges upon others. This is not the first priest to be distracted by the sight of a young woman, nor is he the first to blame the girl for his own shortcomings.

We can see these realities at work in this obscure teaching from the Lord in our Gospel reading for today. Now, this passage can be difficult to understand, but I hope and pray that you are not confused here. The good Lord knows that the most important thing today, at least in my mind, is that you leave here this morning with a better understanding of what Jesus is teaching us in this passage. He is the Master, and these words from the Gospel are not a mistake. They are often misunderstood, and misunderstood badly, and so we have some work to do, because it is of upmost importance that we understand what he is trying to teach us. After all, we have committed our lives to following him as our Savior and Lord.

In this passage, Jesus and his friends are inside someone’s home, talking together. There is still a young child there among them, whom Jesus had brought before them to illustrate the kind of attitude that he wishes to see in them. He had just spoken about the importance of welcoming others in his name when John mentions the fact that the disciples had just tried to stop this supposedly illegitimate healer.

This leads to a time of teaching in which once again, as he did so often during his teachings, Our Lord ridicules the teachings of the Pharisees that true righteousness can be gained by changing your outer circumstances. You might remember that their teachings included things such as the importance of washing your hands before eating as a way to ensure cleanliness before God.

The mindset of the Pharisees leads to a logical progressions such as this:
“If I cut off my hand, then obviously I will not be able to sin with that member of my body any longer, and consequently that will help me to be pure and holy before God.”
I haven’t quite figured out how my foot could possibly cause me to sin so badly in any way, but it’s no matter. The point our Lord makes is the same: this way of thinking is stupid! But it’s not just the Pharisees of 2000 years ago who think this way.

This tendency to lay blame outside of ourselves for our problems is a very familiar temptation for us human beings. For us men, it seems almost like instinct to blame many of the problems that we have on the women around us. Scripture shows that this instinct has been with us from the beginning. In the Garden of Eden, Adam blamed Eve for his failure in eating the fruit of the forbidden tree.

You see, in St. Matthew’s Gospel, this teaching from Jesus is placed in the context of discussing the problem that men have with self-control of their own sexuality.
“But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matthew 5:28). In that context, he refers to the solution of the Pharisees: cut off your hand, tear out your eye. That is, change the circumstances, but do not deal with the root of the problem. No matter what the context, this way of thinking is always in error. It is the way of thinking that causes men to blame women for their struggles.

The most obvious example of this in our world today is in the Arab world. Look at the women in the Muslim world who are forced to wear the burqa. Why are they dressed like this, covered from head to toe? Because of the men’s problems! Of course, it is the men who have mandated the need for women to be covered with the burqa. Men who lack self-control in themselves and so believe that if they never see the skin of a woman, then they will never be tempted by her.

It is a horribly patriarchal way of thinking, one that has reared its ugly head in many different cultures and societies. There have even been groups of Christian men over the centuries who, taking passages such as this one from the Gospel in a literal sense, have determined to live in a way that they can never see a woman and so therefore cannot be tempted by a woman.

How foolish, and how blind to reality! This way of thinking is a distraction from what really matters, and that is the state of the heart.

Dear friends, for a man’s heart that is filled with the love of Jesus Christ, that is deeply connected to the Creator, that is listening to and following the lead of the Holy Spirit, it does not matter at all if the woman in front of you is covered head-to-toe with a black Muslim burqa, or if she stands completely naked! What difference is that? The God-filled heart has the same response to a sister in Christ, no matter how she is dressed! And the response is always the agape love of God: the will and intention to do what is best for her within your own power.

Of course, if a man lacks any self-control at all, then that is a different matter altogether. But the point is always the same: who are you on the inside?! Remember, please, the crucial question by which Christ calls us to measure ourselves: What would you do if you could? If the opportunity were immediately before you, what would you do?

Here is the crux of the problem when we think about sin: we tend to focus upon the act, we get distracted by what we did or did not do, and we lose sight of what is really important: the state of the heart.

But the Gospel of Jesus Christ is about transforming who we are on the inside, about the grace and love of God making us into brand new people. The grace given us at this Communion Table is about this work of transformation. When we share the peace of Christ together, it is about this work of transformation, so that we can meet every other one as an equal sister or brother in Christ.

We have been speaking here only in the context of the relationships between men and women, but the principles are the same in any context. Think of the challenges of self-control when dealing with alcohol. The response of the Pharisee is the call to prohibition. “If we forbid the sale of alcohol, then that will rid society of this evil!” What that mindset fails to understand, once again, is the obvious and clear reality that all behavior is governed by the human heart! If someone is intent on becoming inebriated, then they will find a way to do so, whether the sale and consumption of certain substances is legal or not.

Why cut off your hand, or hack off your foot, or tear out your eye? How can that change who you are on the inside? Even a mutilated stump of a human being can have a heart full of lust and anger and bitterness.

Like a blind guide leading the blind, the Pharisee fails to see the obvious: the law cannot control or change the heart. The law cannot change who we are on the inside.

Only grace, and love, and mercy, and peace from God can do that. And that, my friends, is why we are here.