As we were reading in Deuteronomy tonight, the Pharisees reaction to Jesus that we commemorate this week came into sharp relief. And it made sense.
These days, we have the benefit of never having watched an animal larger than a squirrel be killed (by a car, for instance), let alone killing the animal ourselves. We lead a very sanitized existence, and we're not trying to fit our unruly selves into a community with rather strict, and very serious standards. To the Hebrews, taking the life of an animal meant something. The Law meant something. And I only use the sacrifice picture to illustrate the bigger idea of the Law. The Sabbath was important. Somehow Jubilee seems to have been edited out of the larger consciousness of the Jewish nation, but let's be reasonable. So when Jesus came along and said people didn't need to keep the Sabbath the way they always did, the Pharisees flipped. Were they overreacting? I don't think so.
From Deuteronomy, about 1/3 of the way through:
"If a prophet, or one who foretells by dreams, appears among you and announces to you a sign or wonder, and if the sign or wonder spoken of takes place, and the prophet says, “Let us follow other gods” (gods you have not known) “and let us worship them,” you must not listen to the words of that prophet or dreamer. The LORD your God is testing you to find out whether you love him with all your heart and with all your soul. It is the LORD your God you must follow, and him you must revere. Keep his commands and obey him; serve him and hold fast to him. That prophet or dreamer must be put to death for inciting rebellion against the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt and redeemed you from the land of slavery. That prophet or dreamer tried to turn you from the way the LORD your God commanded you to follow. You must purge the evil from among you" (TNIV).
Granted, Jesus didn't say, "Worship this idol." But he might as well have. He was performing signs and telling the people to not follow the religion they had been taught. I now have a bit more sympathy for the Pharisees. Despite the wrong way they went about it (asking the Romans to execute justice, saying "We have no king but Caesar," thereby running as far from their God as possible), they were trying to purge the evil from among them.
This is another instance where the spotlight is turned right back on my heart. How often do I think I see things perfectly clearly, only to be shown that I only know about 58 percent of what's going on? I see the action that's necessary, and I run after it, never stopping to ask if God's trying to do something different. Yep, I'm the Pharisee. God forgive me.
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3 comments:
a) great post. I'd not considered the Pharisees in that light. I've even gone so far as to label other Christians as modern-day pharisees without a second thought.
b) I love this phrase: "From Deuteronomy, about 1/3 of the way through:" Who'd have thunk that we may benefit from not skipping right to a specific sentence, taken out-of-context? :)
After a little more thought, I want to bring up my belief that the Pharisees were interested in the letter of the law, not the spirit of it. Jesus came to right the path, teach, and live a manifest example of the spirit of the law. Among other things :)
Good thoughts on the Pharisees. I would take it a step further and say they did the right thing (the letter) for the wrong reason (not in the spirit). The law was there to help connect humanity with one another, but it ended up the Pharisees thought the point was the thing itself. YHWH put a giant flashing sign on the law saying, "This is about that," and they got really interested in doing this and ignoring that. (Thanks to the folks at rhinocrash.org for the "This is about that" reference. You can listen to the series entitled "Sex God" based on Rob Bell's book for the full story.)
So after a bit more thought on my part, I'd say the Pharisees didn't see the (S)spirit in what Jesus was doing, so they stuck with the letter of the law that said to kill anyone who made you follow FALSE gods. That's the key distinction. They made YHWH in their image to some degree and were understandably upset when Jesus said, "This is about that."
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