When Kris and I got married I owned a 1973 Renault 4L. It’s
a rearity in New Zealand but it was the first ever mass produced hatch back.
Renault made it with little changes from 1954 right through to 1992. It was
there equivalent to the volkswagon, the people’s car. Mine had a real rust problem, it had been in
England and r driven on roads that were salted during winter. AS a wedding
present my best man actually welded in a floor pan into the car so it would get
a warrant.
We took it on our honeymoon up north. Just before Whangarei we hit a pothole in the
road. Bang and It just about ruined our honeymoon. It hit so hard that the top
hinge on the driver’s door broke. The only thing that stopped the door from falling
off was the bottom hinge was less rusty than the top one and the mechanism that
stopped the door from opening beyond about 90 degrees didn’t break. Now when I say
mechanism I mean a leather strap that was riveted to the door and the chassis
of the car. Renault 4’s were designed to
be very basic. Anyway we found a panel beater welder out in some small back
country place who welded it up for us at a price we could afford, and the car survived
the honeymoon and the few first year of our marriage as we got enough money
together to replace it.
In the passage we had read out to us today Jesus continues
his conflict with the Pharisees and the scribes of the law. At a dinner party
he confronts them about some of their religious practises and thinking that
were counter to Jesus revolution of grace. There is a series of very formal woe
sayings… pronouncements of judgement. It’s important for us as we follow Jesus
on the Cross road to hear those woes because they challenge us about possible
potholes and pitfalls that the church has managed to fall into down through
history that can stop us experiencing the gracious love of God and set us off
course ending up in empty religious observance
and slavish legalism: a whole list of do’s and don’t s not a loving
relationship with God through Jesus Christ.
We are working our way through Jesus journey to Jerusalem, a
journey that ultimately lead to the cross, and our forgiveness, a journey that takes up the central third of
the gospel narrative in Luke, and contains large amounts of teaching on what it
means to follow Jesus. AS we saw last week a journey that lead more and more
into conflict with the religious and political leaders of the day. A conflict
that acts as a warning for us about those pitfalls and potholes we need to
avoid. In fact straight after the passage we had read today, Jesus turns to his
disciples and says they/we are to be on guard against the yeast of the
Pharisees…the same pitfalls of the Pharisees.’
The passage we had read today started with Jesus concluding
comments in his conflict with the people who were writing him off as doing
miracles in the power of evil, not God. It’s a parable about light being on a
stand filling the whole room. He uses that to talk about our inner life, that we
need to let the light of Christ illuminate and fill our whole lives. If that
happens it will shine in us and dispel the darkness and shine out of us to the
world around. If our eyes are healthy we will clearly see the light of Christ
and it will fill us up. But if our eyes are not healthy then we cannot see the
light clearly and we have darkness inside. It dovetails in with Jesus other
teaching about the spiritual blindness of the religious leaders who do not see
God at work in Jesus. Then to illustrate what Jesus means we have an encounter
with Pharisees at a dinner party, where Jesus eats without taking part in their
hand washing rituals. Jesus uses that to point out the unhealthy eyes that the
Pharisees and scribes of the law have that stops them and those around them
from seeing the truth of who Jesus is and God’s love and grace.
Hand washing for the Pharisees wasn’t about hygiene. On
Wednesday morning down here at the church we have a wonderful regular
handwashing ceremony, at mainly music in between the programme and the morning
tea the kids all head down to the bath rooms and wash their hands, it is a
hygiene thing. We had the plumber in on Wednesday and I think he was a bit surprised
to be suddenly surrounded by all these excited pre-schoolers happily washing
their hands. That’s good handwashing, the Pharisees however were a group within
Jewish society that focused on rigorously keeping the law, hoping that as they
did this God would respond and send his messiah and liberate them from roman
rule. They had devised this hand washing
ritual, it wasn’t an Old Testament law, as a way of showing that they were
ritually clean; it was sort of a thing that set them apart from other less
strict people. It makes them suspicious about Jesus when he does not join in
this ritual.
Jesus challenges them. He says they are concerned with the
outside, outward appearances not with what is on the inside. Didn’t God make
both? NT Wright says it’s like a journalist who sets themselves up as societies
moral watch dog and points out the moral failings in others but whose own life
is full of the same moral issues and failings. The Pharisees had a thing for
ritual cleanliness but as Jesus points out what about a heart that loved God
and showed that love in care for the poor and justice. one of the most
challenging emphases in Luke’s gospel is that the condition of our heart will
be reflected in the use of our resources and our care and concern for the poor.
That is the gauge of how our heart has been changed by encountering Christ.
Jesus then gives a series of ‘woe’ statements, they are the
opposite to beatitudes, the blessed are statements, they act as warnings about
behaviour that leads to Gods judgement. He says they are so caught up in the
trivial like making sure that every single piece of food is tithed and a tenth
given over to God, that they neglect justice and the love of God. They’ve
majored on the minors and missed the main thing. They should look to both. I
couldn’t help but think of the way in which some churches will focus on tithing
as a big issue, they will call their people to make sure they tithe so God will
bless them, and not curse them and in
the worst cases it goes with lavish lifestyles for those in leadership. They
forget that yes the tithes were given in part to care for the Levites, the
priests who didn’t own land and were devoted to working in the temple and the
Lord’s work, but also where given for community storehouses to care for the poor,
the fatherless, the stranger, the widows… it was the Jewish social welfare
system. It wasn’t to be seen as a religious duty but as giving thanks for God’s
provision, God’s goodness, his faithful love for Israel.
He goes onto say that they seemed more concerned about
social acceptance than God’s. In verse 42 he had said they neglected the love
of God and in the very next verse we see they love the important seats in the
synagogue, and the acknowledgement of the people in the market place. Later
Jesus will encapsulates the religious pride of the Pharisees in the parable of
the two men who went up to the temple to pray in Luke 18, where the Pharisees
prayer revolves around how righteous he is, and the tax collector is sharply
and simply aware of his need for God’s grace, and the punch line is the question
who went home that day justified and put right with God?
Jesus finishes with a woe that they are like an unmarked
grave. In Jewish culture graves were always marked because people were aware of
the ritual uncleanliness associated with dead bodies, it’s part of why in the
parable of the good Samaritan the priest and Levi pass by on the other side of
the road, just in case the man set upon by robbers is dead. But just like an
unmarked grave there dead religion takes people away from God.
Then a scribe of the law, a person whose role it was to
interpret the law says that Jesus insulting them as well and Jesus agrees and
gives another series of three woes. Instead of making it easier for people to
understand and keep the law which is what the scribes were supposed to do, by
applying it to everyday life they made it harder for people, more complex, more
and more clauses and does and don’t without giving them relief and help. The
focus was on the many ways you could fail not on the grace and forgiveness of
God and guidance of the Holy Spirit. He says they had built tombs for the
prophets, that their ancestors had killed in their laws and religious
structures they had built a monument to the prophets of old, but hadn’t
listened to their message and were going to be like those ancestors and kill
the prophet in their own day, one who encapsulated and fulfilled all that
teaching and truth. He finishes by
saying that they think they have the key to knowledge but in actual fact they
do not they are outside and hinder those who want to go inside. The key to
knowledge is that it is in personally knowing God, knowledge and wisdom come
from personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ.
That is a very hard series of woes to look at and I would
have liked to just skip this passage, but I believe it’s important
systematically work through the scriptures and let them all speak to us so how
does it apply to us?
They act as a warning about the tendency in Christianity to
fall into legalism. Darryl Bock says that the legalistic person feels he or she
has the right to be everybody’s spiritual keeper, using a list of requirements
that are not scriptural. Legalism block knowledge of God , so that people are
damaged not edified. He gives four surprising symptoms that we might have hit
the pot hole or pitfall of legalism.
Frequently legalists refuse to speak directly to those whose
behaviour offends them. The Pharisees didn’t
like Jesus non hand washing and spoke about it only in private. Jesus spoke
about things openly in the hope for truth and grace to have it way.
Legalists major in the minor and ignores the major
relational requirements God asks of his followers. In doing that we can lose
sight of the condition of our heart and fail to notice the needs of those who
are really hurting… My mum always tells the story of a woman who sat down next
to her at Church one day and started to complain about that group of scruffy
young men who came to church with their longhair and bare feet, dressed in
t-shirts and dungarees. My Mum, God bless her, replied well that one is my son
and I’m so pleased he knows Jesus and wants to come to church. And that the
dungarees were the uniform of our church drama team.
The third is that the close association of pride to this
condition is no accident; pride tends to make us into non-listeners. If we lose
that ability to be teachable, and open to change we cut ourselves off from the
guidance of God’s Holy Spirit. We become like unmarked graves.
Lastly, a legalist is quick to criticise but slow to help. I
wonder if our social media age hasn’t exacerbated that as well, people are
quick to troll or flame someone feeling safe because of distance of anonymity to cut each
other down. I think in New Zealand this tendency we simply call tall poppy
syndrome.
As I said it’s hard to speak about this stuff, because it
can sound like its judgemental or without grace. Maybe we don’t see Jesus
redemptive and gracious side in this because the Pharisees and scribes, opposed
Jesus fiercely and tried to catch him out… But Jesus hope is always redemptive
to invite people back to knowing God, God’s love, God’s grace and God’s
forgiveness and finding their lives overflowing with the presence and joy of
Knowing Jesus Christ: That we will allow the light of Jesus to shine into our
lives and bring repentance and change. Don’t get stuck in these potholes and
pitfalls…
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