Legalisms

 Luke 6:1-16

     How do you understand this scripture?  How do you understand Jesus breaking the religious laws in this way? 

I think about the story of Les Miserables.  The man, Jean Valjean goes to prison and does hard labor for 19 years for stealing a loaf of bread that was intended to feed his starving sister and her son.  He is then released with a yellow ticket which means he has to show his status as a convicted man every where he goes.  The result?  Well, it’s similar to now in that it is extremely difficult for a convicted person to get employment, to have places to stay, to do anything.  But in his desperation, he steals again and this time, when he is caught, the bishop whom he stole from offers him grace.  The bishop gifts him the objects that he stole, and lies for him, telling the police that they were gifts.  As a result of the grace he is offered, he becomes a new person: he is generous, he is giving, he saves several lives in the course of his own life.  He becomes the man that he was meant to be.  But Javert, the police officer, does not see it that way.  Javert feels that because the law at that time basically said that Valjean needed to pay with both 19 years in prison and a harsh, unmovable parole, that that was what was right.  Javert’s job was to uphold that, without any reference to the circumstances and certainly without any grace.  That was the law and so Javert felt it was RIGHT with a capital R.  Of course, later, Jean Valjean ends up saving Javert’s life.  And the moral quandary that this created for Javert, to be faced with the goodness, innate goodness of the man he had spent his entire life persecuting was simply too much for him to take.

Similarly in the movie, Chocolat.  The mayor of the town is a very good man.  He cares about the village and the villagers.  But when Vianne moves in to the town and opens a chocolate shop during lent, when she makes it clear that she is not religious and though she has a child, she does not have a husband, when she dresses in much more colorful clothing than the village women, he feels that she will be a temptress for the villagers and encourage immorality in their village.  In fact, she, too, is extremely kind.  She is extremely good.  She provides refuge for the woman who is being beaten by her husband, and she offers kindness to the strangers who pass through the village.  She heals relationships that have been estranged, and opens up those who’ve been broken, down, bitter with her genuine love, ability to listen, and deep insight.  The mayor, Reynaud is not a bad man.  He is a very good man, living with his own struggles, his own pains.  But he cannot see beyond the rules that he, himself, has created. 

I’ve shared this story before and it is not a pleasant story, but still, I’m reminded of the tale in  which a holy man was meditating beneath a tree at the crossing of two roads. His meditation was interrupted by a young man running frantically down the road toward him. “Help me,” the young man pleaded. “A man has wrongly accused me of stealing. He is pursuing me with a great crowd of people. If they catch me, they will chop off my hands.” The young man climbed the tree beneath which the sage had been meditating and hid himself in the branches. “Please don’t tell them where I am hiding,” he begged. The holy man saw with the clear vision of a saint that the young man was telling him the truth. The lad was not a thief. A few moments later, the crowd of villagers approached, and the leader asked, “Have you seen a young man run by here?” The holy man had taken a vow to always speak the truth, because he believed it to be absolutely right, so he said that he had. “Where did he go?” the leader asked. The holy man did not want to betray the innocent young man, but his vow was sacred to him. He pointed up into the tree. The villagers dragged the young man out of the tree and chopped off his hands. When the holy man died and stood before Judgment, he was condemned for his behavior in regard to the unfortunate young man. “But,” he protested, “I had made a holy vow to speak only the truth. I was bound to act as I did.” “On that day,” came the reply, “you loved vanity more than virtue. It was not for virtue’s sake that you delivered the innocent man over to his persecutors, but to preserve a vain image of yourself as a virtuous person.”

Finally, there is another story in which two Buddhist monks who had made vows to never touch a female came across a girl who was desperately trying to cross a river but was unable to do so because she was too small.  One of the monks picked her up and carried her across the river, setting her down on the opposite shore.  As the two monks continued the journey, finally the one who had not carried the girl burst out with “You made a vow to never touch a female and you just broke it by carrying her across the water!” The other one responded, “perhaps I did break my vow.  But at least I put her down on the opposite shore.  In contrast, you are apparently still carrying her!” 

In all of these stories, the person being legalistic, being unable to separate the spirit of the law from the law itself, was not a BAD person.  The same is true of the Pharisees.  They were legalistic because they cared about their faith and cared about the people.  They gave the Jewish people ways of living out their faith in practiced, dedicated, devoted ways.  Additionally, they were worried that if the laws were too lax, that the people would end up as we are now: not honoring or revering Sabbath practices at all.  Keeping the Sabbath is not just an idle law, it is not just one of the hundreds of laws that we read about in Leviticus and Deuteronomy.  Keeping the Sabbath is one of the big ten: on par with not stealing, and even with not KILLING.  The Pharisees were right to be concerned with it, they were right to want some structure to it that made it real, that made it clear, that separated the day out as only for worship and rest.  We know their intentions were good.  We know they had the people’s best interests at heart.

Jesus was a serious threat to them.  As professor Elizabeth Johnson said, “[Jesus] was careless with regard to the boundaries meant to guard ritual purity. He ate with tax collectors and sinners (Luke 5:27-32), and his disciples did not fast (5:33-35). He even claimed authority to forgive sins (5:17-26), which constituted a violation of the most important boundary of all — that between God and humans. Jesus was a threat to all that the Pharisees held sacred, and he was gaining a following among the people.”  So in this situation, he was condemned, out of fear, for his breaking of the Sabbath laws.  

And the reality is that they took it too far.  This remains true, in my opinion, today.  Orthodox Jews, for example, cannot use light switches on the Sabbath, so whatever was turned on at the beginning of Friday evening must stay on all through Saturday, and whatever is off must stay off until Saturday night.  Most of these laws are not oppressive.  But there are exceptions.  Electricity is not, actually, supposed to be used at all, so in a place a friend of mine works (she works for an orthodox organization), the electric doors are off on the Sabbath. For my friend’s partner, who is in a wheel chair, this makes it extremely difficult and much harder work to get her through the door.  Also, they are not supposed to use cars, which makes it extremely difficult for a person who has limited mobility, to actually get to Synagogue, though that is the activity that is supposed to be done on the Sabbath.  And while the laws, again, were supposed to set up things to avoid cruelty, to give rest, they often do not do what was intended at all.  For example, one Sabbath law is that you are not supposed to cook an animal with its mother’s milk because it was seen as cruel.  But instead of helping people to eliminate then the cruelty to animals, those with a high financial level end up having two of everything.  One stove, one fridge, one set of pots and pans for the animal and an entirely different set of everything, including the fridge and stove, for the milk.

We see in today’s scriptures, even best intentions, when we get distracted by the laws we’ve made, when we get too focused on the law itself rather than the reason for it, the intention behind it, and the meaning of it, become abusive, oppressive and can be very harmful.  A lot of this has to do with how rigid we are. 

I’m taking a resilience training webinar through the Board of Pensions and they’ve been talking about the great importance of having a growth mindset rather than a fixed mindset.  A fixed mindset does not allow for change or genuine growth.  It does not allow a person to see in a new way.  But resilience, or the ability to stretch and grow and deal with the challenges and changes in this society and in our lives requires that we move from a “judge and be judged” mindset to a “learn and help-learn” framework.  The commitment is to growth.  And that growth mindset allows you to keep in mind the intention, the meaning behind whatever it is that we are facing, rather than the legalisms. 

The question is, will we be afraid, overwhelmed and anxious about the changes that we face, needing to fall back on rigid ideas of what is right and wrong that are not based on Love, not based on compassion or grace; or will we move forward into what is new with HOPE, and even with joy.  As professor Wesley Allen said it, “While some feel that the fabric of our society is being ripped in two, it is perhaps more accurate to recognize that we live in a day when that fabric is being re-dyed. Some experience this with joy and hope and others with fear and pain. As part of this process, the church’s identity and mission is also in flux. Denominations battle and split over issues like homosexuality. Congregations watch their numbers dwindle. Worship leaders are challenged to embrace contemporary methods of entertainment and technology to reshape the liturgy. What does remaining faithful to Christian tradition and practices mean in such a day?” 

Change is not optional.  And when change is thrust upon us: like with the pandemic, and perhaps like with the political situation we are seeing right now, when we do not know what the future will look like, the desire for “normal” can be strong, extremely compelling.  But Jesus embraced change, confronting the old ways, and calling us to let go of fear in the face of tomorrow.  Fear is a liar.  Fear is a liar.  And so as we seek to find new ways to do things, we are called to respond, both as individuals and as communities, in whatever way “does good and preserves life”.  Those are the criteria Jesus puts before us.  And that means we will have choices to make as times change, but that we need to not be limited by what has been done before simply because it is what has been done before.

I also want to point out that after these two interactions, Jesus went away and “prayed all night”.  In other words, he kept the Sabbath: he took the time to go away and worship and listen and pray and be with God.  He just didn’t do it in the way that the Pharisees wanted him to. 

The bottom line? The sabbath is supposed to be life-giving, freeing, healing.  It is not supposed to be oppressive to those who are hungry or hurting. It is not supposed to be a tyrant.  Nor are any laws.  They are there for our good, for our healing for our wholeness.  They are not there to enslave or imprison.  They are there to “do good and preserve life”.  When they do that, great.  But when we are too rigid in them, even the best will fail us at some point or another.

                Keep your eyes open.  Don’t take the easy way out when it comes to right and wrong.  Look deeper, always, for what does good and preserves life.  And remember, the Sabbath was made for humans, not humans for the Sabbath.  Amen.

Hypocrisy

Matthew 23:27-39

Luke 14:1-6

I want to begin this morning by having you look for a minute at the beginning of chapter 23 in Matthew.  As you can see the entire chapter of 23 is about the hypocrisy of the Pharisees.  But the chapter  opens by recognizing the authority of the scribes and Pharisees, acknowledging that they sit on "Moses' seat" (v. 2). They are teachers and interpreters of the law in the line of Moses, the original lawgiver and the most important figures in Judaism; they are due deference and respect in religious matters. After all, Jesus came not to "abolish but to fulfill" the law (Matt. 5:17).  As a whole, Matthew labors to show Jesus' reverence for and continuity with Judaism. The problem is not Jewish religious traditions or teachings; it’s not the pharisees religious traditions or teachings.  Jesus commends them to everyone: "Do whatever they teach you and follow it" (v. 3).

The problem here is that the Pharisees misuse their authority, misuse scripture and misuse the law. They behave in ways that are counter to the truth teach. They speak of glorifying God, but they seem most interested in self-aggrandizement. They speak of orienting their entire lives toward God, but they draw everyone's eyes toward themselves. They speak of their responsibility for the people of God, yet "are unwilling to lift a finger" to lighten the people's burdens (v. 4). They proclaim that they are people of God, yet they fail to do the basics of caring for one another.  But what is primary, they are MORE concerned about the laws than they are about the people.  And as Jesus points out, “Sabbath was made for the people, not people for the Sabbath.”  In other words, the laws were made to serve us, to make us better, to make us whole, to help us to be closer to God.  We were not made simply to follow the laws.  That means, in all things, that situations must be brought into account.  In today’s passage from Luke we see this with much more clarity.  Yes, it was against the law to heal on the Sabbath or do anything on the Sabbath that required work.  But Jesus broke this law for the sake of healing.  He did this repeatedly.  His disciples broke the law by picking grain on the sabbath: again, they did work so that they might eat.  I cannot stress this strongly enough because this is very central to Jesus’ teachings: we are to help and love one another.  The laws enforce that.  But as with every construct, every rule, every rigidity, the things that are made to serve us can also be misused to hurt people, to harm them, to injure them.  When that is the case, Jesus was clear, the needs of the people, of God’s people, of all people, MUST and do come first. 

Where the hypocrisy part falls into this is that people are generally willing to bend the laws when it serves them, and then they strengthen and insist on the laws in ways that harm other people.  As Jesus said, “If one of you has a child or an ox that falls into a well on the Sabbath day, will you not immediately pull it out?”  Of course they would.  They would break the Sabbath law to save one of their own.  But when it comes to healing or caring for others, they want Jesus to wait for the appropriate day, not recognizing that each day lost is a lifetime for a person in pain, in isolation and in struggle. 

In these actions, the scribes and Pharisees were not unusual or unique.  The Biblical commentary, Feasting on the Word  said it this way: “It is so easy to confuse our interests with God's purposes, our power with God's sovereignty, our standing with God's glory. Whether we are referring to our individual or collective lives, human beings have a strong tendency to create false and sinful hierarchies that displace God's authority; we have a proclivity to ignore or rebel against God's kingdom in order to protect our minor fiefdoms. This is a particularly distasteful, yet common, inclination among religious people and their leaders. Constant reference to God and God's purposes can easily lend our own aims, desires, and identities a semblance of holiness that is sanctimonious and hypocritical.  Pious words and orthodox convictions alone do not make a person faithful…. The true measure of faithfulness is found not in the words one speaks or the doctrines one accepts but in the orientation of one's heart.  Is one's whole heart and life oriented toward God, or is it aimed at something less than God (Matt. 6:19-34)?” – Feasting on the Word. 

I love that.  This is not about our ability to follow rules.  This is about where our hearts are oriented.  Do we walk with love?  Do we see with love?  Do we interact with others with love?  If so, our hearts are oriented towards God.  When we fail to do so, we fail to be oriented towards God.  It’s that simple.  When we are drawing our circles tighter, when we are pulling in and taking care only of our own, when we are reacting out of fear, our hearts are not with God and we will be seen as the hypocrites that we all, at times, can be. 

As I said, we are not immune from this. We all have heard about Westboro Baptist Church.  It gets itself in the news a great deal lately.  This specific church looks “pious”.  They look “religious”.  They are using the bible and quoting rules, and saying things like “God Says”…. But what is coming out of their mouths?  Hatred.  They’ve missed the central message of the Bible and of faith.  And because of that, everyone else sees them as the hypocrites that they are: preaching a God of Love with mouths full of hate.  This is the number one reason people don’t come to church.  Too much hypocrisy.  And we can see it in some of these congregations and we know the public is right to condemn it. 

But the challenge I want to offer today is a recognition that ALL of us have our hypocrisies.  All of us do.  Can you think of something you do that is hypocritical? 

Some minor examples: I have a friend who is constantly complaining about other people’s driving: always, she is yelling about how terrible the drivers around her are.  Yet, I once had the opportunity to sit as a passenger while she drove, and I have no idea how she has made it alive for as long as she has!  Her driving is absolutely atrocious!  She looked at me while she was talking to me, more than she did the road, and then honked and got upset when cars “mysteriously” appeared in front of her!  When she wasn’t talking to me, she was talking on her cell-phone; one, by the way, that did not have an ear piece.  At one point she was holding the phone with one hand, eating with the other, looking at me with her eyes, following inches away from the car in front of us, though we were driving 75 miles an hour (so much for the 3 second rule), swerving all over the place, and cursing and swearing at all the other drivers on the road!  

In my family, we have a number of people who are pack rats.  What is interesting is that each of us sees it in each other, and none of us sees it in ourselves. 

Another friend of mine loves to correct others for failing to be polite.  She is quick to point out, in front of others, I might add, when I or others have been “rude” by failing to use polite-nesses such as “please.”  She seems oblivious to the fact that she is being just as rude by pointing this out to all of us in this public, humiliating way.

 And of course, I have my own hypocrisies.  Some of which I see, but no doubt there are others I don’t see.  I spout love, preach love, stand on love as the law of the land.  I preach about the importance of really seeing people and trying to give them the benefit of the doubt.  But there are times, of course, when I fail to do that and am crabby with others, snippy with others.  Especially when my kids are involved, it is harder for me to really listen to anyone I think has been unfair or has mistreated them (like their teachers on occasion).  This isn’t fair to these teachers.  They have tons of students they are trying to get to know, and stuff happens.  I could have expressed the same things in less cranky ways, but I don’t always. 

I found myself remembering a time, years ago now, when I felt very betrayed by a friend.  I don’t want or need to go into the specifics of that because they aren’t important.  What is important is that I became very self-righteous about it.  I knew I had been wronged and so standing on religious language, I went on the attack.  I let go of all of my years of training that tell me to use “I” statements and instead I “corrected” the other, using learnings that remain meaningful to me, but which, when used as a weapon, frankly do and did more harm than good.  This hypocrisy in myself caused me to become critical of others while failing to look at my own part in the issues.  We do this.  Leaders, especially religious ones, are in a dangerous position because, in standing on scripture, we can become very self-righteous about what we believe to be “truth”, the “truth of God” even.  But taking that stand when it is aimed as a weapon against others can cause damage and harm to others.  There is a reason why the people Jesus attacks most strongly throughout the gospels are the religious leaders: the scribes and pharisees.  From that position of power, it is extremely easy to misuse God’s words in ways that harm others.  It just is.  And when religious leaders fail to be self-reflective, it is an extremely dangerous thing.  We’ve seen this again and again: religious leaders caught in the same activities they are criticizing others for, religious leaders proclaiming that it is okay to destroy or damage other people, religious leaders picking and choosing scriptures and ignoring whole other areas (such as the gospels!!) in order to prove their points. 

All of us have paradoxes within us.  All of us have contradictions, and ways in which we criticize others without seeing the flaws in ourselves.  We all do.  It’s part of being human.  It becomes hypocrisy when the basic beliefs we have, the foundational tenets of our lives do not match our behavior.  When we declare that we believe in the God of Jesus, a God of love and grace, a God who calls us to feed the hungry, cloth the naked, visit the sick and imprisoned; but then we act only on our own best interests and fail to even try to love our neighbors as ourselves.  And while it is easy to point our fingers at others who do this, especially public figures (and the amount of hypocrisy currently is so much, it’s frankly hard not to point those fingers), looking at our own hypocrisies is much harder.

One of the greatest ways we can avoid being hypocrites, or at least minimize our hypocrisy, is by taking the time to look at ourselves, honestly, openly.  When we cannot do that, fortunately, we have each other to help us out.  For we are in a community that is supposed to care about our spiritual growth.  And as I’ve said before, caring about one another’s spiritual growth means being part of helping one another grow better, grow more honest about our flaws and our gifts, grow in our relationship with God.  The other way we can avoid hypocrisy is to really take private and personal time with God, being honest and open.  We can use that time to listen to God.  We can use that time to work on our “hidden” judgements and flaws.  We can use that time to just BE real - because God knows the real us anyway - better than we know ourselves.

            The thing is that before God we are all equal.  This is hard for us to get because we see inequalities around us every day.  Some are smarter, some are more successful, some are braver, some are happier, some are more popular.  But again, before God we are all equals.  We are all God’s children, all loved, all wanted.  Our gifts, therefore, the things that in this world make us unequal are things we are called on to use to help God’s people, to help the community, to give to the community.  Our gifts aren’t for our own glory.  They are for God’s glory and to help others.  When we start feeling that they somehow make us better, we only get into trouble with them.

The thing that heals hypocrisy is grace.  We are called to remember that everything we have has been given to us not because we deserve it, not because we’ve earned it, but because God loves each of us so much that we are created surrounded by abundance.  As we see throughout the gospels, this extends to loving us even when we mess up as Jesus loved and forgave the disciples again and again for their blindness, their stupidity, their inability to see and understand and follow in the way they were asked to do.  Our worth, our value, comes from a God who knows us completely and loves us completely.  We don’t need to impress others, we don’t need to be dishonest about who we are, what we believe and how we act. 

My challenge, then, for all of us, is to do the work of self-reflection and look at the hypocrisies in our lives.  It is hard work to truly be the Christians we strive to be, especially when it comes to loving people we don’t like.  That is the call, but it also takes a great deal of work to face ourselves.  It takes a great deal of honesty to be willing to look at our own stuff, name it, confront it and work to change it.  But when we do, when we are able to look, we grow, not just in our own beings, but in our closeness to God.  When we can really take the time to own our shit, we open the door to change and to letting God in at ever deeper levels.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.