2011-10-30–Life in the Family
Life in the Family
Jesus is still teaching in the Temple Courts. You will recall that he has entered Jerusalem in such a way as to declare that he is the Messiah. He has, contrary to expectations, not raised an army against Roman occupation, but gone instead to the Temple. There he chased out those who were profiting from the devotion of the people and began to teach.
Then followed a series of questions and answers, first with the Sadducees—those who governed the Temple, who believed that Jewish identity was best expressed in the sacrifices and worship on Mount Zion, in the Second Temple. After they withdrew, the Pharisees stepped forward—those who believed that Jewish identity was best expressed in the reading, interpreting, and keeping of the Law. They tried to trick Jesus with questions about money and the Law and such were Jesus’ responses that, when he finished, no one dared ask him anymore questions.
But, Jesus is not done talking. Now, having silenced his enemies, he turns to the crowds and to his disciples and continues to teach them. And, surprisingly, he begins with a very high compliment. The Pharisees, he says, sit on Moses’ seat. They are, in other words, the inheritors of a grand tradition. They are the guardians of the commandments. They are the interpreters of the Law. In Moses’ absence, they sit in his seat. They are the stewards of the gift of God through Moses to Israel at Sinai. And in that role, their readings of the Scriptures are to be accepted and adopted. Do whatever they teach you and follow it.
Interesting that Jesus has no such compliment for the Sadducees. Jesus, it seems to me, has actually declared himself here. He, like St. Paul after him, is basically a Pharisee in orientation. He does not identify with the priestly caste (though he is from a priestly line—His uncle was a priest; his aunt, from a priestly family). Rather, He identifies with the “lay leaders” whose responsibility took place in and around the reading of the Holy Scripture, in and around the synagogue. He continues, in this way, to identify with the prophetic tradition of authority, which had at its root the claim that to obey was better than to sacrifice; that daily living was more important than ceremony.
But now, having identified with the Pharisees and underscored the importance of obedience to the commands of God as the key to life in the community of God and life with God, Jesus turns the tables. He lays three charges at their feet.
(1) They do not practice what they preach. They are, in other words, bad examples. And nothing is more corrosive to authentic witness than those who claim to speak for God whose lives speak for something or someone else. Such a criticism is so obvious that it hardly bears comment. But it does bear repeating. Human nature, it seems, is such that no matter how many times the Old Testament prophets, or Jesus after them, or the countless preachers after Jesus make this criticism, it is still fresh.
(2) They burden others and refuse to help them. Note, the issue here is not that the Pharisees are teaching wrongly. Jesus has just commended them for their teaching. Nor is the problem is that their standards are too high. The problem is that they have come to see themselves as the holiness police, setting themselves between ordinary folks and God and placing themselves on God’s side of the line. They set the bar to which everyone else was expected to measure up. And they would not help. Of course, this stands in contrast with the message of Jesus, who said, “Take my yoke upon you. My burden is easy. And you will find rest for your souls.”
The Pharisees burdened their followers with the demands of the law and drove them. Jesus presented himself in contrast as sharing the yoke with his followers. And because he did, because he came alongside his disciples and lived his way with them and as an example for them, it was easy. His burden, unlike that of the Pharisees, was light.
(3) The Pharisees do what they do for their own glory and not God’s glory. The way they dress; where they sit at synagogues and banquets; the way they want to be greeted in public—all of it was aimed not at the glory of God, but at their own exaltation. Note again that the criticism was not that they had such seats, or went to such banquets, or wore such elaborate and religiously significant clothing. Rather, Jesus criticism goes to motive. They do these things (which may be fine in themselves) to bring glory to themselves rather than to God.
“But you. . .” begins the next paragraph. Thus Jesus begins contrasting the conduct of those who would be his disciples. You are not to take any titles—whether Rabbi or teacher or even father for we are all, the reading says, students. Here again, the translation of our Gospel gets in the way of what Jesus is saying. He does not say, that we are all “students.” He says, we are all “brothers.” The Greek word is adelphoi. If we don’t like the gender exclusivity of the English word (which is entirely appropriate—Jesus’ words apply to both sexes) then, we are closer to the intentions of the text if we translate Jesus as saying, “you are all brothers and sisters.”
For the point Jesus is making is about family. His movement—unlike that of the Pharisees, whose hierarchy was bent on the acquisition of prestige and pride—was a family. A family which, because it acknowledged the Fatherhood of God followed the teachings of God’s Messiah, was knit together by bonds much stronger than blood. What did Jesus himself say in Matthew 12? Whoever does the will of my Father, that one is my brother and sister and mother.
If we would follow Christ—if we as individuals are united to and in him—then we are not only united to God who thus becomes our Father. We are united to each other as brothers and sisters. Not mere students. As family, disciples are to follow the teachings of their Master together. In close quarters. Helping each other out rather than heaping up burdens. It is because we are all in this together—following, failing, succeeding, growing—that Jesus’ yoke is easy. Not because his demands are lighter: we know from the readings over the last few weeks that Jesus’ demands are not lighter in the least.
And perhaps that’s a good place to begin when we try to think ourselves into this story. The challenge here, it seems to me, is to see both paragraphs as applying to us. The challenge here is to see ourselves both under the indictment of the first paragraph and under the freedom of the second.
It may be that we are prevented from seeing ourselves because we are tempted to see only others in the first paragraph and ourselves only in the second.
It’s those fake Christians who go to that other church that need to hear this, we might think. But if we’re honest with ourselves, we know that human life is not so tidy. We are all living in a messy world where discipleship to Jesus is fraught with challenges and beset with compromises. Real life and real-life discipleship is never so neat as to be able to see Jesus talking only to other people. In both paragraphs, Jesus is looking straight at us. He is talking right to us. He is talking right to me.
On the one hand, we are part of the new community formed by Jesus. We are part of the community that is to call no one rabbi or teacher or father. We are part of the community that is, in fact, a new family that recognizes only one father and on teacher. And yet, we are part of the old community, too. Even as we are part of the new community, we are not yet entirely in the kingdom. We are still defined by memberships in various communities where the rules of prestige and power still seem to hold sway.
And if that’s the case, when meet with Jesus in this Gospel, we are going to meet him as our Judge. As the one who stands over against all our allegiances and calls them into question. If we are going to encounter Him in this Gospel, we will encounter him standing over us, having authority over us. And we can hear this as either bad news or good news. As bad news, encountering Jesus as Judge means that our presumed place as judge of our own lives is itself judged and we are exposed as unjust judges and overthrown.
As good news, encountering Jesus as judge means that we are set free from a place that was never ours to begin with. That we are freed to have our place, our life, lived under the command of the one just Judge, whom to serve is perfect freedom. We are relieved from the burden of having to be the one in charge. The Judge whom we meet, says the Reformer John Calvin, is the Judge who is our Redeemer.
Whether received as good news or bad, to encounter Jesus is to be relieved of command of our own lives and from our own finally unjust judgments about our lives.
And that means there is no space from which we can hide from Jesus’ just and gracious judgment. It comes to us as plainly, as forthrightly, as it came to the Pharisees. We are the ones who now sit in Moses’ seat. And like the Pharisees of old, we do not practice what we preach. We revel in titles, we burden others by pronouncing on their sins, remaining silent on our own, and barring the way to grace of God as though it’s ours to give or withhold as we would like. And Jesus stands over against us. Calling us to a different way.
Which brings me to the second point of application. That different way to which Jesus calls us is not a way that simply dispenses with the moral standards the Pharisees would have enforced. A very popular Jesus in today’s cultural imagination is the one who pounces on the moralists of his day, eliminating hypocrisy by eliminating any sort of moral standards. “Judge not that you might not be judged,” has become a misunderstood mantra that is trotted out as permission to evade any call to individual or corporate holiness. Sadly, this is not the Jesus who meets us whether in this morning’s reading or anywhere else in the Gospel.
The Jesus who meets us in the Gospel of Matthew, if anything, raises the bar when it comes to moral standards. I don’t know how one can read the sermon on the Mount and fail to see it in any other way. “You have heard it said, but I say” is not the prescription of an easy live and let live relativist. The Pharisees whom Jesus condemned were hypocrites for not practicing what they preached; not for preaching in the first place.
No, the way to which Jesus calls us is a way of moral excellence and practiced virtue. A way of life lived in submission to his word as the one teacher whom we all acknowledge, the one Father to whom he has united us.
What marks his way as different is not the lowering or obliterating of moral expectations. Rather, what is to identify it is that it is a way of life lived together, not in the absence of the teacher, but in his presence. Remember his promise at the end of this Gospel? Behold I am with you always. A way of life lived not in the absence of support, but in the presence of many, many brothers and sisters to whom we are mutually accountable, who will bear with us in our failures, and bear us when we fall. Who will celebrate every success and point the way to grace in response to every sin.
For the ground of our life together—what makes it a truly common life—rather than a mere collection of lives is the presence of the One who, by that presence, makes us brothers and sisters. The common life we share, we believe, is His human life, freely and graciously given to us by the Holy Spirit through the creatures of bread and wine.