October 7, 2012
Confessions of a Pharisee
- Hebrews 1:1-4
- Rev Ruth Chadwick Moore
I have shared this with you before. And those of you who know me, know that I am a Pharisee. But Pharisees and scribes are not shown in a positive light in most of the New Testament. In fact they make great scapegoats for us. They’re the legalists who reject Jesus’ teachings because he keeps breaking their rules. They frequently try to trip Jesus up by asking questions that have no good answer. The Pharisees are often portrayed as the holier-than-thou hypocrites who would rather be right than redeemed.
But the Pharisees had been following their rules for a long time and then Jesus came along and turned their world up-side-down! (Jesus was quite good at that wasn’t he?)The Pharisees practiced a life where everything that could be done, could be done in a holy way, and no one was more devoted to living that holiness than they were. They observed the Sabbath reverently. They tithed everything, right down to the spices they put in their food. And while we may criticize the Pharisees for rejecting our good news, they were not bad people. On the contrary, they were some of the best people around. They were serious about their faith, concerned about their purity, and devoted to pleasing God by living the most honorable lives they knew how.
So, I think if you took away the label, most of us have a Pharisee somewhere on our personal list of saints. Someone whose obedience to God seemed as natural as air – although you now know how hard it must have been – someone whose quiet, steady virtue was like a light on a rainy night for you. Just seeing how they lived their lives helped you find your way. If that person could do it, so could you. That person raised the standard for what was possible for you, simply by the way she or he lived.
So I am grateful for the question the Pharisees have asked Jesus in our Gospel reading this morning. The Pharisees are not the bad guys in this reading, but the people who take their religion seriously and who were serious about what was right and what was wrong – in other words they wanted to know what the rules were. And it is important to note that they had developed a complicated system of rules and regulations defining under what conditions divorce was right and wrong. Of course they were only rules for how a man could divorce his wife and said nothing about the wife divorcing the husband – but I digress. See, these Pharisees are me. They want to know the rules. They want to live as God commanded they live and then this Jesus guy comes in and messes everything up – this Jesus who Hebrews calls the exact imprint of God’s very being.
And at first glance, and in a literal interpretation, it seems like Jesus is prohibiting divorce. What God has joined together, no one else should separate. Wow. How does that sound to you? What does that say to those of us who have divorced our spouses or to go even further, what does that say about those who have never married or who are denied the legal right to marriage? What does that say to those of us who have gone on to marry a second time? Are we committing adultery?
Ultimately, I believe it is a misunderstanding of this text to see it as Jesus providing moral advice on the issue of marriage and divorce. Jesus is trying to direct the Pharisees’ attention to a deeper problem – their relationship to God. As always, Jesus is making us work harder when it comes to relationships. The Pharisees had staked their lives on the importance of knowing the difference between right and wrong. For them, the question, “Is it lawful?” is the most important religious question you could ask. For the Pharisees, your relationship to God was dependent upon being able to answer that question correctly. You couldn’t do what was right if you didn’t know what was right. Once again, it is a question of what are the rules.
But Jesus points out that the Pharisees are missing the point. The problem of divorce reflects a far deeper problem. It reflects the problem of understanding what a covenant relationship really means. When I officiate at a wedding I always stress that these two people are entering in a new way of life – they are entering into a covenant relationship. And a covenant is different than say a legal contract. You can go to the Court House and get married and make promises to each other and in doing so you have made a legal contract to love one another. A contract is conditional on both parties keeping up their end of the bargain. When one person breaks the contract, the contract is over.
A covenant on the other hand is not conditional on the other person keeping their promise. When you enter into a marriage covenant you promise to love the other person even if they fail to do the same. God made a covenant with his people Israel and he always kept his promises to them regardless of their actions. So a marriage covenant expects so much more of us than a marriage contract. In fact it expects more than we as humans can possibly do and be, because it expects us to act and love and do and be the kind of people God created us to be – and as we all know – we fall short of living that way each and every day.
This passage from Mark reflects the problem, the fact really, that we are sinful, imperfect, often selfish people, who just can’t love and live the way God created us to live and love. It reflects the problem of our hardness of heart.
It would be simpler if sin was just a matter of do’s and don’ts. That would help me as a rule follower, a good Pharisee if you will. But Jesus calls sin “hardness of heart.” It is a condition of the heart. A rock is hard. It’s impervious to outside influences. The hard heart is the heart that always wants to be right. The hard heart insists that, “I’m right and you’re wrong.” The hard heart wants to win, to succeed and to be on top.
The hard heart is the enemy of any relationship. It’s there when you can’t say you’re sorry. Or when you always have to win the argument, or you always have to be right, or when you insist that your needs are the most important. The hard heart has got to be in charge. It is afraid of being soft or becoming vulnerable or dependent or conceding that it needs to trust anyone other than itself.
While marriage is not the standard for all people, the marriage commitment and its covenant relationship is used in scripture as a metaphor for the divine – human relationship. “I will be your God and you will be my people and I will not desert you” says God. So Jesus is raising the stakes here in this issue. The hardness of heart that leads to distrust, conflict and selfishness in marriage, or in any relationship for that matter, is also the hardness of heart that leads to distrust of God. That is the ultimate indictment of what Jesus has to say here. Sin is not just our mistreatment of others. Sin or hardness of heart is our mistreatment of God. God wants us to trust him, to count on him, to hope in him more than anything else in the world. But that takes a heart that is willing to depend on and trust in someone else. And ever since the Garden of Eden we have refused to do that. If you know all the rules, then you don’t have to trust as much do you – you know what is right and what is wrong. You never have to make yourself vulnerable or scared or confused. You don’t have to have a soft heart.
This text is not about divorce or marriage. This text is not advice about under what conditions divorce if permissible. This text is not a pat on the back for those of us who have managed to stay married come hell or high water. This text is about what keeps us separated from one another and from God – what keeps us separate from being a part of God’s kingdom.
And then Jesus uses the example of little children to help me finally understand what Jesus’ kingdom vision is. Although children were on the margins of society – they represented the lowly and the weak and the vulnerable among us – Jesus instructs the children to be brought to him. It is with these children that Jesus shows us what kind of messiah he is and what his kingdom is all about. It is to the weak, the vulnerable, the marginalized – the soft of heart – which the kingdom belongs.
For Jesus, the kingdom of God was unfolding and that meant everything was changing. So the answer to the Pharisees question was not what was permissible under the law, but what was now possible in this unfolding kingdom of peace, love and justice. For Jesus it is always about the spirit of the law rather than the letter of the law.
So, as a Pharisee, I have to remind myself that it is not always about being right, or knowing the rules. It’s more about opening our hearts and admitting that at some point we have been wounded, we have been rejected, that we have sometimes found ourselves standing on the outside with the children. It’s not about the “Is it lawful?” as if our relationships could be perfect if we followed a few simple rules. All of our relationships are less than God wants them to be. But that’s okay. We can admit that. And then maybe we can acknowledge that our hearts don’t have to be hard – that they can be soft – even if that means that they are broken or wounded. Then perhaps we can let ourselves become vulnerable. Maybe we can even say “I’m sorry.” For it is for people like that, for people like us, that Jesus has come.
Jesus is addressing our human frailty and how our brokenness leaves us with hearts that are hard. And then despite our vulnerability, he is encouraging us to soften our hearts and keep our lives open to the touch and welcome of love – just like children allow themselves to be swept up in compassion’s embrace. So he says to us, “C’mon kids. Have a seat on my lap. Let me love you so you can love one another.”
The gospels are about Jesus declaring the beginning of a new era in which relationships could work if each party approached the other with mutual respect and concern- if they approached each other with soft hearts. Because in this new kingdom that Jesus began for us, it is now possible to go beyond what is just permissible, to what is kingdom enhanced. So it’s time now, time for me to loosen my grip on the rules and trust more. It’s time for me to be a person held firmly and gladly in trusting faith. How about you? Amen.
Resources:
Feasting on the Word, Year B, Volume 4
“Hard and Soft Hearts” by Steven Albertin from www.sermons.com