Faithful, caring hearts

Why do you do a chore? Do you do it because you have to or because you want to?

Do you do a good thing because you are afraid that you’d get in trouble if you don’t—or do you do the good thing for the sheer joy of doing a good thing?

When you are at work, do you a good job to keep the boss happy—or because a job done well is a job worth doing?

I think, if most of us were honest, most of the time we fall somewhere in the middle of those two poles. Some days it really feels good to do the work of cleaning the house or cutting the lawn, to look back at the job and just feel good about the work. And some days, I have to make myself—force myself—to get started, and while I might feel good about the work, mostly I feel glad just to get it done.

Well, it’s not just cleaning the house, doing the homework, cutting the grass, or doing the job where these feelings happen. They also happen in the spiritual life. Sometimes we get joy out our prayer, our faithfulness, our worship, and our service. And, truth be told, sometimes we have to force ourselves to do what we know will be right.

This is the challenge that Jesus laid before the Pharisees.

Let’s think about the Pharisees for a minute, okay? Actually, let’s re-think them!

When we read about the Pharisees in the Gospels, we hear them both as the foes of Jesus who were tiresome, nitpicky and legalists. We have been conditioned to “boo” and “hiss” everytime they come on stage.

But what if I told you that the Pharisees really wanted to serve God by being as faithful as they could possibly be to God in everything they did.

And what if I told you that the Pharisees were really (I mean really!) interested in making the faithful practices of Judaism as new and as fresh and as accessible as they could to as many people as possible? In fact, the Pharisaic movement wanted to move the heart of Judaism out of the Temple and into the synagogue, where the majority of faithful Jews worshipped, learned, and interacted, because they wanted to get more people to participate in the life of faith and doing the things that faithful people do.

In fact, the Pharisaic movement saved Judaism from the disaster of the Roman Empire’s destruction of the Temple (and, with it, Temple-focused religion) in 70 AD by re-orienting Judaism from a religion of sacrifice and geography, into a religion of the heart and of community.

The Pharisees were passionate for justice for the poor; they believed that God made the Hebrews a people that did things differently from the nations, including caring for the poor, who would be a light for the whole world.

Jesus and the early Jesus movement grew out of and shared a great deal with the Pharisaic movement that would eventually evolve into modern Judaism.

I think Jesus criticized Pharisees so passionately precisely they were so close in so many ways! The quarrel was one between brothers -- which, as anyone who grew up with siblings knows, can be the most animated of arguments.

So, what, exactly, was Jesus' beef with the Pharisees anyway? The short answer is, is found in today’s gospel reading, and it points to a challenge we all face. Despite what generations of Sunday School and preachers have said, the Pharisees weren't just concerned with purity laws and their position on purity laws was, in fact, pretty inclusive and progressive for its day. Instead of saying, as the Sadducees did, that holiness was found in a physical place--the Temple in Jerusalem-- and that only special people (namely males who were without deformity and who were born into a priestly family) could serve in the Temple, the Pharisees, instead made Judaism-- and the sense it offered of being in God's presence-- accessible to anyone. They said anyone could be a Jew, and any place could be holy to God if only people would treat it as such. On this point, Jesus and the Pharisees agreed.

But what makes a person holy?

First of all, think about purity laws. We all follow them. Don’t believe me?

Well, most of us grew up being taught not to eat or to leave the bathroom without washing our hands and to brush our teeth after every meal. Oh, we say, that's just about germs! We say, it’s about health and science, and that makes these rules important. And, of course, there’s masking and social distancing… I think that the politicization of the COVID-19 pandemic, where dueling ideologies makes a sensible, consistent community response fraught with judgment, division, and fear.    

Our culture’s apparent inability to think about our responsibilities as members of a community makes what Jesus teaches today so very important.

Did you notice how Jesus’ answer in today’s gospel is so brilliantly subversive? Jesus redefines purity in terms of ‘what comes out of a person’ -- of qualities we demonstrate in relationship.

Jesus is proposing that we intentionally, in community, 're-wire' ourselves, to feel as icky about carelessly wounding remarks, hurtful slogans, or strident opinionators as we do about eating food with dirty hands or preparing food in filthy kitchens. Jesus proposes a culture where belittling behavior that feeds grudges, focuses on resentments, promotes violence, or traffics in fear is as worrisome to us and our spiritual lives as unhygienic food practices.

When Jesus says elsewhere that the first commandment is to love God with our whole being and our neighbor as ourselves (another Pharisaic teaching, by the way) he calls us to build a culture of love where we engage each other with an intentional gentleness; and the kind of consistent, persistent formation that, in most healthy households, gradually teaches children about washing hands and being careful with meat and potato salad, but which also teaches courtesy as the gateway to respect—and self-respect.

Both the Pharisees and Jesus believed that the heart of the law was to love God with our whole being and to live the Golden Rule—which is another way of saying love our neighbor as ourselves.

Both the Pharisees and Jesus taught that the law was made for people, not people for the law. In today’s gospel, Jesus reminds his fellow Pharisees that the point of religious practice was to change and form the heart. Practice both forms the heart and at the very same time practice grows out of a changed heart.

They forgot that. When they came down from Jerusalem, it was because they were curious about Jesus—they admired what he was doing! High fives and fist bumps all around! But when they saw that some of these very same people, who are now more attentive to the heart of the law, did not wash their hands in the ritual way before eating, they got distracted.

That’s when Jesus says some very harsh words to these guys. He quotes the Prophet Isaiah, “They honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.” And he calls them something even more harsh. He calls the Pharisees… actors! The ancient Greek word for “actor” was hypocrite because Greek actors wore masks. Jesus says they are pretending to be holy and acting “as if” they are being faithful!

Here is what is important: it does not matter what our practice is so long as it results in mercy, a kind heart, a gentle spirit, attentiveness to our neighbor, sensitivity in speech, care for the poor, and compassion for those in trouble.

We may want to do church “right” and that is good, especially when it trains us to become attentive to God in the everyday as well as to care for people and creation. It is important to remember that as wonderful as it is that we bring God glory in this beautiful space that we also bring God glory in how we are with the people God gives to us every day.

There will be days when it will take all our energy just to put one faithful foot in front of the other. And there will be days when our joy is so overflowing that we just skip down the aisle or energetically serve the poor or the sick or even each other.

What’s important is not our feelings, but our faithfulness.

We don’t want to be actors, wearing masks of righteousness that hides closed and uncaring hearts. No. God calls us to be real. To have changing, growing hearts; hearts that love and hearts that seek after God. And Jesus (and we) wants these changed hearts to make a real practical difference in the world and in the lives of the people God has given to us every day.