Pharisee Virus

Mark 8:11-15, CEB - The Pharisees showed up and began to argue with Jesus. To test him, they asked for a sign from heaven.  With an impatient sigh, Jesus said, “Why does this generation look for a sign? I assure you that no sign will be given to it.”  Leaving them, he got back in the boat and crossed to the other side of the lake.

Jesus’ disciples had forgotten to bring any bread, so they had only one loaf with them in the boat.  He gave them strict orders: “Watch out and be on your guard for the yeast of the Pharisees as well as the yeast of Herod.”

 

Mainstream Christian theology asserts that Jesus was at the same time fully human AND fully divine.  Millions of pages have been written attempting to explain this paradoxical concept, but ultimately, it is best to work to accept it on faith.  Unless Jesus is fully human, He cannot fully bridge the gap between us and God; unless Jesus is fully God, He cannot save us.  Much of the miracles described in the gospels point to the divinity of Christ, but in the passage above we catch a glimpse of Jesus’s humanity.  Mark recalls Jesus’s “impatient sigh.”  Jesus is finding it hard to remain composed in the presence of the impetuous Pharisees.   

Most of us have been there and understand that kind of exasperation.  Someone or a group of someone’s questions our right to be doing what we are doing.  They ask us to prove ourselves even though they have already seen proof.  It seems they are being confrontational simply to tear us down.  We recognize that impatient sigh because it has rushed from our mouths on multiple occasions.

“No sign will be given,” follows Jesus’s sigh. 

Jesus refuses to play their game for He knows that it is a losing proposition.  If a sign was given, it would only be followed up with a request for a further sign.  Signs do not result in authentic faith in those who receive them.  They only placate until a desire for another sign arises. It is faux faith at best.  It is unhealthy dependence on constant “proof” that our trust in God is justified. 

I believe this is one of the reasons Jesus often tells those He has healed to not talk about it too much. Even miracles do not produce a healthy faith.  The high experienced when one witnesses the miraculous is short-lived.  It will take another miracle to sustain it.  Right before this passage in Mark 8, the disciples clearly don’t have faith in Jesus’s ability to provide food for the four thousand even though they witnessed Jesus feed five thousand just days earlier.  They too needed proof that Jesus could do it again. 

The yeast of the Pharisees is this constant questioning and demand for proof.  This is the basis for Jesus’s scolding of his disciples to avoid this yeast.  When Jesus includes “Herod” as part of this yeast, He is referring to the Sadducees, another group of religious leaders who were constantly testing Jesus in the same way.  They were often called Herodians because they supported Herod Antipas.  Jesus refers to them as “Herod” to imply that they were no different than the oppressive ruler himself. 

What Jesus is implying by referring to the Pharisees and Sadducees as yeast is somewhat lost on many modern readers who aren’t bakers.  Yeast is used by bakers to cause dough to rise and expand.  A miniscule amount of yeast is needed to infiltrate the entire loaf and make it grow exponentially. What Jesus is saying is that faux faith quickly spreads.  A particularly current metaphor that could convey the same meaning is to call this imposter faith a virus. 

As we’ll see in the next reflection, the disciples are still not getting the message.  Mark is hoping that, by telling the story, the reader will get it.  Strive for a faith deeper than “faith” that requires constant proof.  Authentic faith in Jesus based on a relationship with Jesus Himself serves as “a vaccine” to protect against this Pharisaical virus. 

This is still true today, although the “virus” has many variants.  Faith that requires answered prayers (defined as getting what I want), success, or any other condition to be met for that faith to be sustained.  The invitation offered to the disciples and to us is to trust that God will give us what we need when we need it.  It is the invitation to trust Jesus’s shepherd-like compassion for us, knowing he will provide for us.  This is hard and all of us seem to catch the Pharisaical virus sometimes. Hence, Jesus issues the warning to watch out and guard against it. 

 

Question:  Have you ever caught yourself placing conditions (ie…seeking a sign) on sustained faith in Jesus?

 

Prayer:  Spirit lead me where my trust is without borders. Let me walk upon the waters wherever You would call me. Take me deeper than my feet could ever wander and my faith will be made stronger in the presence of my Saviour.  Amen.

 

Prayer Focus:  Pray for people who will be alone on Thanksgiving tomorrow. 

 

Song:  Oceans – Hillsong United (Cover by Hannah Davis)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-Q1WuWpulY

More Love Than We Can Know. . .

 

More Love Than We Can Know. . .

 

Matthew 22:23-33, The Message - That same day, Sadducees approached him. This is the party that denies any possibility of resurrection. They asked, “Teacher, Moses said that if a man dies childless, his brother is obligated to marry his widow and father a child with her. Here’s a case where there were seven brothers. The first brother married and died, leaving no child, and his wife passed to his brother. The second brother also left her childless, then the third—and on and on, all seven. Eventually the wife died. Now here’s our question: At the resurrection, whose wife is she? She was a wife to each of them.”

Jesus answered, “You’re off base on two counts: You don’t know what God said, and you don’t know how God works. At the resurrection we’re beyond marriage. As with the angels, all our ecstasies and intimacies then will be with God. And regarding your speculation on whether the dead are raised or not, don’t you read your Bibles? The grammar is clear: God says, ‘I am—not was—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob.’ The living God defines himself not as the God of dead men, but of the living.” Hearing this exchange the crowd was much impressed.

 

                Once again, Matthew includes a discussion between Jesus and religious officials that provides a contrast between this world and the Kingdom of Heaven.  Today the sparring partners are the Sadduccees, a religious group that denied much of what we would call the supernatural world - spirits, demons, angels, or any kind of resurrection (life after death).  Matthew notes this to point out the disingenuous nature of their question; they like the Pharisees before them, are only trying to make Jesus look bad in front of his followers.  And like the Pharisees, the plan backfires.  The followers are even more amazed and endeared to Jesus because of His answers. 

                The question they ask concerns one Moses’s laws.  In a culture so patriarchal it’s hard to imagine these days, Moses’s remedy for caring for widows was to give the responsibility for their care to the dead husband’s brother.  The Sadducces present Jesus with a preposterous “what-if…” scenario; what if all seven brothers are dead and then the poor widow finally dies.”  If there is a resurrection of the dead, whose wife will she be in the afterlife? 

                There is no good technical answer to the question, which is the Sadducces’ reason for asking it.  Of course Jesus knows this and doesn’t step into the trap.  Instead, He pivots to a much deeper issue, the nature of the Kingdom of God.  “Who was married to who?” is an irrelevant concern in the life after this one.  Though it’s hard to imagine a reality where such would be the case, somehow, in the eternal presence of God, we just won’t worry about such things.  Jesus pulls the rug out from underneath the Sadducces by pronouncing the whole basis for their religious order to be false.  God is a God of the living, a God of resurrection.   Matthew includes this exchange because Jesus is about to prove this truth by being resurrected Himself!

                Most commentaries I have read on this passage focus on the marriage question; will we still be married to our spouses in heaven.  I believe that is falling into the same trap as the Sadducces.   Jesus is trying to present a new vision.  Imagine a reality where the relationship between souls and the relationship between souls and God is so much better than we know now that who we were married to before seems like a silly question.  The very best we’ve experienced in this life pales in comparison to the love we will know in eternity.

 I’ll be honest; I struggle to imagine such things.  But I have heard first-hand witnesses from people who “died,” spent a few moments in the perfect presence of God, and then rejoined us here on earth.  They always struggle to find language to describe the love they felt surrounding them.  Some do report recognizing those who had died before being there with them, which is comforting to me and many others.  But in almost every case, the one thing the eyewitnesses to “the other side” want to make clear more than anything else is the Love present there.  

                I do my best to hold on to their witness.  I can also add to their witness that the Love that they struggle to describe sounds like the deepest longing of my soul.  A Love that will make all that has come before just melt away.  A Love with power to heal all the imperfections of the past.  A Love that becomes the only currency that matters.  The perfect and complete Love of God.  We get tastes of it but when the Kingdom reaches it’s fullness, it will be the only reality we’ll know.   I hold as much of that vision in my heart as I can.  I pray that you will too.  Because to the extent that we can, we can be part of that vision becoming reality right now. 

 

Question:  What do you really believe about the coming Kingdom of God?

 

Prayer:  We long for so much to be different than we experience right now.  No more tears. No more pain.  No more brokenness.  No more strife.  Plant the seeds of your Kingdom in our soul and helps us nurture the growth of Your Kingdom within us.  Help us experience the fullness of Your Love.  Amen.

 

Prayer Focus:  Spend some time today reminding yourself that our God is not a God of the dead.  The people that we see no more are not really gone.  They are waiting for us in the life to come.

 

Song:  Perfect Love – Planetshakers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bwlDBtGVd0