seeing while dining

The year is around AD 30; an unnamed Pharisee is keen to have Jesus as a dinner guest. The Pharisees were a religious political party; each and every one from the party was highly respectable, seriously powerful and diligently righteous. The great and the good.

This Pharisee was astonished because, as everyone who was anyone knew only too well, no-one sat down to dinner without ceremonially indicating their cleansing from the defiling, tarnishing things of the day.

The Pharisee was seeing this. But nothing was said.

Instead, Jesus said aloud what he was seeing – seeing there while dining. It makes interesting reading. Here it is again.

(1) “Now you Pharisees cleanse the outside of the cup and of the dish, but inside you are full of plundering and malice.” If a person is accused of slandering another, one of the principal defences is to claim the truth of what was said. Given the nature of the person who made this statement, it seems very likely that the statement was true.

 

And, on reflection, is it not still the case even today that many apparently-upright leaders and opinion formers are only clean on the outside?

(2) “Foolish people! Did not he who made the outside make the inside also? Rather grant mercy for those things that are within, and behold, it is all clean for you.” Yes, Jesus did call the Pharisees “foolish”. The original Greek word used by Luke can also be translated “illogical” or “irrational”. However, the pint which Jess is making is that the Almighty Creator God whom they worshipped made the outside and the inside of each Pharisee. That Almighty God , being wholly and utterly and altogether righteous, wants the inside of each person to be as clean as the outside. Mercy is available for your insides, Jesus says.

(3) “But distress awaits you Pharisees in that you tithe mint and rue and every herb, and neglect the justice and the love of God. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others.” A tithe was ten per cent of income. These men were scrupulous about giving away one tenth of their gains every year. Including one tenth of the mint-patch and of the medicinal rue and of every herb in fact. Everyone knew they did that. But they neglected “the justice of God” and “the love of God”. Religious observance was all to them.

(4) “Distress awaits you Pharisees in that you love the best seat in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplaces.” What’s wrong with loving the best seats in church? Or loving being well-known in the markets, financial and other? When Jesus was asked which commandment was greatest in the law, he replied, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’

(5) “Distress awaits you in that you are like unmarked graves, and people walk over them without knowing it.” Most of us today prefer to stick to the path when visiting a graveyard. But for the Pharisees of AD 30, things were much more serious than merely feeling uncomfortable about walking over dead bodies. Nearness to a dead body defiled them religiously and spiritually. That would need cleansing by a priest and possibly atonement of some kind.

 

So, what Jesus was saying here must have been horrible to their pride. He was saying that, when men and women came near to them, to the Pharisees, they did not realise it but they were being defiled by the Pharisees.

How so? Well, folk wanted to copy these men – they were so “good”. But those who copied them were being defiled by doing so.