Luke 11:37-46How to Make Jesus Really MadSermon preached April 12, 2015

Opening

A guy was getting ready to tee off on the first hole when a second golfer approached andasked if he could join him. The first said that he usually played alone, but agreed to thetwosome. They were even after the first few holes. The second guy said, We're about evenly matched, how about playing for five bucks a hole? The first guy said that he wasn'tmuch for betting, but agreed to the terms. The second guy won the remaining sixteen holes with ease and the other player paid upthe $80 he lost As they were walking off number eighteen, the winner noticed the nametag on the othergolfers bag - said Father Brian ODonnell. The man was a priest.

So the man confessed that he was the pro at a neighboring course and liked to pick onsuckers, he was flustered and apologetic, offering to return the money. The priest said,You won fair and square and I was foolish to bet with you. You keep your winnings. The pro said, Is there anything I can do to make it up to you? The Priest said, Well, you could come to Mass on Sunday and make a donation. And, ifyou want to bring your mother and father along, I'll marry them.

The Pharisees

Thats what the young people call, a sick burn. Heres another one.

Jesus is at a dinner party hosted by a Pharisee. In the gospels, you find Jesus at dinnerparties all the time - this got him accused of being a chowhound and a boozer - he didntpull back from life and live on cold lentils and lukewarm water - he dove right in andspent time with people, broke bread with them, hoisted a cup of wine with them, sharedlife with them.

Now a word on the Pharisees. Said it before, will say it again. We think of them as thebad guys in the gospels. But we must remember that they were the good religious peopleof the day.

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Heres how they got their start - the Greeks under Alexander the Great and later hissuccessors occupied Israel and put their own stooges in charge of the religiousestablishment, including the temple in Jerusalem. That corrupted the Temple, so devoutJews had to find another way to worship God, learn about God, so two things happened.

One was the development of synagogues - local places of worship - Jesus had one in hishometown in Capernaum. Synagogues meant you didnt have to depend so much on theTemple in Jerusalem that been corrupted by their Greek occupiers.

Second thing, was the development of a way of life where people asked, How can weobey God in everyday life, in the midst of the corruption of Greek culture and religion? And the people who devoted themselves to this became the Pharisees. And theydeveloped an elaborate lifestyle based on the idea of obeying and honoring God in theeveryday - prayers, rituals like hand-washing before meals, rituals like tithing not onlyyour income, but everything you made or grew - including the herbs from your garden.

As one writer has said, the Pharisees were among the best people of their day - the mostdevout, the most dedicated to God. They were highly respected, people looked up tothem.

And this Pharisee was reaching out to Jesus - an invitation to dinner was an invitation tofriendship, it meant I want to be your friend.

And yet they really ticked Jesus off

So Jesus goes to the dinner party. What sets Jesus off? Luke tells us that the Phariseewho threw the dinner party was amazed that Jesus didnt wash his hands before themeal.

Thats curious, isnt it? For two reasons.

Washing your hands before eating is a good idea, isnt it? My momma alwaysmade me and my brother and sister wash our hands before dinner. Maybe wedbeen playing outside, who knows what nasty germs and filth we had on ourhands? Turn on the hot water, grab the bar of ivory soap and wash those handsbefore dinner, thats what we did. Thats just good hygiene, right?

Second reason this is curious. The Greek word Luke uses for amazed is astrong one - it has the idea of jaw-dropping, head-shaking, eye-poppingamazement. The Brits have a great word for this - gobsmacked.

Why was the Pharisee amazed that Jesus skipped washing his hands? And why did Jesusskip hand-washing? Well, here we get to the nub of the problem.

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For the Pharisees, hand-washing wasnt about physical cleanliness, it was aboutreligious cleanliness. You know the old saw, cleanliness is next to godliness? Thats kind of what the Pharisees were thinking - and what contaminated them,made them dirty, wasnt mud and germs and dust - it was people they believedwere religiously impure.

A Pharisee would have right by his front door, a big stone jar full of water andthey would rinse their hands in the water to cleanse them of the impurity they hadcontracted by coming into contact with impure people - like Gentiles, like womenhaving their monthly cycle, like people with a disease.

So the Pharisee is amazed that Jesus the holy rabbi prophet-man doesnt do this ritual ofcleansing himself of the contaminating impurity he might have contracted by coming intocontact with unclean people. Jesus sees the amazement on the mans face and itsets...him...off. Why?

Because the Lord completely and utterly rejects this whole notion of uncleanpeople from whom we must separate ourselves and who can contaminate us withtheir foulness.

Because the Lord Jesus sees into the heart of this whole religious system that thePharisees have created and sees hypocrisy - sees that its really a way to setyourself above other people by going through religious rituals that allegedly makeyou more holy, more pure, better and more righteous.

The irony of this

The irony of all this is pungent as a bowl of chopped onions. Jesus is saying, when youtry to get closer to God by moving away from unclean people, you instead separateyourself from God. Jesus is saying, when you try to make yourself holy by puttingyourself above other people, you instead become wicked. Evil.

And Jesus gets angry out of frustration, I think - all this religious effort - tithing yourherbs for instance, to make sure youre following the law of God down to the smallestdetail - I mean, how ridiculous - you go out to your herb garden and pick some basil andyou take it inside and put it in a pile and then carefully, like a drug dealer dividing up apile of weed, separate out a tenth of it to devote to God. Youre oh-so-scrupulous inallegedly obeying God and yet you miss the whole point of knowing and loving andobeying God.

And even worse, as the Lord charges the Scribes in vs. 52, you hinder other people fromknowing and loving and obeying God too.

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The danger of religion

What does this have to do with us? Well, when you read the Bible, you ought to ask,where do I fit in here? We do that with other stories - when you read the Lord of theRings, you wonder, would I be a person of courage like Sam and Frodo? Well, Irecommend every time we read about the Pharisees and Scribes in the Gospels - whowere the good religious people of the day - we ask ourselves, I am like that? Am I doingthat? Am I - a Pharisee? Because who are the so-called good religious people of our dayand time? Who are the people who are trying to know, love and obey God? We are.

Listen to what theologian Cornelius Plantinga Jr. says about this:

When we are most religious, we may be most at risk of losing touch withGod...Honest religious practice builds spiritual growth...But not nearly allreligious practice is honest. Evil perverts religion as well as everythingelse...When it does....People start to use their religion to get rich or to gethappy...They use it to build a power base or simply to secure and enrich a middle-class life. We believers are entirely capable of using mutant religion to concealfrom ourselves the character of God; we are entirely capable of using our religionto oppose the project of God in the world.

How we do this?

And we must ask ourselves, in our attempts to know love and obey God, are weseparating ourselves from other people, and hindering them from coming to know God?

Lets think of how this can happen.

How about, for starters, church signs?

Like the one I saw that said, Dont Make Me Come Down There! - God

Like the one a church put up for Easter - Were Open More Than Twice a Year

Like the one you see in August sometimes - You Think Its Hot Here?

On a personal level - does your piety separate yourself from other people?

One of my college roommates told about the time his company hired a newdepartment manager for my friends department, and the man got the people in hisnew department together and said, You need to know that Im a Christian, sodont swear or tell dirty jokes anywhere where I might hear them.

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You see, there is a fake form of holiness that repels other people because at heart itsabout making the so-called holy person feel better about themselves by thinking Im goodand righteous and better than other people. And people can smell that a mile away andthey feel judged by it, they sense its self-righteous phoniness.

Jesus was the holiest man who ever lived. And yet broken and sinful people were notrepelled by him, they were attracted to him. They felt an overwhelming love andacceptance that enabled them to come before him - not run away from him - come beforehim and admit their mess and need and find his mercy and healing.

What do we do?

The Lord says in vs. 42 that the Pharisees had neglected the love of God, and mercytowards people - and they should have devoted themselves to those - rather than theirfussy religious nonsense.

It goes back to basics, really - that great commandment again - love God with all yourheart soul mind and strength, and your neighbor as yourself. With one nuance here -mercy towards people - mercy towards people who need mercy - broken, poor, hurtingpeople.

The Pharisees had made it so complicated - all these little rules - wash your hands! Titheyour herbs! Jesus makes it conceptually simple - Love God, and love others. He sayselsewhere, come to me all you who labor and are heavily burdened, and I will give yourest. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

The Lord doesnt burden us with endless religious requirements that we must follow outof duty and obligation so we can try to please a distant, frowning deity.

Love God

What does that mean? For one thing, to delight in God

The great cellist Pablo Casals, in his life story entitled Joys and Sorrows, revisitshis first memory of attending church on Christmas Eve when he was 5. Hewalked to the church in a small village in Spain hand-in-hand with his father, whowas the church organist.

As he walked, he shivered - not because the night was cold, but because theatmosphere was so mysterious.

"I felt that something wonderful was about to happen. High overhead, theheavens were full of stars, and as we walked in silence I held my father's hand ....

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In the dark, narrow streets, there were moving figures, shadowy and spectral andsilent, too, moving into the church, silently .... My father played the organ, andwhen I sang, it was my heart that was singing, and I poured out everything thatwas in me.

And Central, I think youre on to this. Ive had some wonderful experiences of thepresence of God in worship here lately - and that comes from people gathering to worshipa God they love. And if we can keep our focus on God, keep our hearts on God, as weworship - thats what Jesus was talking about here, thats what we do, and people willwalk in here and sense the presence of God, it will feel to them like the smell of breadbaking in the oven.

Mercy towards others

I read a column in The New York Times a couple of months ago by Nicholas Kristof - theTime is not exactly a hotbed of sympathy towards Christians. But heres what Kristofwrote:

...the liberal caricature of evangelicals is incomplete and unfair. I have little in common,politically or theologically, with evangelicals or, while Im at it, conservative RomanCatholics. But Ive been truly awed by those Ive seen in so many remote places,combating illiteracy and warlords, famine and disease, humbly struggling to do the Lordswork as they see it, and it is offensive to see good people derided.

On a recent trip to Angola, the country with the highest child mortality rate in the world, Icame across a rural hospital run by Dr. Stephen Foster, 65, a white-haired missionarysurgeon who has lived there for 37 years much of that in a period when the Angolanregime was Marxist and hostile to Christians.

Foster, the son and grandson of missionaries, has survived tangles with a 6-foot cobra andangry soldiers. He has had to make do with rudimentary supplies: Once, he said, heturned the tube for a vehicles windshield-washing fluid into a catheter to drain a patientsengorged bladder.

Armed soldiers once tried to kidnap 25 of his male nurses, and when Foster ordered thegunmen off the property, he said, they fired Ak-47 rounds near his feet. He held firm, andthey eventually retreated without the nurses.

Oh, by the way, this is where Dr. Foster raised his family.

Kristoff continues, ...I must say that a disproportionate share of the aid workers Ive metin the wildest places over the years, long after anyone sensible had evacuated, have beenevangelicals, nuns or priests.1

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1. Nicholas Kristof, A Little Respect for Dr. Foster, in The New York Times, March 28, 2015.

Friends, this is why, for example, were doing this diaper ministry - I must say that I amgrieving and wounded they didnt select my name for the ministry - Blessed Bottoms -but hey, Ill get over it.

Why are we giving diapers away? Because we want to move towards people like Jesusdid - the diapers are only a means to say we care about you, and a way we hope will breakthe ice and show we are people who care so we can develop relationships with hurting,struggling people outside our walls here. Mercy, mercy towards the hurting!

We need Christ to do this

And if this loving God stuff sounds weird to you - well, thats a diagnostic indicator thatyou may be trapped in joyless mechanical obedience that you follow in hopes that itmakes you ok in Gods sight.

And thats where we all start really - were trapped in our own mess and on our ownwere pretty hopeless. We are, the very kind of people whom Jesus came to save - thelost, the broken, the messed-up. And instead of standing far off in the splendor of hisholiness, the Lord came all the way down to us and moves towards us to touch us andheal us and forgive us and free us from the curse of bogus religion. Heal us and forgiveus so we can love God and love other people. Died to heal us and forgive us. Mygoodness, think of that - the Lord did not retreat from sinful, impure people - he let themarrest him and lay hands on him and beat him and nail him to a cross - and somehow tooktheir sin and our sin into the great heart of God - where it was forgiven. Thanks be toGod. Amen.

Endnotes

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