Why do Pharisees grumble?

Scripture Lessons: 1 Timothy 1: 12-17 and Luke 15: 1-10, NT page 78 Sermon Title: Why do Pharisees grumble? Preached on 9/11/16 This is a familiar lesson from the Gospel of Luke. You probably know about the Good Shepherd who searches for one lost sheep as this is one of the most beautiful images that the Bible has to offer. In the Narthex of the last church I served, a church called Good Shepherd Presbyterian is a painting of a lamb, lost and afraid, tangled in brambles, and there are the hands of Christ comforting this lamb, ready to take him home. The image is in Sunday School rooms throughout the country too. Pictures of Jesus with a little lamb across his shoulders, and I think maybe we like this image and relate to it because so many of us feel like lost sheep. We can understand why all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to Jesus – it’s because he is the Good Shepherd who sought us out when we were lost, untangled us from the brambles, laid us on his shoulders and rejoiced that he found us. It’s a beautiful image, and it offers us a true and accurate picture of who God is and what God does, but this Scripture Lesson titled in our pew Bibles as “The Parable of the Lost Sheep” isn’t directed at those who would identify with the lost sheep or the lost coin, this Scripture Lesson is directed to the Pharisees and the scribes who were “grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinner and eats with them.”” That’s what prompts the two parables of Jesus that we just read, so I ask you to ponder with me the question: “why do Pharisees grumble?” For some back up information let me help you clarify in your minds who Pharisees are. In the Gospels there are three groups of religious villains who irritate Jesus: the scribes, the Sadducees, and the Pharisees. The scribes aren’t that bad, they’re just around, because in a society where not many people knew how to read or write, where there weren’t computers or typewriters, people who had authority and things to say needed scribes to write it down. It’s not bad to be a scribe – the Apostle Paul had scribes to help him write his letters too, and so every important figure and every figure who thought he was important had scribes around from time to time. The Sadducees on the other hand had a particular belief system that they wanted to defend. They were Jews just like the Pharisees were Jews, but in addition to irritating Jesus they also liked to irritate the Pharisees and the Pharisees liked to irritate them. Just as there are different denominations of Christians today, in Ancient Israel at the time of Jesus there were different kinds of Jews who believed a little bit different from each other and here’s the thing about the Sadducees that made them different from the Pharisees – the Sadducees didn’t believe there would be an afterlife. Moses never mentioned an afterlife so they didn’t believe there would be one and that prompted their questions to Jesus – it was the Sadducees who went to Jesus in the 20th chapter of Luke and said: “Teacher, there were seven brothers; the first married, and died childless; then the second and the third married her, and so in the same way all seven died childless. Finally, the woman also died. In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be?” That’s some question – and for them, any answer would have been wrong because they didn’t believe in an afterlife any way. So here it is – the Sadducees didn’t believe in an afterlife, so they were Sad – you see? And the Pharisees – they loved the Law of Moses laid out in the first 5 books of our Bible and they loved interpreting those first 5 books of the Bible so traditions developed and those Pharisees loved holding people accountable to those laws and traditions because they believed that God would reward those who followed the Law and that God would punish those who broke the Law, so in short the Pharisees loved the law, so they were Fair – you see? You learn that kind of thing in seminary. The Sadducees were sad and the Pharisees were fair and you wouldn’t think that there was anything wrong with being fair, but any parent of siblings can tell you that an obsession with fairness can be as great a burden to bare as any. You’ve seen it: “Dad, can I have a piece of candy?” “No. No candy, we’re about to eat supper,” dad responds, but before the words are even out of his mouth completely – “But my sister had a piece of candy and mama said that she could eat it so this isn’t fair!” Fairness becomes a burden – because if someone has something that you don’t you feel angry – but the inverse is also true sometimes. If you have something that someone else doesn’t maybe you feel happy. The bug man comes out to the house and you feel embarrassed – and I mean you really worry about what he’s going to think of you when you tell him that roaches have been getting into your kitchen, so he makes you feel better by saying, “that’s nothing. Your neighbor has the biggest rat infestation I’ve ever seen” and when you hear that maybe you feel a little happy. Do you know what I’m talking about? When life is too much about keeping score, thinking too much about how the ones who follow the rules will be rewarded and the ones who don’t will be punished than the sick part of me who is insecure about my failures and shortcomings starts to take a little comfort in the failings and shortcomings of others. Like life were a race – and I don’t have to win the race – but I sure don’t want to finish last, so I take a little bit of comfort in the people who are behind me. And that’s true. Listen to this. Years ago we were running a race in Atlanta. It was 13 miles and I had no interest in running after about the 10th mile so I started to walk, but just as I slowed down I saw this lady running with a cane – and she was ahead of me. Now I didn’t need to win that race – but I sure couldn’t get beat by a lady with a cane. For me to feel OK about me I had to be ahead of somebody, especially somebody who was running with a cane. I’m OK being among the 99, so long as I’m ahead of the one who is lost and maybe that’s why the Pharisees grumble. They’re closest to the finish line and when they finish they want God to be there to place that medal around their neck for running the race so well – but then Jesus tells them that God isn’t at the finish line. Guess where God is. Jesus says – “he’s back there with the lady who runs with a cane.” Is that fair? If you trained for the race you should get a medal, but where is God? Among the lame and the lost. And getting upset about that is a sickness you see. The Pharisees are sick in their fairness and all their keeping track of who is good and who is not and wondering “how good is she and how good am I?” That’s a question that judgmental people can’t help asking: “Am I as good as I should be?” “Have I been doing enough?” If the answer is “No” then you start to take comfort in hearing about the people who have done less. I don’t know what you did last Tuesday, but if you stayed off the front page of Wednesday’s paper than you did better than some, but here’s the catch – while the sick part of us loves to read the bad news that comes off the front page of Herald, Jesus would be combing the crime reports for the next person he’d be having dinner with. That’s why the sinners and tax collectors loved him – and that – I am convinced – is a big part of why the Pharisees grumbled. They grumbled because if nothing else, they thought they were at least better than them, but then God shows up and turns this economy of better and worse right on its head. The great southern author Flanner O’Connor tells it this way: In the doctor’s waiting room Mrs. Turpin’s “little bright black eyes took in all the patients as she sized up the seating situation…Sometimes Mrs. Turpin occupied herself at night naming the classes of people. On the bottom of the heap were most colored people [according to her]; then next to them – not above, just away from – were the white-trash; then above them were the home-owners, and above them the home-and-land owners, to which she [and her husband] Claud belonged. Above she and Claud were people with a lot of money and much bigger houses and much more land” and so she took inventory of the doctor’s waiting room and realized that she was not ahead of everybody because there was a stylish woman seated to her right who probably had plenty of money and land and a big ol house, but that was OK because Mrs. Turpin wasn’t at the bottom of the heap. The first time I read the story about her I thought she was awful, but then Sara was pregnant with Lily and she bought about 20 books on pregnancy and babies, and she read them all in about 3 days. She asked me to read just one – just one of those books with her, but I didn’t really want to, even though not reading the book made me feel like a horrible person who would be a half-rate father. But then one day I was in the waiting room for her doctor’s appointment, and I looked around, and whereas before I had felt like a half-rate father I just took inventory of that waiting room and noticed how many father’s to be had failed to show up as I had and so I started to feel a little bit better about myself, but now – now I think on this and realize how sick it can make us to keep score. To treat life like a race where some win and some loose. To keep count – keeping track of sins and wrongs and failures – because living like a Pharisee leads right into the worst kind of sickness where our hope is that the lost should just stay lost – for how will I know that I’m found if all are found? The low should just stay low – for how will I know that I’m high if all are lifted up? The weak should just stay weak – because I want to be strong. The last should just stay last – because I don’t have to be first but I sure want to finish in front of somebody. Jesus turns this way of thinking on its head – not just by being at the end of the race with the lame instead of the finish line, not just by eating with the ones who end up on the cover of “Just Busted” rather than looking down his nose at them, but also for choosing a teenage girl to be his mother so that he could redeem you and me – making the path to salvation, not a race that we can win but a gift given by the God who doesn’t keep score the way we do. Thanks be to God; God doesn’t keep score the way we do. We have to remember these things. On this anniversary of September 11th, remembering one of the worst tragedies in this nation’s history we have to remember these things because it is too easy to think on those who have and would do us wrong and not come close to rejoicing should they be found. To live as Christ lived, to follow where he leads, we must be prepared to rejoice whenever there is the chance of forgiveness or the hope of redemption – for we are called again and again not to judge but we do, and the Lord invites us again and again to celebrate but the Pharisees grumble instead. Let us remember then, the God of grace, the Good Shepherd who sought us out when we were lost, untangled us from the brambles, laid us on his shoulders and rejoiced that he found us. Let us remember the God of Grace, for God is not nearly so interested in fairness or punishment as we sometimes are. God just wants us and all his other children to come home. Amen.