Dear People Whom God Loves,
We have seen how Jesus was personally aware of our human struggle. His own human struggle fostered his ability to empathize and understand the human struggles of others. This human awareness enables us to gradually embrace more and more different kinds of people.
We will now look at the Pharisees and at how their spiritual path made them obstacles to their own entry into the reign of God and obstacles to others’ entry into the reign of God.
The Pharisees were not bad people, and I’m sure that some of them were compassionate. What was their problem? They saw that the path of salvation lay in observing literally all of the rituals and rites of the Mosaic Law. This law had numerous prescriptions. It was not possible for ordinary people to observe them all. That is why the Pharisees were called the separate ones. They could not mingle with ordinary people. Such mingling might make them ritually unclean and thus not worthy to partake in temple worship. For example, eating with ordinary people lay them open to eating improper food or food prepared improperly. That would make them ritually unclean. They dared not take such a chance. Jesus’ eating with the unclean was shocking and threatening to those who were clean. They were true religious Jews. Jesus was not.
We should not be too harsh in judging them because it is an easy trap to fall into. That trap is thinking that external conformance means entering the reign of God. We who claim to follow Jesus have less of an excuse for falling into that trap.
Jesus did speak harshly to the Pharisees. I suspect that that was his way of holding up a mirror to them so they could see themselves and repent. Remember when the scribes and Pharisees were taking the woman, caught in adultery, out to stone her, Jesus said to them, “Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” They then quietly slipped away. Jesus enabled them to see themselves deep inside. This presented them to begin entering the reign of God.
Interestingly, as far as I can tell, Jesus spoke harshly only to righteous religious. An exception that I remember is when he rebuked Peter harshly.
As I finish this series, I pray for the grace to see how I am an obstacle. I am especially in need of grace because it is so easy to not see the ugly truth about ourselves. Let us all pray for each other and for ourselves.
Smile, God Loves You,
Father Clay
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