Most of us, when reading this passage, immediately side with Jesus. After all, as we learn just four chapters later, the entirety of the Jewish Law hangs on the commandment to “Love the Lord your God…and [to] love your neighbor as yourself.”[1] Human need takes precedence over legalism every time. Jesus, in his divine wisdom, obviously made the right choice here. Of course, this is an important truth – one that’s worth repeating, especially given the state of the country and world today.
But the only reason WE’RE able to accept this teaching without question is because of who’s giving it: Jesus the Christ; God’s only son, our Lord; true God from true God. With the benefit of hindsight, we recognize that his authority is absolute – especially over the Sabbath. But at this point in his life, Jesus is the only person (besides his parents) who knows this. As far as the general public is concerned, he’s an exceptionally knowledgeable and talented – but entirely human – rabbi. So from this perspective, the alarm expressed by this group of pharisees isn’t quite as outrageous as it may have initially seemed.
Modern Christians tend to view the Pharisees of the first century with suspicion at best; disgust at worst, but in the first-century Jewish community, they were well-respected figures– unlike their religious contemporaries, the Sadducees. The Pharisees weren’t part of the aristocratic class; they lived and taught among the people. They allowed for nuance and context in their interpretation of Jewish Law, incorporating Scriptures outside of the Torah[2] and oral teachings into their understanding. And, unlike the Sadducees, the Pharisees believed in resurrection. The Pharisees were to the Sadducees what the Protestants were to the Roman Catholics: religious reformers.[3]
Jesus’ ministry actually had a lot in common with the pharisaic movement (which was well over 100 years old by the time he was born). He, too, was a reformer who cared about the common folk. He, too, embraced teachings beyond just the five scrolls of the Torah. He, too, sought to demonstrate how the Law could be applied in “modern” contexts. And belief in resurrection was obviously essential to his message. Ideologically, Jesus and the Pharisees were on almost the exact same page. It seems that the biggest difference between Jesus and the Pharisees is the way it led them to live out these shared beliefs – how they each chose to engage the Law.
The Pharisees generally demonstrated their commitment to Torah by building “a fence [of behavioral norms] around the Law”. These norms weren’t laws themselves, but they were self-imposed rules that kept the Pharisees from getting anywhere near breaking any of the commandments. For example, they protected the Sabbath by avoiding anything that could possibly be mistaken for work, even if it wasn’t explicitly forbidden by God. Jesus, on the other hand, had a much more permissive attitude towards keeping Torah. He didn’t want anything, including human-made rules, to distract from the Law’s ultimate goal of bringing humanity closer to God. In this passage, Jesus wasn’t necessarily breaking the Sabbath – but he was absolutely violating the fence that the Pharisees had set up around that particular part of the Law. And this group of pharisees took that personally.
This encounter didn’t have to lead to conflict. Given everything else that the Pharisees had in common with Jesus, this cohort could have used it as an opportunity for healthy debate leading to growth on both sides. But instead, they become reactionary and antagonistic. They could have approached Jesus as a potential ally, but instead, according to Luke, “They were furious and began talking with each other about what to do to [him]”.
Although Scripture doesn’t explicitly tell us what this group of pharisees was furious ABOUT, it’s fair to assume that it was Jesus’ open and unapologetic disagreement on these finer points of practical theology. This is their true hypocrisy: their rejection of Jesus, not for valid ideological concerns, but for nitpicky, shortsighted ones. They were unable to look past their knee-jerk reaction, and so, rather than becoming stronger together, they chose to make him an enemy – and they actively began to seek his undoing.
In this era of divisiveness, of “us versus them”, we often fall into the very same trap that this group of pharisees did. The other day, I was poking around in “The Christian Left” Facebook group – a group, as you might expect, intended for Christians on the left side of the political spectrum – when I stumbled across someone spewing all kinds of anger at the group’s members. He was accusing them of the hatred and corruption that have sadly become associated with the term “Christian” today. No matter how many times people tried to tell him that they shared his values, he couldn’t be deterred. He responded that if they really did, they should have done more to prevent things from getting to this point, and that they were still responsible.
Now, this individual had clearly been hurt by the Church in the past, and he wasn’t wrong about there being more that the progressive Church could have done. But by letting his anger get the better of him, he completely missed the hundreds of thousands of potential allies conveniently gathered in one digital space. He could have discovered a valuable new community that would have welcomed him, he could have heard a different perspective, and maybe he even could have helped liberal Christians understand how to better support people like him. But because the group’s members didn’t wholeheartedly reject all of Christianity, he wrote them off out of hand – loudly and aggressively. We’ll never know what was lost because of his choice to focus on their differences instead of what they have in common.
It's easy to look at the world in terms of black and white, to assume that if someone’s way of thinking isn’t identical to ours, then they must be our enemy. Christianity today has become preoccupied with ideological purity tests of our own making, our own “fences around the gospel”: which particular rules do you follow? How do you perform your faith to the world? What is it that demonstrates your superiority to others?
It’s not just things like, “Not swearing,” “Opposing same-sex marriage,” and other hallmarks of the evangelical movement; mainline Protestants are just as guilty of this. “Did your pastor mention the latest news event in their sermon?” “How many protests have you been to?” “Which non-profits do you support?” Of course there’s a place for each of these things in context, but when they become rules acting as barriers to inclusion – when they become more central to our identity than our shared commitment to the Gospel – then we’re sowing needless division in the body of Christ.
Don’t get me wrong; this absolutely does not mean that we should sacrifice our religious and spiritual values on the altar of tolerance. Making room for those who aren’t exactly like us isn’t the same as adopting an “anything goes” morality. If the group confronting Jesus had been Sadducees, this approach wouldn’t have worked; they simply didn’t have enough in common with him to overcome their ideological differences. We can’t reconcile our principles with those that are diametrically opposed. But when the things separating us from another person or group are just different approaches to the same core values, then we need to consider whether conversation is a better tool than rejection of a potential ally – if not for their sake, then for the sake of God’s kindom on earth.
As the saying goes, “In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity.” Following Christ is not about being right; it’s about figuring out how to do the right thing. And sometimes, there’s more than one way to do the right thing. When we see someone doing faith differently and feel our anger bubbling up, we should stop and ask ourselves: is this something that’s essential to the gospel or not? Is my reaction based on a solid understanding of God’s Word, or just my own inclinations? Could my anger be stopping me from recognizing a friend in disguise?
We shouldn’t be like the pharisees in this passage, seeing an enemy where God has provided an ally. If we can remember that the ultimate destination of faith is more important than the particular path we take to get there, then we may find that there’s almost always more room for dialogue than we think. Where there’s room for dialogue, there’s room for cooperation. And where there’s room for cooperation, there’s room for God’s kindom to sneak in. So let’s stop building fences and start making some room. Amen.
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[1] Luke 10:27, CEB.
[2] The first five books of the First Testament – Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. This term is also used to refer to Jewish Law as a whole.
[3] https://www.britannica.com/topic/Pharisee
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