Category: Red Letter Year

Red Letter Year: 8/6

Luke 12.1-12

1 Meanwhile, the crowds grew until thousands were milling about and stepping on each other. Jesus turned first to his disciples and warned them, “Beware of the yeast of the Pharisees — their hypocrisy. 2 The time is coming when everything that is covered up will be revealed, and all that is secret will be made known to all. 3 Whatever you have said in the dark will be heard in the light, and what you have whispered behind closed doors will be shouted from the housetops for all to hear!

4 Dear friends, don’t be afraid of those who want to kill your body; they cannot do any more to you after that. 5 But I’ll tell you whom to fear. Fear God, who has the power to kill you and then throw you into hell. Yes, he’s the one to fear.

6 What is the price of five sparrows — two copper coins? Yet God does not forget a single one of them. 7 And the very hairs on your head are all numbered. So don’t be afraid; you are more valuable to God than a whole flock of sparrows.

8 I tell you the truth, everyone who acknowledges me publicly here on earth, the Son of Man will also acknowledge in the presence of God’s angels. 9 But anyone who denies me here on earth will be denied before God’s angels. 10 Anyone who speaks against the Son of Man can be forgiven, but anyone who blasphemes the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven.

11 And when you are brought to trial in the synagogues and before rulers and authorities, don’t worry about how to defend yourself or what to say, 12 for the Holy Spirit will teach you at that time what needs to be said.”

Comments

When we read the warning about the yeast of the Pharisees in Mark and Matthew, the statement was embedded in narrative, coming after a mass feeding and just as the Twelve had forgotten to stop at the Piggly Wiggly for a loaf. Luke strips away the narrative frame and any explanation other than the rant we read yesterday and the rest of chapter 12 (which will fill the rest of this week for us). The Pharisees fail to practice justice and abuse the people they are supposed to care for (ch. 11). The disciples are not to be afraid of them or anyone or anything else (ch. 12). Luke wants us to consider what the yeast of the Pharisees is in his carefully constructed context.

Yeast is such a powerful agent. Once it is active it works its way through the dough changing the chemistry, texture, and taste of the bread. It starts small but it affects the whole, leaving no part untouched. It is self-replicating when fed and can lay dormant waiting for the right conditions to leap into action again. It adds volume to the dough, making it seem bigger than it is. Yeast is the ideal metaphor here because the root of the Pharisees’ hypocrisy, their yeast, was fear. Like a baker uses yeast as a tool, the Pharisees used fear as a tool to control and abuse people. Anyone who claims to speak for God and have the authority to adjudicate another’s spirituality can easily use fear to manipulate anyone who accepts their claim to authority. The Pharisees were master fear mongers. Which explains the content and placement of Luke 12.

But pay careful attention – Luke doesn’t just rail against the fear-yeast of the Pharisees. He keeps the basic warning – Jesus’ disciples need to actively avoid (the Greek is literally – “pay attention to getting away from”) this fear-yeast. Luke is already looking ahead to the troubles the early church experienced that his second volume reports on. Disciples of Jesus need to avoid the fear-yeast because we are just as prone the Pharisees to using fear to religiously manipulate others.

Jesus wanted nothing to do with any form of manipulation. Justice does not manipulate. Love cannot manipulate. Those who follow Jesus cannot, must not, manipulate either. And we don’t need to (that’s not to say some don’t anyway – the warning here is a very real warning), because perfect love drives out all fear. The way of Jesus is not the way of fear. It is the opposite. It is the way of freedom, the way of empowerment, the way of shouting from rooftops and going before magistrates unrehearsed, trusting the Spirit – the Spirit Who Is Love, the Fear Banishing Spirit – to fill our minds and mouths with the very words of God to the world, to the authorities, to every little sparrow of a person who feels worthless and is actually worth more than they could possibly imagine until the Love-Spirit begins to speak through you to tell them. Find a rooftop today and let the Spirit fill your mouth with fear-dispelling words.

New Living Translation (NLT) Holy Bible. New Living Translation copyright© 1996, 2004, 2007 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale HousePublishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

Red Letter Year: 8/5

Luke 11.37-54

37 As Jesus was speaking, one of the Pharisees invited him home for a meal. So he went in and took his place at the table. 38 His host was amazed to see that he sat down to eat without first performing the hand-washing ceremony required by Jewish custom. 39 Then the Lord said to him, “You Pharisees are so careful to clean the outside of the cup and the dish, but inside you are filthy — full of greed and wickedness! 40 Fools! Didn’t God make the inside as well as the outside? 41 So clean the inside by giving gifts to the poor, and you will be clean all over. 42 What sorrow awaits you Pharisees! For you are careful to tithe even the tiniest income from your herb gardens, but you ignore justice and the love of God. You should tithe, yes, but do not neglect the more important things. 43 What sorrow awaits you Pharisees! For you love to sit in the seats of honor in the synagogues and receive respectful greetings as you walk in the marketplaces. 44 Yes, what sorrow awaits you! For you are like hidden graves in a field. People walk over them without knowing the corruption they are stepping on.”

45 “Teacher,” said an expert in religious law, “you have insulted us, too, in what you just said.”

46 “Yes,” said Jesus, “what sorrow also awaits you experts in religious law! For you crush people with unbearable religious demands, and you never lift a finger to ease the burden. 47 What sorrow awaits you! For you build monuments for the prophets your own ancestors killed long ago. 48 But in fact, you stand as witnesses who agree with what your ancestors did. They killed the prophets, and you join in their crime by building the monuments! 49 This is what God in his wisdom said about you: ‘I will send prophets and apostles to them, but they will kill some and persecute the others.’ 50 As a result, this generation will be held responsible for the murder of all God’s prophets from the creation of the world— 51 from the murder of Abel to the murder of Zechariah, who was killed between the altar and the sanctuary. Yes, it will certainly be charged against this generation. 52 What sorrow awaits you experts in religious law! For you remove the key to knowledge from the people. You don’t enter the Kingdom yourselves, and you prevent others from entering.”

53 As Jesus was leaving, the teachers of religious law and the Pharisees became hostile and tried to provoke him with many questions. 54 They wanted to trap him into saying something they could use against him.

Comments

We have seen a lot of this before in Matthew 23, but Luke really ratchets up the tension by locating the whole thing inside a Pharisee’s home. In Matthew, Jesus is out teaching the crowd. On one hand, the more public setting exposes the criticism more widely (not following the praise in public, scold in private adage), but to walk into someone’s home and lambast the way Jesus does here seems even harsher (imo) than the public setting. 

The key addition that Luke makes is adding love to justice as the things they are deficient in and defining both of these as caring (or not in this case) for the poor. Make sure you get that: justice = the love of God. Every single human being is the object of God’s unlimited, unconditional, unrelenting, passionate love. Justice happens when we treat each other like we know this is true.

Jesus gives a pretty clear message to the religious leaders: stop crushing people. This critique of the religious leaders is the same that drove Mary to sing and Zechariah to prophesy. God sends prophets to turn people back to justice – which is the human practice of the love of God. The religious leaders reject that message and kill the prophets. They respond by crushing even more people, including Jesus.

And nothing much has changed. Religious leaders still crush people. We still struggle to practice justice. We still spend more time pronouncing the judgment and wrath of God than we spend declaring the love and affection of God.

Except everything has changed. The Crushed One became The Resurrected One. And The Empowering One. We can engage in practicing the love of God because we have the power of Jesus’ resurrection, the anointing of the Holy Spirit, and the commission of the Father to do so. We don’t have to settle for building monuments to the prophets we’ve killed. The best way to honor the prophets is to do what they said.

New Living Translation (NLT) Holy Bible. New Living Translation copyright© 1996, 2004, 2007 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale HousePublishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.