Christian Art | Jesus Reproaches The Scribes And The Pharisees
Luke 11: 37-41 – Week 28 Ordinary Time, Tuesday (King James Audio Bible KJV, Spoken Word)
37 ¶ And as he spake, a certain Pharisee besought him to dine with him: and he went in, and sat down to meat.
38 And when the Pharisee saw it, he marvelled that he had not first washed before dinner.
39 And the Lord said unto him, Now do ye Pharisees make clean the outside of the cup and the platter; but your inward part is full of ravening and wickedness.
40 Ye fools, did not he that made that which is without make that which is within also?
41 But rather give alms of such things as ye have; and, behold, all things are clean unto you.
The letter kills, the spirit gives life. So writes Paul in his Second Letter To The Corinthians. Much of the opposition to Jesus, as depicted in the Gospels, is from a legalistic standpoint, in which the scribes and Pharisees challenge Jesus concerning the ways in with he and his disciples do not seem to adhere to the letter of the Old Law.
By the time of the composition of the Gospel of Luke – the date is uncertain but potentially the 80s – Jerusalem has fallen to Rome and the Sadducees are no more. It is therefore the Pharisees who are depicted as bearing the brunt of Jesus’ criticisms, especially as, following the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70, the widespread flourishing of Christian communities, living largely in Hellenic contexts, became defined oppositionally to the Jewish culture which emerged to reinvent itself, now in the absence of Temple worship.
The Pharisees observe the Law strictly, and dedicate much time each day to the study of the Law. Here we discover the roots of Jewish Orthodoxy. Jesus, however, has come to fulfil and to complete the Law.
In these Gospel verses, the particular issue is concerning ritual cleansing. There were many prescriptions for the cleansing of the person and of pots and vessels, which must be scrupulously observed, according to the Pharisees. Jesus’ host marvels, therefore, when Jesus does not follow the prescriptions of the Law. In a remarkable reversal of thought and purpose, away from the conversation or dialogue of hospitality, Jesus is stinging in his rebuke to his host, accusing him of hypocrisy.
This is a very heightened manner of storytelling, focussing our attention on Jesus’ message. We are taught in these verses to ensure that our soul is clean, that our thoughts are clean, that our heart is clean, rather than to lavish excess attention on our external appearance, while inside we are fallen in sin. Jesus comes to cleanse us through and through.
Concluding Prayer | Love Revealed By Jesus Christ
Increase in us, Lord, your gift of faith,
so that the praise we offer you
may ever yield its fruit from heaven.
We make our prayer through our Lord.
King James Audio Bible | Endnotes
How Shall I Be Clean?
In Luke 11:37-41, we find a conversation between Jesus and a Pharisee who invited him to dine with him. As they sat down to eat, the Pharisee was surprised that Jesus did not wash before the meal, as was the custom of the Jews. In response, Jesus rebuked him, saying that the Pharisees were so concerned with outward cleanliness but neglected inner purity.
This passage raises an important question: How shall we be clean? Is it merely a matter of following external rituals and traditions, or is there something more profound at work? To explore this question, we can turn to the teachings of the Bible and the wisdom of religious authorities throughout history.
Firstly, it is important to note that the Bible frequently speaks of cleanliness and purity in a spiritual sense. For example, in Psalm 51:10, a penitential psalm, King David prayed: ‘Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.’ Here, David recognizes that true purity comes from within, from a heart that is right with God.
Similarly, in Isaiah 1:16-17, God says: ‘Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil; Learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow.’ Here, God calls his people to repent of their sins and turn towards righteousness.
Furthermore, the New Testament repeatedly emphasizes the importance of inner purity. In Matthew 5:8, Jesus says: ‘Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.’ In 1 Peter 1:22, the apostle writes: ‘Seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently.’
So, we see that according to the Bible, true cleanliness and purity are matters of the heart and soul, not merely external actions. However, this does not mean that external actions are unimportant. On the contrary, as Jesus says in Matthew 23:26: ‘Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse first that which is within the cup and platter, that the outside of them may be clean also.’ In other words, external cleanliness is a reflection of internal purity.
Religious authorities throughout history have recognized the importance of both internal and external cleanliness. For example, in the Catholic Church, the sacrament of confession is a powerful tool for purifying the soul. As the Catechism Of The Catholic Church states: ‘By the grace of the Holy Spirit, we receive forgiveness of sins and reconciliation with God and the Church.’ (CCC 1489) Through the confession of sins and the receiving of absolution, Christians are able to restore their internal purity and move towards external cleanliness as well.
Similarly, in Protestant Christianity, baptism is seen as a symbol of both internal and external cleansing. As the apostle Paul writes in Romans 6:3-4: ‘Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.’ Through baptism, Christians are symbolically washed clean of their sins and enter into new life in Christ.
This is a dark time, and, as Luke writes his Gospel, it is a dark time for the Christian communities. Jesus has been crucified. Well then, so the logic of the Old Law states, Jesus could not possibly have been the Messiah. Except he was. Luke writes primarily for the communities of Greece, mostly pagan converts. There has been the great persecution of Nero. Jerusalem has been destroyed in the year 70 by the Romans [ … ]
‘Death,’ says His Grace, ‘throws it all apart. For we are not as we should be. Faith requires our adjustment to God’s truth. God’s triumph in a very real sense requires in us the loss of our everything. Which, as with Mary at the other end of Jesus’s life, is God’s truth.’ The Gospel reading is of John 11: 1-45, which is a long passage, and His Grace’s homiletic theme commences in textual wilderness. Our brokenness – in this place – a family home. Our faith, our doubt, our death… The irruption – death, doubt, fear – within our precious scenes and our most intimate places. Our domesticity. His Grace speaks from the chair, as is a bishop’s prerogative, and says: ‘So much is obscure in the Gospels. We’re always reaching through them. We’re never there. Really, we never are. Our knowledge, our understanding, of the Gospels is never complete, and with each reading comes a new revelation. There are always new riches there. Just as there are between all of us, between myself and you. The Gospels are living texts. This is a part of the conversation we have with our own Christianity. It is a part of who we are in our relationship with Jesus. We are in this sense always on the brink. ‘So yes, there is plenty that doesn’t seem to make sense. As one of the order of bishops, we would be lying if we said that weren’t the case. They are not easy texts to encounter, if by that word we may signify something more than a superficial glancing off against, but rather a profound search for the word of God. The Gospels are written by people who had their own ideas, and often didn’t know what had really happened. Luke is quite explicit on this point. His is an investigation, from the explicitly claimed point of view of an historian, rather than that of a first-hand witness, who attempts, so he says, to set out an orderly account, out of the chaos, the sheer muddle, that has been handed down to him. It is possible to imagine Luke researching and composing his account after many years, when there has arisen a desire to know what exactly happened, and this implies a certain call to faith and certain demands of historicity, to historical exactitude. So in these different ways, the people of the first years of Christian faith are in the dark. There is also a decisive need to define the life of Jesus. And people didn’t get Jesus. The whole meaning of Christianity is only now beginning to take root throughout the composition. So much needs to be evangelized. The light shines almost in tentative fashion like that first star, which drew the wise men from the east to our Lord’s cradle. ‘John’s is widely held to be a very late Gospel. There are others who say that John’s Gospel might have been the first to acquire its true shape, because it most fully expresses Jesus, as we know him to be, as members of the Catholic Church. We don’t really know when any of this is being written, but we get a feel in John of a Gospel refined over many years, through a community. So there’s a lot going on there that I’d like you to think about. ‘What I would like to suggest to you is that, while within the Gospels we are often confronted with clues, guesswork, stories that have been handed down through so many people, and so in this sense we might find ourselves to be in the wilderness, this is the very desolate space itself to which we must give ourselves in order to experience Christ’s full redemption in our lives. I suggest it is for God’s glory that we do so. ‘As we become aware of ourselves, in this seminary, we find ourselves in a very secure, comfortable setting, and there are signs of Easter everywhere. Within the very fabric of these buildings, our Lord is risen; our Lord lives. But now this is our Lenten journey, where death enters, where death breaks us. We are to ride into Jerusalem in triumph, and then we are to be utterly broken, all hope gone, our hope extinguished. And really, I suggest to you, it is only by inhabiting this thought, as if we don’t know Easter is there, that our new life can follow, just when we have given up all hope, when every promise that Jesus made to us seems to have been cancelled. ‘And here now we have the story of Lazarus. I should like to suggest to you that we have a very powerful call now. In our very comfortable space, our domesticity, with all this comfort, where so very little might seem to happen each day, so it might seem to you, there is a disturbance within all of this comfort, and that is a disturbance within ourselves, and that is our call to Jesus. I think it is correct to say that our most comfortable places break in the light of Jesus from the inside, in order that we may take the necessary steps to be with Jesus. ‘Faith is not comfortable. I think that we can all receive the message of the rolling away of the rock from the tomb of Lazarus to say something of vital importance to ourselves concerning our openness to God’s love. The rock we roll away can come in all sorts of guises, but we know when we are blocked, and I firmly believe if we are truthful then we know where those blocks might be. ‘Next Sunday, which will be Palm Sunday, we process as it were to Jerusalem, to begin our Holy Week. Now as I speak to you we are on the brink. Even now, I suggest it might be very good for all of us to lay aside what we think we know, to fall apart a little, and so […]
The passage, Matthew 19:16-22, recounts the encounter between Jesus and a wealthy young man who asked Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life. In response, Jesus told him to keep the commandments, to which the young man replied that he had done so since his youth. Jesus then told him to sell all his possessions, give the money to the poor, and follow him. The young man went away sorrowful because he had great possessions, which he finds himself unable to relinquish [ … ]
