Tuesday of the Fifth Week in Ordinary Time
Have you ever seen one of the old silent movies – or heard stories about people who saw them? You know, the ones where the villain would appear, dressed in black and playing with his mustache, and the audience – as well-trained as Pavlov’s dogs – would immediately hiss and boo? Whenever the Pharisees are mentioned in the Gospels, we almost instinctively begin to hiss and boo – inwardly, at least. We tend to see them as the villains in the story of Jesus (black clothing and mustache optional).
In first century Galilee, however, most people would not have seen the Pharisees as villains. Far from it. They would have thought of the Pharisees as the ideal or model Jews, exemplary in their obedience to the Law of Moses and their refusal to compromise with the ways of the Gentile world all around them. If there was a Jewish EWTN at the time, the Pharisees would be running it. Paul told the Galatians about his own beginnings as a Pharisee who tried to outdo everyone else in living out the whole Torah. The beliefs and the practices of the Pharisees were actually closer to what Jesus taught (and what the first Christians believed) than those of any other Jewish group of the time. And yet, Jesus had more clashes with the Pharisees than with any other Jewish group he encountered. How could this be?
In today’s Gospel reading, the Pharisees voice an objection to Jesus that his disciples are not being faithful enough to the Law of Moses because they aren’t properly purifying their hands before eating. Jesus responds by pointing out inconsistencies between some of the Pharisees’ own practices and that very Law of Moses. But this, for Jesus, is only one example, and not quite the heart of the matter. After all, Jesus could also point out similar inconsistencies in the behavior of his own disciples. We can surely see such inconsistencies in our own following of the Gospel. In the case of Jesus and the Pharisees, however, these inconsistencies – as important as they were – weren’t the core issue. What was the issue?
Let’s dispense with a myth about the Pharisees first. The issue was not that they believed that they could be saved by their efforts alone. Many Pharisees were quite capable of acknowledging that salvation and righteousness were gifts of God, and of thanking God for those gifts. The issue was more about the attitude that the Pharisees had about this gift of righteousness. The issue is more about a temptation which has a strong appeal to us as well. Living in an age of uncertainties only makes this temptation even more enticing.
The temptation is this: to see God’s gift of righteousness or salvation as something we can possess or cling to. Something we can be absolutely sure of. Something we can plot in precise spiritual degrees of longitude and latitude, like a GPS device. And, if we can plot our own spiritual locale in this way, with our trusty spiritual GPS, we will think that we can plot the locales of others as well. Chances are, we will put them a little behind us in the spiritual journey. Funny how that works.
What’s wrong with that, someone might ask? Isn’t God faithful to his promises? Surely. We know that we have been claimed by God. We are incorporated into God’s people, children of our heavenly Father, siblings (so to speak) of the Son, and temples of the Holy Spirit. We know that God has challenged us to live lives of holiness by keeping his commandments. However, God’s work in us is usually hidden. We may, every now and then, experience moments of clarity in which we have some strong sense of God’s call to us. But most of the time, things get ambiguous. What should I do today? Is this really part of God’s call to me or not? Even when we do good things, our motivations are often an ambiguous blend of Christian charity and self-serving. We do not often perceive God working in us. And we cannot, unless God chooses to shine a little light our way. God’s ways in our deepest selves are often hidden, quiet, subtle. We do not always know where God is leading us. We rarely have a glimpse at God’s GPS, though we’d like to think that we do. But we know that God is leading us. In fact God invites us to put away the GPS, the maps, the need for absolute certainty, and live each day in faith and hope. What we shall be has not yet been revealed. So, we can’t know fully how we are to get there. We trust that God will lead us there, and we strive to be as faithful to God as our limited lights allow. We trust that the Holy Spirit has the real GPS or, rather, is the real GPS.
Our spiritual situation is more like the account of creation that we have in the first reading. In the beginning, we are told, all was without form and void. So, too, our own souls begin the journey in darkness and chaos. No GPS at hand; only faith and hope in the mercy of God. Then God begins to reveal to us, gradually, who and what we are, and, step by step, begins to refashion us. Only on the “sixth day”, at the end, do we become – in the fullest sense – people in the image and likeness of God. Then, and only then, do we hear of Sabbath and rest. Not just God’s rest, but our own. Once we are fully formed in God’s image, we are ready to be with God forever. The God who can bring the universe into being out of nothing can also bring us into the fullness of life, even after the seeming nothingness of death itself.
The question is: who is in charge of this journey of faith? We are often tempted to claim the driver’s seat for our own, or to claim to know exactly where we are in that journey. But only God can truly know where we are in the journey of faith, or where we need to go if we are to become what God wants us to be. Only God can be our GPS, not anything we can own or control. May we abandon our itch to possess or to have absolute clarity, and trust in God’s word and in the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Only then will we be truly open to the overflowing gifts of grace that God wants to bestow on each of us and, through each of us, on the whole of creation.