As I mentioned last week, we have this misconception that holiness is primarily about purity, and this misunderstanding leads us to be dogmatic in our thinking and isolationist in our actions. In contrast to the Pharisees, who probably wouldn’t have eaten with non-Jews on a bet, Jesus (presumably as holy as they come) ate with sinners, drunkards, prostitutes, and all sorts of "impure" people. Could our ideas of holiness need some revision?
The peace, the shalom, that God desires for us has been described as:
The experience of harmony and connectedness that is a part of spirituality—the "feeling good" that flows from the sense of be-ing "good"—derives from a vision of life that sees self in perspective, as somehow fitting into a larger whole ... as somehow linked. This sense is, perhaps, the most important human experience. It is certainly the deepest human desire.
During the atrocities that accompanied the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, thousands of bewildered suspects were randomly arrested, rounded up, stripped naked, and shot one by one in the back of the head. One eyewitness account captures the depth as well as the poignancy of our need to feel linked, joined together: "Most of the victims usually requested a chance to say good-bye; and because there was no one else, they embraced and kissed their executioners." (The Spirituality of Imperfection, p 72)
The peace that God desires for us goes so far beyond our way of living that that peace will ultimately lead us to forgive our enemies, to embrace our executioners, to get dirty with some pretty unsavory people.
Matthew 16:5-12
Commentary
The context is key. Jesus’ comment in v6 only makes sense given the encounter with the Pharisees and Sadducees in Matt. 16:1-4. Also, given that the last of the miraculous feedings that Jesus refers to in v9-10 appears at the tail end of (Matt. 15:29-39) one really has to look at these three episodes as a group; otherwise Jesus’ comments seem random and hard to fathom.
v6,11,12 the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees. In preparation for Passover, an observant Jew would go through the whole house removing any hint of fermented grain and all fermenting agents. Not only would yeast be used, burned, or sold, but beer, cakes, leavened breads and sourdough as well. Presumably, Jesus is arguing for this type of scrupulousness in guarding against the teachings of the Pharisees and Sadducees.
Since the teachings of the Pharisees and Sadducees are lumped together, Jesus is not simply warning about a single doctrine. Rather, there is something about how both groups work, how they look at the world, that is wrong. Worse, through the metaphor of the yeast, Jesus implies this wrong-headed way of dealing with spirituality tends to corrupt and contaminate others and should be avoided.
v7 They discussed this among themselves. I love this verse! I think being a disciple of Jesus must always have been a struggle to understand, a challenge to keep up, and a frustration whenever one totally misunderstood. Isn’t that what our spirituality is like from time to time? Does God frequently say that you are doing it correctly, or do you get challenged to continue to grow?
Application
Jesus had just fed over 4,000 people on a mountainside. Jesus, who elsewhere had called himself the Bread of Life, didn’t just feed a huge number of people from a small offering of 7 loaves & a few fish. He gave them a picture of the wonderful grace of God as the blessing of bread was given out to everybody: the ritually clean and the unclean (how many of these 4,000+ washed their hands before eating?); the godly and the ungodly; the inner group of disciples and the strangers; the Jews and the non-Jews; sinners; prostitutes; outsiders. He gave them a picture of the superabundance of grace, as the cleanup crew afterwards collected seven large baskets full of scraps. [1] He gave them a picture of how that grace was multiplied—just as seeds multiply by falling to the ground and dying to produce more seeds, the Spirit of the Bread of Life would be multiplied in the breaking of Jesus (and us).
Right on the heels of this tremendous event, the Pharisees and Sadducees came to Jesus and asked for a sign. In all fairness to the Pharisees and Sadducees, the feeding miracle did happen out in the middle of nowhere, while presumably they caught up to him in Magadan. Would they have been asking for a sign if they had been there? Had they heard about, or seen, the miracle and wanted him to repeat it for their whole group? Or where they unaware of the miracle and just interested in having Jesus prove his prophetic credentials? [2]
One thing is certain: God operates on his own schedule, following his own agenda, and—although he is gracious enough to attend to our prayers and sometimes answer our prayers in ways that we can see—he is not a trained pet performing tricks at our command. The skeptics ask for a sign and Jesus says, "[Y]ou cannot interpret the signs of the times. A wicked and adulterous generation looks for a miraculous sign, but none will be given it except the sign of Jonah" (Matt 16:3-4).
So what is the sign of Jonah? In a similar tirade in Matt. 12:39-43, Jesus says:
For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and now one greater than Jonah is here. (Matt. 12:40-41)
The bane of humans is that we argue over the sign and miss the big picture—the real action that the sign is supposed to be pointing us to in the first place! We argue over how Jonah could have survived three days in the belly of a great fish, and miss the fact that the real action in the book of Jonah is the salvation of Nineveh! We argue over Jesus’ death and resurrection—the "sign of Jonah" that Jesus refers to—and miss the fact that the real action in the gospels is the salvation of people estranged from God. The people of Nineveh—pagans!—will be amazed that we could have missed what God is doing right in front of us!
The Sadducees wanted a spirituality that happened on schedule in the temple. The Pharisees wanted a spirituality that came through their careful observance of the Law. What sort of spirituality do we want? The grace of God—like bread in the feeding miracle—is being given out willy-nilly all around us! Do we see it happening, or are we missing it through a careful observance of a spirituality of our own making? Pollsters say that over 90% of Americans believe in God, and most of them at least believe in a historical Jesus as a good and wise teacher. Could it be that the grace of God is being given to them—and to us!—but we do not see it, because it doesn’t come right the right religious trappings? What would the pagans from Nineveh say to us?
WYSIWYG is an old computer programming term, meaning that what you see while editing a document looks like the final product. (For example, when I type up these sermon notes on the computer, what I am looking at on my screen looks like what I print for people in church.) However, I think there is a spiritual WYSIWYG principle as well: what we see with the eyes of our heart determines the type of peace, or shalom, we are prepared to receive. (Remember, I started out by talking about shalom!) For the Sadducees, the eyes of their heart had compartmentalized spirituality to the temple; they were only prepared to receive shalom during that time at temple. But what if God was at work outside that time and place? For the Pharisees, the eyes of their heart had compartmentalized spirituality into an exclusive practice; they were only prepared to receive shalom from other "insiders". But what if God was at work outside of the inside group? For us, the eyes of our hearts are focused—by tradition, by habit, by guilt, by sin, by fear—and we are unable to see the many places where God is at work outside of our small focal point. How long are you going to wait for God to work here when he is calling you to join him there?
Points to Ponder
Jesus said, "I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does" (John 5:19). Do you think you are doing what God is doing, or just doing your own thing? If your usual way of going through life—doing your own thing—is frustrating you, why not try doing what you see God doing?
What you see is what you get. The eyes of your heart will only see the type of grace you are prepared to receive. Think of somebody you have a grudge against. Is it possible that God is actually working in their life? If so, does it make more sense that God would have you work against them, or work for them? If you changed your focus, working with them instead of against them, how much more grace might you begin to see in your life?
So, if the yeast, the wrong thinking, of the Pharisees and Sadducees that Jesus was warning about was compartmentalizing God—only looking for him to work in special places or with special people—where do you see that yeast, that wrong thinking, at work at church, in your study time or prayer time, or in your life?
The Discipline of Meditation:
Attend to a Difficult ObjectWilliam James, philosopher and author on the psychology of religious experience, said, "My [spiritual] experience is what I agree to attend to [i.e. set my attention to]."
Our attention tends to be drawn to the negative instead of the positive. The Egyptian monk Evagrius described our fatal way of seeing—seeing through the perspective of our own egos—that resulted in bad thinking. Because we tend to focus on the wrong stuff, our minds later tend to be drawn in the wrong direction. Evagrius came up with a list of fatal ways of seeing that eventually evolved into the 7 Deadly Sins.
Meditation attempts to change our minds by changing those things on which we focus. We are not "creating our own reality" as the new age mystics promise. Rather, by meditating on God, we are attempting to open ourselves up to where God is at work, and asking him to open the eyes of our heart to him and where he is at work. For example, the one feeling impoverished may wish to meditate on reviewing where God has provided and giving thanks for God’s provision. The one feeling shame and guilt may wish to meditate on stories of God’s mercy and forgiveness.
Choose what you want to think about, both Evagrius and James counsel, and choose it wisely, because that choice determines the way you live your life (The Spirituality of Imperfection, p 79).
End Notes
1 - In theology there are arguments over something called "limited atonement" which says that God must chose who is saved and who is not saved, for otherwise some of God’s redemptive work is squandered and goes unused. For proponents of limited atonement, the idea of God’s work being wasted is unacceptable. However, I see in Jesus’ actions—like the many baskets of scraps—plenty of evidence to indicate that some of God’s grace is in vain. The real tragedy is not that some go to hell, bad as that is, but that they go to hell when God’s saving grace is all around them—like a person drowning while a lifesaver is within arm’s reach.
2 - Remember, a prophetic sign is visible evidence that something invisible (or in the future) proclaimed by a prophet is true. For example, in Matt. 9:1-8, when Jesus tells the paralyzed man that his sins are forgiven, the prophetic sign is that the man is healed. Read that account again, and pay attention to v5-7.
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