You Might Be A Pharisee If...

Mark 2:23-24 states:

²³ One Sabbath Jesus was going through the grainfields, and as his disciples walked along, they began to pick some heads of grain. ²⁴ The Pharisees said to him, “Look, why are they doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?” 

In addition, in the passage immediately prior to this, the Pharisees were questioning Jesus about fasting, and will continue to nag him and his disciples about their ritual observances. This will be one of my main themes for the New Testament, and I'll probably repeat it more than once and have different applications at different times, but Jesus, through these events, was introducing a radically different idea from what the people up to that time had been used to. That theme is (drumroll, please):

HOW you do things is not nearly as important as being sure THAT you do them

In the fasting episode, the Pharisees were questioning what Jesus and his followers were doing, not their reasons or motivations for doing so. We saw it repeated over and over in the Old Testament, but the verse I'll use for reference will be 1 Samuel 15:22, a solid 1,000 years prior to the time of Christ:

But Samuel replied: “Does the LORD delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the voice of the LORD? To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams.

Even though the people had been ordered to sacrifice, obedience and reverence were the key ingredients, and if those were missing, they were just going through the motions. When the Pharisees criticized Jesus and the disciples, they weren't  doing it from a loving, God-focused manner, but from a narrow legalistic view intent on displaying shortcomings. When you think about it, Levitic law is perfect for an OCD-like checkmark type of religion that collects acts like the old S&H Green Stamps of days gone by, ready to be redeemed for salvation, but Christ was introducing a new age.

The same type of Phariseeic activity occurs in our churches today when we worry more on how something is done instead of that it is done. Traditionally, we do confession and absolution at the beginning of our services, and while I don't recommend changing that, what if we moved it to after the sermon is delivered (but before Communion--let's not get crazy here)--is God mocked? What happens if we baptize at age 10 instead of at infancy? What happens if we never kneel for Communion again and just do continuous flow? What if we replaced the Red Hymnal (oops, too late on that one...)? In the Age of Grace, HOW we do things is meaningless, if how we did them ever had any meaning in the first place--if we can't earn salvation (and we can't, and never could), the process by which we do something becomes unimportant, as long as the activity itself is being undertaken.

So, how can we tell if we're a Pharisee? It's very simple--any time we obsess over how something is done instead of reflecting on what we're doing and why we're doing it (and hopefully that answer is to glorify the Lord), we're taking a step in the wrong direction. There is only one path to the Lord, but how we find that path will be in infinite ways. When we try to place limits or strictures on those paths, well, we just might be a Pharisee.

Scott