What Gets Jesus Fired Up--February 24, 2020

What Gets Jesus Fired Up--February 24, 2020

"As he taught, [Jesus] said, 'Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets! They devour widows' houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation'." [Mark 12:38-40]

Jesus' harshest words are aimed at Respectable Religious and Civic Leaders.  And he gets them in his sights, not because they were rude or brash or not sufficiently "nice," but because their practices were rotten.  It wasn't a matter of merely improving their manners, but of rediscovering their humanity.  

These are difficult words for us to hear, especially for me as a modern day "religious professional," who is often greeted with respect when folks see me in a clerical collar walking down a hospital hall or even at the grocery store, and who wears a long robe on Sundays in worship.  But as much some part of me wishes I could skip past the verses that make me squirm, I need to let Jesus' words sink in.  Because honestly, Jesus' issue isn't so much with the length of your robe or the pleasantness of being "greeted with respect in the marketplaces," but rather with the ways the Respectable Religious Crowd uses the veneer of politeness to cover over terrible policies that destroyed the lives of those with no safety net to care for them.

This really gets at Jesus' point here. It's not that it's a sin to be greeted with respect or to accept an honor of some kind.  The problem was that folks in positions of relative power, authority, and respectability (like these "scribes" that Jesus specifically mentions) could use those positions as cover for doing terrible things that exploited those in their communities who were most vulnerable.  When Jesus accuses them of "devouring widows' houses," he seems to have in mind some way that these highly educated, highly respected figures in their communities were able to prey on the most at-risk in their societies and to charge exorbitant fees for their services, even when it forced their "customers" to lose their meager nest-eggs they had to live on.  Whatever it was the scribes were doing, it was technically "legal," but Jesus saw that it violated the deeper spirit of God's law which called for protection and care for those who had no means of providing for themselves.  Jesus isn't upset so much that they pray (whether in long or short prayers), but that they drape their actions in the veneer of religiosity so that everyone will think that all they do is acceptable to God.  

By publicly parading around their piety, the scribes thought they were immune from public criticism. if someone called them out for their predatory business practices (like Jesus does here), they would reply, "But I'm so devout!  Whatever I'm doing in business must be OK, because I pray so much!  You must be attacking me because I'm religious!" And that, of course, would be wrong.  But it makes for a formidable defense strategy--gaslighting always is.  Jesus just sees through it, and calls out the respectable religious folks anyway.  What upsets him is not the length of their robes, but the smallness of their compassion for the most vulnerable among them.  Jesus is clear: even if something is technically "legal," if it makes its profit by siphoning life off of the most at-risk, it is neither good nor right.

I want us to be clear on this, because sometimes in our day, people assume that Christians are simply interested in the cause of "niceness."  Sometimes folks think that all we want is for people to be "nice" or "civil" to each other, but that we have no stake in the actual practices and policies that affect our communal life.  And other times, folks insist that it doesn't even matter if you are "nice" or "civil" to others, as long as you "get the job done."  But Jesus' concern is not that the scribes are using bad manners or coarse language because they are so passionate about pursuing good policies--it is just the opposite: they are covering over terrible policies that hurt the most vulnerable, and they are draping their actions in the cover of piety, respectability, and politeness.  And that is a damned shame in Jesus' book.

Jesus is always about what genuinely brings life--not simply what looks religious, or what has the appearance of respectability.  His problem with the scribes is not that they pray to God, but that they seem to think that sort of praying is still compatible with preying on members of their own community.  Jesus isn't opposed to being respected--he just hates when it becomes a cover for treating the vulnerable like they are disposable.

The question for us to ask, then, as we face a new day, is, "Beneath the question of niceness or respectability, do my actions bring life to others, or prey on others?"  The issue is whether we are pursuing goals that would harm others who are most at-risk--and if we are, no amount of politeness or rudeness, piety or respectability, will make it OK. Jesus isn't upset if we are socially rougher than a corncob--he is concerned with whether we are pursing objectives in our lives that harm others, and whether we are OK with policies that treat the vulnerable like they are disposable.  Beneath the question of politeness, there is the deeper need for genuine goodness.  And beneath the exterior of looking "nice" or "pious," there is the deeper issue of whether we are about the work of giving life all around.

That's what gets Jesus fired up.

May we get so fired up as well.

Lord Jesus, cut through our exterior projections and carefully crafted pretense, to the things that really matter.