|
Jesus begins this story with one of the
most powerful little words in all of scripture, “Woe.”
W–O–E. Jesus says, “Woe to you, you hypocrites.” Now there
is a great way to build rapport with your audience! What is
he thinking? This isn’t what they taught you at Dale
Carnegie. This is no way to win friends and influence
people. Do you even know what some of the synonyms are for
woe, Jesus? Words like anguish, affliction, sadness, despair
and wretchedness. Do you really mean that, Jesus? Are you
really saying, “Anguish to you!? Affliction to you!? Sadness
to you!? Despair to you!? Wretchedness”…come on now,
really…“wretchedness to you!?” What happened to the nice,
calm, lamb-holding, let-the-children-come-to-me, polite,
gentle Jesus? Where did this “Woe to you, you hypocrites”
guy come from?
We are not quite sure what to do with the
“woe to you” Jesus, are we? It is so different than many of
the images we have grown to love about our Lord and Savior.
This isn’t the meek and mild Jesus or the nice,
story-telling Jesus or the “Come to me, all who are weary
and heavy laden” Jesus. No, this is the in-your-face,
finger-pointing, name-calling, fire-and-brimstone Jesus.
(That would be a very welcoming portrait of Jesus to have
hanging in the lobby of our church, now, wouldn’t it?
“Welcome to First Church…you hypocrites!”) But I am here to
tell you that this is exactly the kind of savior we need.
Just as much as we need a loving, forgiving and gentle
Jesus, we also need a Jesus who will tell it like it is.
That is why we can trust Jesus with our lives; he loves us
enough to tell us the truth. So whenever Jesus says, “Woe to
you…”, we would do well to listen.
So let’s listen to him. “Woe to you,
teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give
a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cumin.” Now if you’re
like me, you might be saying to yourself, “All right! I get
it. We need to have Jesus get on us from time to time, but
why is he so uptight about my spice rack? Mint? Dill? Cumin?
Really, is this all you’ve got, Jesus?” The issue here isn’t
the spice rack. The issue is giving. The issue is tithing.
The scriptural image at play here comes from the fourteenth
chapter of Deuteronomy. It reads:
Be sure to set aside a tenth of all that
your fields produce each year. Eat the tithe of your grain,
new wine and oil, and the firstborn of your herds and flocks
in the presence of the Lord your God at the place he will
choose as a dwelling for his Name, so that you may learn to
revere the Lord your God always.
(Deuteronomy 14:22-23)
The people were supposed to take
one-tenth of their grain, one-tenth of their wine, one-tenth
of their olive oil and one-tenth of their livestock, and
bring it to the temple as an offering. Why? So they can
“learn to revere God—always.” Right there is the most
important point about our giving. Our giving is never about
church budgets. It is never about pet projects. And it is
never about obligation, duty or responsibility. The truth of
the matter is that giving is not about us at all. It’s about
God. Tithing was a core value in biblical times because it
recognized that all of life and everything in it is a gift.
And since everything is a gift, it made perfect sense for
them to take a tenth of their food, a tenth of the very
things that kept them alive and sustained them, and give it
back to the One who gave it them in the first place.
“So, I don’t get it. Is Jesus getting on
their case because they weren’t tithing?” No. In fact, this
story makes it clear that the scribes and Pharisees tithed.
“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you
hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint,
dill and cumin.” So why is he all up in their grill? Look
closely at that text from Deuteronomy. Does it say anything
about giving a tenth of your spices? No. “So are you telling
me, pastor, that Jesus is so upset with them, throwing all
this ‘Woe unto you’ stuff around, because the Pharisees are
not following the exact letter of the law? Seems a bit
legalistic, doesn’t it? And while I might need a savior who
will get in my face from time to time, I don’t need one
that’s so uptight.”
But that’s not it either. In fact, it’s
just the opposite. Jesus is on their case because they
were taking things too literally. They were missing the
point, squeezing the spirit right out of their faith. You
see, here is what was going on. The Pharisees were so
preoccupied, so obsessed, with wanting to obey God, wanting
to impress God, wanting to follow every rule, that they
would actually take the time to measure out a tenth of all
the spices they had grown, thinking all along that this was
what God required of them.
Maybe this will help you get the picture.
I have brought with me the Nelson family spice rack. Now, we
are a family that takes very seriously our commitment to
God. We want to make sure we are doing everything just so.
So much so that every time we come to church, we take the
time to measure out one-tenth of everything, even down to
our spices. One-tenth of the coriander. One-tenth of the
oregano. One-tenth of the mustard seed. One-tenth of the
parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme. (Hey, that’s kind of
catchy. Who knows…might make a good song.) Can you see the
absurdity in this? These religious folks were spending too
much time and too much energy worrying about the letter of
God’s law, down to the tiniest detail, that they had
completely missed the point of their faith.
And that’s exactly what Jesus goes on to
tell them. “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees,
you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill
and cumin. But you have neglected the more important
matters of the law…” They had gotten all caught up in
trying to be ritually perfect—saying all the right prayers,
wearing all the right clothes, believing all the right
doctrines, reciting all the right scriptures, even tithing
down to the exact cumin seed—that they had missed the point
entirely. “You have neglected the more important
matters...justice, mercy and faithfulness.” Jesus simply
can’t stand it any more. “Stop it!” he shouts. “Stop trying
so hard to get it right that you miss the whole point. This
is about justice, mercy and faithfulness. If your tithing
doesn’t lead you to this, then forget it! Keep your
spices!”
Jesus makes this pretty clear. When it
comes to our faith, we are not to major in minor things. And
let’s be honest. The church can get caught up in minor
things. The Church of Jesus Christ wastes far too much time
fighting about the conservatives vs. the liberals, the
creationists vs. the evolutionists, the biblical literalists
vs. those who read it more metaphorically, the
fundamentalists vs. the universalists, the orthodox vs. the
emergent, contemporary worship vs. traditional…the list goes
on and on. The church has a long history of majoring in
minor things. I bet sometimes when Jesus looks at the state
of his church today, we look like a bunch of people fussing
over the spice rack.
And Jesus can’t stand this. He says to
them, “You want to know what this is all about? It’s about
justice, mercy and faithfulness. These are the more
important matters.” And these three words meant something
very particular to Jesus’ audience. When the words justice,
mercy and faithfulness appear in the scripture, they are
almost always linked with God’s call to take care of the
poor and marginalized. Remember the popular political slogan
of a couple of years ago, “It’s the economy, stupid!” It’s
almost like Jesus is saying to the Pharisees, “It’s the
suffering, stupid!” To remember, and look after, the widow,
the orphan and the stranger is what Jesus says are the more
important matters of our faith. If you are going to tithe,
then tithe because of these things. To neglect the demands
of justice, mercy and faithfulness, to neglect the poor and
oppressed in our midst and throughout the world, is to
suddenly find yourself in a conversation with our Lord and
Savior that is bound to start with a stern, “Woe to you!”
Jesus spells it right out: “You should
have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former.”
Don’t misunderstand him. Our personal relationship with God
matters. Individual morality matters. How we spend our money
matters! The websites we go to matter! Who we are sleeping
with matters! The drugs we are taking matter! The gossip we
spread matters! Our sexuality matters! Whether or nor you
are forgiving others matters! Lying, cheating, stealing—it
all matters. But these things can never be at the expense of
the more important things: justice, mercy and faithfulness.
We need both: an individual response to God, as well as a
response to the suffering world God created. Jesus’ warning
to religious folks, both then and now, is this: It is never
just about God and me. There is a bigger picture, and we are
never to become so obsessed with our own, individual,
private walk with God that we forget that God is in the
business of healing, transforming and saving the world.
And in order to drive the point home,
Jesus uses this great metaphor. This is brilliant. About
their missing the point, Jesus says, “You strain out a gnat
but swallow a camel.” The Pharisees would have caught on
immediately. Jesus was making fun of them. You see, as with
their tedious tithing of tiny amounts of spice, the
Pharisees went to elaborate lengths to keep out the pesky,
little, unclean gnats. They placed strainers over their
goblets and drank through the fabric in order to keep the
gnats out. Imagine Jesus at this dinner party with a bunch
of Pharisees, and all the time they are having to take the
strainers on and off to drink. Jesus sees all this effort on
the part of religious believers to take care of the
smallest, minute details of their faith while all around
them tens of thousands of people are dying from the effects
of extreme poverty. Which leads him to say, “You go to all
this trouble to strain out the tiny little gnat, all the
while never realizing that you are actually choking to death
on the much bigger camel. Woe to you!”
Friends, we are in the second week of our
annual stewardship campaign. In just two weeks, each of us
will be asked to fill out a card, making our financial
commitment to the church for the year. And as we prepare to
do this, I can hear the voice of Jesus whisper, “Whoa to
you.” But this time the whoa is W–H–O–A. Whoa, slow down!
This is serious. In fact, it is dangerous, because if we are
not careful, we just might end up swallowing a camel.
You see, all of the pitfalls that befell
the Pharisees when it came to their giving can still befall
us in ours. Stewardship campaigns are notorious for majoring
in minor things. Stewardship campaigns are famous for
missing the point. They can focus way too much on budgets
and salaries and apportionments at the expense of the more
important matters. They can be filled with moments of guilt
and shame, robbing us of the joy that is to be discovered in
our giving. Too often, stewardship campaigns are turned into
just a “me and God” thing, making our financial commitment
all about how God will bless me and my family if I am an
obedient giver. If we go down this route, then before we
know it we will be choking on a hunk of camel.
So let me clear a few things up. This
campaign is not about the church budget. It is not about arm
twisting and sales pitches. And it is not about what God
will do for you or me personally if only we increase our
giving. No, this is an invitation—an invitation to be a part
of the more important matters. It is our chance to be a part
of God’s justice, mercy and faithfulness.
Think about this. The church is the only
organization I know whose sole mission is to heal, transform
and save the world—the whole thing. Don’t get me wrong.
There are a lot of great organizations out there, doing a
lot of great work, worthy of our charitable giving. But the
church has as its vision the whole package: saving and
transforming individual lives so they in turn might shape
and transform the world around them.
Consider for just a moment what our
tithes and offerings are doing through the ministries of
this church. They feed the hungry, clothe the naked, house
the homeless, and bind up the brokenhearted. They put us on
the front lines of Katrina relief in New Orleans and fire
response in California. Our offerings have us rebuilding the
earthquake-destroyed cities in India, building an AIDS
clinic in Zambia and orphanages in Ghana, and educating
medical students in Zimbabwe. Our pledges help farmers in
Chile, build new churches in Prague, call pastors in
Estonia, teach kids in Costa Rica, work for peace in the
Middle East, are a voice in the halls of Congress, bring
reading to kids in Pontiac and safety to battered women in
Detroit. Our pledge dollars ensure the elderly are cared for
and teenagers are challenged to be more. Our pledges free
the addicted, unburden the grief stricken, remember the
forgotten, include the outsider, give hope to the depressed,
comfort the sick, forgive the sinner, and connect the
lonely. Through our giving, we create opportunities for
God’s justice, mercy and faithfulness to be on display
around the world. And friends, if that doesn’t get you
excited, then I don’t know what will! That is where the joy
of this moment lies, in knowing that God is using us and our
giving to save the world.
But maybe when it comes to this whole
stewardship pledge, you’re like the guy Myra Moreland spoke
to this past week. She was talking to someone she works with
about her church, and he said something like, “Churches are
all the same. All they want is your money. I figure you just
give them what they ask for and then they’ll leave you alone
for the rest of year.” We can give like that…just to get the
church, the preacher, and even God off our backs. But if
that is how we do it, then we can expect Jesus to say back
to us, “Would you like ketchup with your camel?”
Note: Once again I am grateful for the
preaching and teaching of Rob Bell out of Mars Hill Bible
Church in Grand Rapids. He has been preaching a sermon
series this fall on the seven woes Jesus speaks to the
scribes and Pharisees in Matthew’s gospel. Much of the
insight into this text came from his sermon entitled “Gnats
and Camels,” delivered earlier this month. |
