Excerpts Taken from Spring 2015 ICF Lessons.

One of the lessons I developed at ICF this spring was taken from the parable of the Pharisee and Publican who went into the same temple at the same time to pray. Here follows one small excerpt about the pharisee from my teaching notes.

Some one recently reminded me that 80% of human communication is nonverbal. The first thing we learn about the Pharisee is non verbal.  He positioned himself alone and central in the temple and lifted up his head. Not only did the Pharisees words signal his separation, as will be pointed out next, his physical posture and location sent this message. As soon as he opened his mouth his religious ethic that required him and prided him to separate from others became explicit. Words interpret actions. The Pharisee’s opening words “I thank you God I am not like other men” betray him. He views himself as morally – and religiously separated from “other men”. Indeed this assertion is historically precise – the Pharisees’ religion was fanatically focused on keeping themselves pure and separated from Gentiles and other Jews who they deemed were not careful in their Torah observance lest they be contaminated. The goal was not merely to be righteous by keeping righteous moral standards but to be righteous by being separated from the ‘unrighteous”. Righteousness was a sociological (and ecclesial) category. Separation from took on a life of its own and became the defining signature of the Pharisee religion.

These opening words not only betray his relation to others but to God. He assumes God is on the same page with him on this conclusion that he is fundamentally different – morally. He has not only made himself a stranger to other men but a friend of God. He views himself as on the inside circle with God so much so that he can speak for God. By thanking God that he is not like other men he assumes that God views him as he views himself – embodying the full righteous difference of the Torah, fundamentally cut from a different cloth, in a religious moral league of his own.

Here are a couple of my reflections on this double entendre.

The real struggle in life is to remain connected to others who are different either in their moral sensibilities or absence of moral sensibilities all while being true to the way of truth and right that one understands and believes God requires of him. It is easy to remain true to one’s beliefs about how one is to live in this world if one keeps oneself separate from others who are different and lives safe and secure inside one’s own group (“he that shall save his life will lose it”). But the real struggle is interact with and befriend others who are different or ‘worldly’ while remaining true to oneself and one’s God. Jesus did this as the gospels tells us – eating with publicans and sinners. This is a practical observation but not one Jesus over looked (see Matthew 5:13 -you are the salt of the earth not the salt of the church ). Listening to the Pharisee’s prayer in light of the Gospel of Jesus Christ the root of the problem becomes evident.

“Jesus Christ” means the end of all elitist familiarity with God based on any and all distinctions that differentiate individuals and groups one from the other. Like the Pharisee, humans often imagine that their special, exceptional parts, whether they be moral, religious, doctrinal, denominational, spiritual, national, ethnic, racial or economic, not only set them apart from other women and men but set them at the table with God and God’s favor and blessing. There is a universal unbridgeable gap between God and humans. “Jesus Christ” is the name of that gap. Jesus Christ is God’s NO to all presumptions of intimacy and familiarity with God based on one’s darling differences no matter their source. “Jesus Christ” is the sword in the hand of God cutting the legs out from under ever person and people who have become intoxicated with the presumption that they are a breed apart, on the inside circle with God because of some distinguishing difference. The beginning of a relation to God founded costly grace is at the same time the end of all attempts to relate to God on the basis of something special within one’s person or people. Soren Kierkegaard somewhere writes that the Publican forgot the danger of God.  “Jesus Christ” is the presence of the danger of God toward all who cast about to find something within themselves and their religious, familial or national group that establishes common ground with God. There is no common ground with God there is only the ground of grace  incarnated and proffered in the Cross of Christ. The cross is at the same time enunciates a human gap and a  divine bridge between heaven and earth