Sermon Tone Analysis

*“Am I a Pharisee?”*

Pt. 5 of /“Who is Jesus…”/                                                  Pastor Bruce Dick – BEFC

Mark 2:18-3:6                                                                                     April 29, 2007

            Of all the television shows and characters over the years that I have seen, perhaps none tickles me like Barney Fife.

Do you remember him on The Andy Griffith Show?

That wiry little guy who was probably 130 pounds soaking wet made me both laugh and drove me crazy.

The schemes he cooked up to show that he was a worthy deputy; I remember the episode he dressed up like an old woman  showing up to clean the bank to show how inept their old security guard was and got locked up in the bank vault!

And then his singing; he would try out for the community musical, commenting on everyone else’s singing, thinking he was the greatest when in reality he was horribly off pitch.

Oh the list could go on and on.

But I think that what characterized Barney most, when it came to his law enforcement, was that he was an absolute stickler for the law.

He had no trouble arresting an old grandma for jaywalking; he would measure how far in inches a car was parked from a hydrant; he would bring kids in, including Opie, Sheriff Taylor’s son, for about anything that bothered him that day.

He never made an exception for anyone; the law was the law and there was no wiggle room.

Barney Fife to me is a modern-day Pharisee.

The Pharisees of Jesus’ day were very serious scholars of the Torah, the Jewish law.

They were the religious Barney Fife’s of their day; someone had to make sure the Law was kept to the letter; they were the guardians of the written and oral law.

As time went on, they realized the gaps in God’s law that God hadn’t answered, so they created new laws to add to the “old” ones so that people would be sure to know even more clearly what God had in mind.

The very term Pharisee means “separatist” and they did a good job of it.

They were obsessed with the law, ritual purity, tithing and keeping the Sabbath.

And where Jesus was concerned, they almost always knocked heads with each other.

To them it seemed Jesus was always breaking the law.

If Barney Fife was a Pharisee, Andy Griffith was more like Jesus.

Andy knew the Law and what was required, but he also looked into people’s hearts; he knew that Otis was a the town drunk but helped him with a Saturday night cell rather than a jail sentence; he knew that the old man on the hill who pointed his gun at anyone who came on his property would never actually shoot anyone.

He probably understood the balance between Law and Grace as well as anyone.

The question that I want to ask each of us this morning is this:  *am I a Pharisee*?

Am I the kind of person where being right is more important than being loving?

Am I the kind of person that the end is more important than the means or the process?

But on the other hand, being the opposite of a Pharisee isn’t good either.

I ask one question but the opposite is equally true.

Am I so gracious that the truth is secondary?

Am I so passive that I am unable to say “no?”

I have a small pendulum here with me this morning to express the way we often swing to one side or the other but showing that where we need to be is in the middle, with both.

Where Jesus is such a great role model and a rabbi worth imitating is that he had the perfect blend.

When the apostle John began his gospel, in chapter 1 verse 14, this is what he said of Jesus: /“And the Word (Jesus) became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father /(and here is the phase)/ full of grace and truth.”

/(John 1:14)

            Did you get that?

/Grace AND Truth/.

Jesus never let the pendulum swing too far one way or the other; he hung perfectly in the middle, balancing both grace and truth.

How about each of us here today – if our life was a pendulum, which side would it be swung?

I’ll simply confess that I am much more like a Pharisee than the opposite.

I love the details and the words and the commands.

Someone gave me a plaque a few years ago that hangs in my office which says, /“Which part of ‘Thou shalt not…’ didn’t you understand?”  God/.

I love that.

As Roger Cross told us last summer at our retreat, he is a “recovering Pharisee.”

Me too.

How about you?

But if you’re way over on the grace side, then you need balance too.

In three short episodes, the Pharisees ratchet up their opposition to Jesus, emphasizing of course, the law.

They’re the Barney Fife’s stationed in their squad cars, slumped down, but watching every move Jesus and his disciples make, HOPING he makes a mistake, and today, they find three of them.

Bob read this passage for you, and if you have your Bibles open, that is great; if not, please open your Bibles to Mark 2 verse 18.  Jesus has been demonstrating his authority, his s’mikhah, in a variety of ways, from his teaching and preaching to his healing and casting out demons, to his authority to call sinners like Levi, a tax collector, to be one of his 12 disciples.

The first of Jesus’ three encounters today happens in verses 18-22.

Verse 18 says that some people who had observed Jesus’ disciples and John the Baptist’s disciples and the Pharisees noticed something – Jesus’ disciples didn’t fast like the other groups did and they wondered why.

Now the law demanded that they all fast once a year on the Day of Atonement but as I said before, over the years, they added more regulations.

In Jesus’ day, the requirement was to fast twice a WEEK on Monday and Thursday.

Do you *know what fasting* is?  Fasting is basically to not do something you normally do for a period of time.

You normally eat, so to fast from food, you don’t eat for 24 hours or 3 days or even 40 days like Jesus did.

But you can fast from other things too, like certain activities or other things you would normally do.

Well, why do it?

What’s the *purpose* of fasting?

Well, there were a variety of reasons like *fear of demons* – if that was your fear, you fasted to be sure they stayed away; *fast for God’s mercy* to forgive sins – if I show God I am serious, perhaps he’ll forgive me and reverse the consequences of my sin; fast in *sorrow for the loss* of a loved one.

You just showed your love for one who died by fasting for them.

But the bottom line is that *fasting was a sign of grief*.

This was not a happy thing you did; you were serious and sorrowful and you showed your grief by fasting.

So here are the Pharisees fasting.

Here’s what they did:  They actually whitened their faces, put ashes on their heads, wore their clothes in shoddy disarray, refused to wash, and looked as forlorn as possible.

You could not be spiritual unless you were uncomfortable.

They thought spirituality makes you do things you do not want to do and keeps you from doing the things you want to do.

(Kent Hughes)  That’s such a great description of how many of us view religion as a whole:  It keeps us from doing things you want to do.

Well Jesus has a reply for them in verse 19; essentially says this:  /“Can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them?  /(The implied answer is a loud, NO!)”  At a Jewish wedding, the couple didn’t leave for a honeymoon but stayed at home for a week of open house in which there was continual feasting and celebration.

Kent Hughes writes that for the “hardworking, this was traditionally considered to be the happiest week in their lives.”

(Kent Hughes)  There was a special rabbinical rule that said this: /“All in attendance on the bridegroom are relieved of all religious observances which would lessen their joy.”/

Get that; it would lessen their JOY if they fasted.

I can see the Pharisees looking around and saying, /“So what?

I don’t see a wedding anywhere near here!”/

Jesus replies that as long as the bridegroom is there, no fasting; but when he’s taken away, carried away, then there will be a time for fasting because that will be a very sorrowful day.

What is he talking about?

Himself.

He’s the bridegroom and as long as he is on the earth, they don’t need to fast.

So here’s Christ with his disciples, eating and joyful while the Pharisees are walking around gloomy in their required fast.

I’ll come back to this later, but does the joy of the Lord fill you on a regular basis?

I didn’t say “happiness,” but rather joy; they’re different.

I’m not saying you won’t have bad days; you certainly will; there will be days where you can’t smile if your life depended upon it, but you can still have joy.

We have something happen to us or said to us that destroys us, but in the midst of that, there is a spark of joy that just can’t be explained.

That’s joy from God.

But Jesus isn’t quite done with this example; in verse 21, he says something interesting:  /“No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment.

If he does, the patch tears away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tar is made.

And no one puts new wine into old wineskins.

If he does, the wine will burst the skins – and the wine is destroyed and so are the skins.

But new wine is for fresh wineskins.”

/OK, that’s nice, but what gives?

Why this statement?

His example of the patch would look like this.

Suppose you have a sailboat and you just got your boat out as the ice is going off Devils Lake.

And when you unfurl the sails for the first time you see a hole about 6” in the main sail; oh brother, the mice must have gotten into this.

Well, you’re kind of a handyman; you can fix this.

So you go buy some new sailcloth, and right out of the package you put this new piece of sailcloth on your old sail.

This old sail has seen its better days but this new stuff will surely be real strong and maybe last you another 10 years.

Well you get it on fine but as the summer goes on with some rain and then sun and heat, this new sail cloth begins to shrink.

And because you sewed it up so well, it begins to pull the old sailcloth, eventually causing more problems than the original hole.

That’s one of Jesus’ examples; the other is of a wine flask.

In Jesus’ day, they made these wine flasks out of goat skin, partly tanned and sewed into the form of a flask.