Pharisee - No Space for Grace
“A pharisee is a righteous man whose righteousness is nourished by the blood of sinners.” - Thomas Merton.
I love it! What a definition of a pharisee, a blood sucking vampire that preys on sinners. Of course it’s necessary to understand that the word sinners here needs to be defined in terms of where the pharisee draws a line in the sand in order to be able to say, “Thank God I’m not like them.”
That’s the problem with a large segment of people in the church today. They love to go after the sins of others. They gain strength and energy from their condemnation of others. They believe they are serving God when they are really only serving their own sense of self-righteousness. You’ll often hear these folks on the news, or see them parading at political rallies.
As Merton rightly continues, “In politics, as in everything else, pharisaism is not self-righteousness only, but the conviction that, in order to be right, it is sufficient to prove that somebody else is wrong. As long as there is one sinner left for you to condemn, then you are justified! Once you can point to a wrongdoer, you become justified in doing anything you like, however dishonest, however cruel, however evil!”
Ouch! But yes.
I think about the time when the Pharisees brought a woman caught in adultery before Jesus (John 8 and yes, I know it wasn’t in the earliest manuscripts). They wanted to stone her, but conveniently forgot to bring her male counterpart with them. Jesus draws a line in the sand, or writes something, scribbles … whatever … he does something to distract the crowd that seeks to nourish themselves on the blood of this sinner.
Now, Jesus does not believe in adultery. He makes that clear in the Sermon on the Mount. There is no denying she is guilty of the sin. But when the self-righteous go after the sinner and draw their line in the sand, Jesus is on the other side of the line. The primary concern for Jesus is to create space for grace. Jesus is always on the other side of the line, standing with sinners waiting to create a space for grace.
In a culture full of metaphorical and, tragically, sometimes literal stone throwers, I want to stand on the side of grace. I want to stand by those the fundamentalist pharisees seek to condemn in order to prove themselves righteous. This means I will stand beside and defend people who I may think have sinned, but until the space for grace is created, there’s no place to safely address that.
I’ve had former friends suggest I am a “woke liberal” for doing this - Jesus was called worse. I have others who think my theology has shifted, it hasn’t, but my practice is, I hope, more focused on grace.
Be like Jesus - Create space for grace
