When Set Apart is a Bad Thing

ChatGpt's interpretation of this event

But the Pharisees and their experts in the law complained to his disciples, saying, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?” Jesus answered them, “Those who are well don’t need a physician, but those who are sick do. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”  Luke 5:30-32

 Have you ever met someone for whom nothing is good enough? It seems like they can find fault in anything and everything around them exists only to disappoint them. They wouldn’t compliment you on the hairstyle you carefully arranged, they’d point out the hair out of place. They wouldn’t appreciate the feast set before them, they’d complain about the lack of options they’d prefer. This might not even be the way they are all the time, just some of it. Sometimes they are quietly appreciative, and others they are vocally disapproving of everything. I feel bad for them. I think they’re missing out. I try not to let them bring me down… I try. If I’m being entirely honest, I’ve probably been one of those people on occasion. Jesus faced a lot of people like this during His ministry on earth, and most of them were from a group called the Pharisees.

 So who were the Pharisees? If you thought they were priests and spiritual leaders you might be surprised to learn that most of them were middle-class businessmen and leaders of the synagogues. What set them apart was, well their set apartedness. No, that’s not a word, but I hope it helps you get the idea. Their focus was on piety, on following the letter of the law – all the laws. They held the written law of God, the Old Testament to us, in equal weight with the oral traditions the priests had developed over the centuries. They saw them with equal weight, which is a bit of a paradox since one of those laws, found in Deuteronomy 4:2, expressly forbids adding to or taking away from God’s Word, which is exactly what they did with their more than 600 additional laws. They saw themselves as apart from, above, gentiles and others who did not adhere to the law in the same way they did – most especially tax collectors.

 Even within their ranks there was division with one group leaning towards the teachings of a rabbi named Shammai who advocated for exclusivity and a strict, unbending interpretation of the law and others following rabbi Hillel who had a more lenient, gracious approach. It seems like the Shammaites were present during this passage as they criticized Jesus’ association with sinners, but tax collectors in particular. They saw tax collectors as traitors, collaborators with the Roman government and the worst sort of person. What you have to realize is that this hatred was based on their interpretation and adherence to oral tradition, not to God’s law. God did not see them this way, which is evident in how Jesus freely associated with them. If Jesus saw these people as worthy of His time, worthy of His love, then who are we to say they are not?

 The Pharisees saw Jesus’ acceptance of the tax collectors and sinners as a proof of His lack of righteousness when, in reality, it was the ultimate proof of His love and perfection. In this passage, Jesus points out to the Pharisees one of the big failings of their approach – by not associating with those who did not follow God as strictly as they did they were missing out on ministry opportunities. They were placing themselves into an echo chamber, a group that would only pat each other on the back and tell each other what great guys they were. If they were truly great guys then, like Jesus, they would have seen the poor, the hurting, the needy and felt moved to do something for them. They would have reached out and shared their good news of righteousness. But instead, they opted to sit on the sidelines and criticize those who were doing the real work of God.

 That’s the part that gets me about this story. Here they are criticizing Jesus for attending a feast with tax collectors and sinners, but they were there too! How else would they have complained about this to Jesus’ disciples and then been addressed by Jesus Himself? Sure, they might have justified their presence by saying they were bearing witness to Jesus’ (in their eyes) soiling Himself by His association with sinners, but weren’t they doing the same thing?

 Sometimes we get so caught up in our own righteousness, our own rightness, that we put blinders on to what we are actually doing. In seeing ourselves as higher, better, separate we are failing in our responsibility to serve, give and go. That was spelled out both in the Old Testament and the New. The people of God were meant to represent Him to the world, to bear witness to His mercy and grace, not to hoard it for themselves. The more we pull away from those we are called to minister to, the tighter we are held in the trap (like the finger trap in the video above). Mercy and grace are kind of funny like that, the more you give, the more you have. The stingier we are with it, the less we experience it for ourselves. I think that’s the trap the Pharisees found themselves in. In their eyes, the mercy of God was limited and small – there was just enough of it for them and they couldn’t share it or they would run out. Sadly, they missed out on the much bigger blessing that they would have seen if they had given what little they had only to receive abundantly more than they could ask or imagine.

Here's the Thing: As Jesus said in this passage, people who are well don’t need a doctor -sick people do. He came for those who knew they needed Him, the sinners and tax collectors. What the Pharisees missed was that they needed Jesus just as much, if not more, but they were blinded to their need by their view of their righteous adherence to “the law.”

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