IGNORE the Pharisees! A sermon for Proper 21, Year A

Series: Leaning into the peace of God

Sermon: Ignore the Pharisees

A sermon by Fr. Rian Adams. Proper 21, Year A. Matthew 21:23-32

I heard a story about a marital conflict that started at a reunion. 

A husband and wife were sitting at a table at the husband’s 25^th high school reunion when the wife noticed a lady sitting alone at a table nursing her third drink. 

The wife asked her husband, “Do you know her?”

“Yes,” he sighed, 

“She’s my old girlfriend. Bless her heart, and I hear she started drinking right after we broke up, and I hear she hasn’t been sober since.”

“My God!” his wife said, “Who would think a person could go on

celebrating for that long?”

And that’s when the fight started…

Where we’ve been:

This is week four of preaching about conflict! Week one was the conflict with others, week two was conflict within the self, last week was the conflict with God, and today, we’re leaning into the peace of God by exploring conflict with… Pharisees.

How do we recognize it? How do we respond to it? And how do we ultimately let it go and live in peace? Those are the questions the peace of God asks us to answer today. 

Resistance and the state of the soul:

Often you can measure the peace of someone’s soul based on how many things they feel the need to resist, fight against, protest, and boycott; if you die on every hill, well, you will die a lot sooner than if you pick a really good one.  

The religious leaders in today’s Gospel resisted Jesus. They didn’t fight the oppressive Roman governor, the political pawn of a high-priest, the aggressive soldiers, or even their king who stole his brother’s wife. 

They resisted Jesus because he stood for love, mercy, forgiveness, compassion, and religious justice. 

Power & Preference?

At this point in Matthew’s Gospel, the chief priests and the most influential men in Jerusalem conspire to kill Jesus. He is a threat to their power. 

Let’s name something this morning; on the surface, and it’s easy to judge Pharisees and religious leaders. But, in some ways, in many ways, I almost understand their positions. Were they not just trying to follow their God? 

In their time, the law was the only way to please God. In their minds, God sent them into exile and slavery 500 years before because they failed to keep all the 613 rules outlined in the law of Moses. 

It seems like they wanted to make sure the people followed the laws and remained safe from God’s judgment. In many ways, they saw themselves as public servants—people called to help the normal person understand the written law’s complexities and oral tradition.

It’s no surprise they set a trap for Jesus. In their minds, Jesus was out of control when he rode a donkey into the temple the day before acting like their Messiah. He even dared to let others refer to him as the anointed one, the son of David.

Then he went over to the tables where people purchased sacrifices to offer to God and flipped them over while he screamed about making his father’s house a den of thieves. 

He was a danger to others! He would bring God’s judgment as well as Roman’s punishment.

Is their zeal justified? 

Dismiss Foolishness:

How many of you know the expression, “OK, Boomer?”

It’s relatively new on the scene. It became big in November 2019. What does it mean? Well, allow me to read what it means to you from the Wikipedia page: 

The phrase has been used as a retort for perceived resistance to technological change, climate change denial, marginalization of members of minority groups, or opposition to younger generations’ ideals… 

They are saying that sometimes people, which has nothing to do with age, dismiss views just because if they adopted them, they would have to change their lives… and worse, their preferences. 

Here’s a real example I watched in Publix two weeks ago. A woman who was probably late 20s told her mother how hard things were for her and how expensive housing and healthcare was. Her mother said, “Well, if you’d stop eating that avocado toast, or whatever it is, you could afford housing and healthcare.” The daughter looked at her mother, and playfully said… “Okay, boomer.” Then they looked at me because they caught me, in a clerical, laughing at them. I broke the silence and said, you guys just gave me a sermon.” They laughed. 

I thought about titling that sermon, “Okay, Pharisee.”

Let’s jump back to these Pharisees in the temple and bring this whole thing home where we live. 

Conflicts, especially with the self-righteous crowd, are inevitable. If you want to spot them, pay attention to how they demand authority over the little things in your life. I don’t mean offering you solicited advice; I mean telling you what you should do with your life as if they are the only moral authority. 

When we confront self-righteousness and fakeness, we need to address it exactly as Jesus did. He told a story about a man with two sons. The man asks them to go help in the vineyard. His first son said, “No, forget it; I’m not going, it’s too hot outside.” But then he changed his mind and went to work anyway.

The second son promised he would go to work, but he decided against it and didn’t bother to inform his father, hoping his father would assume he was working. In essence, he was a manipulator of perception (e.g., hypocrite).

So when we face Pharisees we shouldn’t let them ruin our peace of mind/soul. We need to recognize them for what they truly are: voices that do not speak to God.

I recall an event a large and fancy diocesan function, the kind you wear your Zegna suit to, where a lady sat at our table who was a negative and bitter person – you could just tell… I made mention that it gets expensive to fix a Mercedes once it passes 75k miles. She looked at me and said, “You should be ashamed; it’s ungodly to drive something like that when there are hungry people in the world.”

That’s when a retired bishop (she didn’t realize it…) spoke up. He said that sounds a lot like what Judas said to the woman who gave Jesus the anointing oil. He said, “that should have been sold and given to the poor.”

Recognize, Act, Let it Go:

So, how do we recognize the Pharisees? They need control of others to give them a sense of belonging and purpose. What do we do about it? We go to work in God’s vineyard, even during the times when we don’t feel like it. 

I’m the first son, and I’m the second. We have each one inside. It’s up to us to choose who we want to be.

How do we get over Pharisees? Well… That’s what Jesus’s parable was about… How do you understand it?

Amen. 

Sermon, Proper 21, Year A. “Ignore the Pharisees”