Rules vs. People

I read John 5 today, and I was struck by the response of the religious leaders. The Pharisees get a lot of flack for being jerks. For being too stuck on the rules to see the person, and rightly so, but before I condemn them, I do want to defend them for a moment.

The Pharisees were the most observant of the religious sects in Judea at Jesus time. The Pharisees concerned themselves with following the law. Following the way God had told them to live. The roman occupation of Israel was intolerable to them. The romans were cruel overlords, and unclean under Jewish Law. The Jews knew that God had allowed the Romans to conquor them because the nation of Israel had not lived up to its commitment to God. God lays out in [insert passage about vomiting up from the land] that if the people fail to honor him as God, then the land will not allow them to stay. God promises his protection only so long as the Israelites remain his people, if they chose to ask a different God for protection, then they get to live with that choice. God is not going to force himself on this people. If a person didn’t care to live as a Jew, they were welcome to leave the society, they were not compelled to stay. If a the nation chooses not to live according to God’s promise, then God says that he will allow them to be conquered.

The Pharisees knew all of this. The Pharisees knew that it was their forefather’s failure to abide by the law that caused God to withdraw his protection. The Pharisees were, in a misguided way, trying to regain God’s favor, by following the very letter of the Law. In order to ensure that no one strayed outside the bounds of the law, the Pharisees tried to move the bounds inward, constricting the people to a more restrictive reginme than God had intended. Where God said you could not work on the Sabbath, the Pharisees defined work as carrying enough ink to write more than a single character. Yet, even here, the Pharisees went awry, they fell off the wagon by adding to God’s law, and by treating their religious authority as a means to social prominence. Rather than humbly, and quietly, loving and following God, the Pharisees were known for shouting about their piety in the public square. Jesus tells a parable about a pharisee and a tax collector who went up to the temple to pray. The pharisee exalts himself in front of everyone, turning his prayer into a sermon for the crowd, a sermon focused on how good a man he is. The tax collector meanwhile, stays a little distance away, he says, "Lord have mercy on me, a sinner." Jesus says that the tax collector goes home justified before God, while the Pharisee doesn't. Jesus ends by saying, "I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted." Luke 18:9-14

So it is in this context that we find the Pharisees, or teachers of the Law, making another appearance in John. This passage exemplifies the commitment and focus of the Pharisees. The story is in John 5:1-14,

     Then Jesus said to him, "Get up! Pick up your mat and walk." At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked.

     The day on which this took place was a Sabbath, and so the Jewish leaders said to the man who had been healed, "It is the Sabbath; the law forbids you to carry your mat."

     But he replied, "The man who made me well said to me, 'Pick up your mat and walk.' "

     So they asked him, "Who is this fellow who told you to pick it up and walk?"

Now, here’s the relvent bit. Note that the Jewish Leaders don’t ask, “who made you well?” they ask, who told you to pick up your mat? The concern isn’t to find out who is going around healing, it’s not about finding out who this healer is, or where he comes from. It’s about finding out who is encouraging people to break the law, who is failing to closely follow the precepts set out in the Law. The problem with the Pharisees of the day was that they lost sight of people, and only saw the Law. Now, don’t get me wrong, Following the Law was the right thing. Following the Law is good, but only when done in a way that remembers that the Law was made for man, not man for the Law. (That’s a paraphrase of Jesus quote from yesterday). In Modern Day Christianity, I think that this is why the church chooses to concern itself so heavily with one sin over another. I think that Christians still lose sight of people in favor of the Law. Today, this is a worse offense, since the law today is summed up in two commands, “You shall have no other Gods before me.” And “Love you neighbor as yourself.” We Christians tend to forget these, in favor of getting hung up on our favorite pet sin. It’s a problem of mine. It’s a problem of the church’s. Is it a problem of yours?