Pharisees R Us

I grew up despising the Pharisees. After all, in every episode of the gospels where they appear, they wae Jesus’s implacable opponents. And Jesus himself denounces them as hypocrites (Matthew 23).

In Jesus’s day, the Pharisees were widely admired for the strict adherence to the Law, but thanks to their portrayal in the Gospels, the word “pharisaical” now carries only negative connotations of pious self-righteousness and judgmental hypocrisy.

Then one day it struck me: I am more like the Pharisees than I realized, certainly more than I want to admit.

•         They were men of the Word.

•         Their blind spots were cavernous.

•         They had turned spirituality into performance art.

•         And their hearts were stony.

In other words, they were far too much like me.

I was reminded of that unpleasant epiphany this week as I’ve been thinking about Jesus’s parable of the lost son. Of all Jesus’s stories, this is one that so clearly and so beautifully illustrates God’s love for lost sinners.

But to see that parable only as a portrayal of the gospel is to miss the point of the story. Jesus told that story, along with two other stories of lost things found (the lost coin and the lost sheep, Luke 15), in response to the Pharisees who criticized Jesus for his social engagements with unsavory sorts – social outcasts like prostitutes and tax collectors.

The story of the lost son doesn’t have a fairytale ending. After he comes to his senses and returns home in disgrace, and when the father graciously forgives him (he doesn’t even let him finish his confession!), the story turns then to the elder brother’s sullen response.

And if the Pharisees had been listening closely, they would have realized that when Jesus got to the elder brother, he was talking about them. He was inviting them to see what their reaction to Jesus’s unorthodox friendships looks like from God’s point of view.

You remember how it goes: when the elder brother learns that the father has welcomed home his wayward brother – the same man who had disgraced the family in the community – he storms out in a cold fury.

The story ends sadly, not with the elder brother repenting and joining in the celebration of his lost brother’s return but with the father pleading for him to give up his resentment and self-righteousness and join the party.

I remember a story that brought me to an “elder brother” moment.

The Persecutor by Sergei Kourdakov (now out of print) was written by a man who had headed up a local goon squad for Soviet authorities. His crew was made up of street thugs, martial artists, boxers, and other men skilled in doing violence. Their job was to break up secret Christian meetings and terrorize the Christians. 

They would get word from an informer of a secret meeting going on, and on the way to the meeting they would decide whether to go fast or slow in carrying out their mandate. If they chose the fast mode, they would crash into the service and thrash everyone there. When they were finished with their grisly work, they would go out to get drunk. Sometimes they chose to go slow: they would break into the meeting and secure the premises to ensure that no one could escape. Then they would take out the worshipers one at a time to beat and abuse them. And then go get drunk.

As I read about how Kourdakov treated my brothers and sisters in Christ, the rage grew in me. Why? Because I knew how it was going to end, with his coming to put his faith in Christ.

What surprised me was my own reaction to the story of his conversion.

I found that I wasn’t happy that God has saved him from wrath. I didn’t rejoice that the grace of God in Christ could redeem even such a man. I remember being resentful, disappointed that this vile man would never have to pay for what he had done.

He got off scot-free. It just wasn’t fair.

Of course it wasn’t fair. The gospel isn’t about God treating us fairly; it’s about how He treats us kindly and mercifully because he visited His wrath on His Son instead. When I found myself reacting with resentment at the good news of Kourdakov’s conversion, I realized that I was playing the role of the elder brother in Jesus’s story. Instead of rejoicing over the return of the lost sinner, I was sulking because I knew he would never receive the punishment he deserved.

So, yes, the parable of the prodigal son is a vivid portrayal of the gospel. Many gospel elements are so beautifully displayed – sin, repentance, grace, forgiveness, redemption. But to read the parable only as a picture of the gospel is to miss the point: the story of the lost son is a cautionary tale.

There are two lost sons in Jesus’s story.

The rebellious son comes to repentance and returns to his father’s gracious embrace. But as the story ends, the dutiful son is on the outside looking in, lost in his self-righteous arrogance and resentment. He is lost in his own “far country.”

Since Jesus leaves the story there – with the father pleading with his self-righteous son to relent and join the celebration – we don’t know if the elder brother did, after all, repent of his own sin and return to the father. Which was precisely the point: the Pharisees were the elder son. Would they recognize and acknowledge their own sin and repent?

Henri Nouwen’s book The Return of the Prodigal Son explores this parable in detail. As I have been reading it recently, especially as Nouwen turns the spotlight on the elder brother, I have realized again how much I have in common with the Pharisees, the men at whom Jesus aimed this story.

Nouwen notes that repenting of wild rebellion is so much easier than repenting of self-righteousness. The younger son’s rebellion was so obviously immoral that everyone could see that he was in the wrong. He was the last one to see what was obvious to everyone else all along; he comes to his senses, and he repents, and he returns.

But Nouwen points out that the self-righteous arrogance of the older brother is intertwined with virtue in a way that makes it difficult for him to detect and even more difficult to repent of. After all, why would he need to repent of having done his duty by his father for all those years? The very idea that a conscientious man would need to repent of his sin is offensive!

And thus, as I have meditated again on Jesus’s parable, this high-achieving, dutiful man of the cloth has had to come face to face with his own sin. I can see in the Pharisees –and now cannot un-see – an ugly reflection of my own sin.

Which explains the title.

Almost.

Paul, you may ask, if you are acknowledging for yourself that you have Pharisee-like tendencies, why the plural in the title? Why “Pharisees R Us”?

I chose the plural partly because of the obvious play on words (“Toys R Us”) and partly because “Pharisee Am Me” would be awkwardly Yoda-like. But also – mostly – because I believe that my malady is not unique. In fact, I believe it is a contagion that has made its home in many of our hearts.

In a church culture where we condemn sin and praise virtue, it’s easy to build a list of respectable sins that we are willing to overlook in ourselves, even as we roundly condemn the sins of others. It’s easy, then, to reinforce one another’s self-righteous judgmentalism.

I heard a story once about a pastor who told his deacon board that their next meeting would be in the local bar. The men sat there nervously in that unaccustomed atmosphere for an hour before the pastor said it was time to leave. Later one of the deacons asked why the pastor had insisted that they go through that weird exercise.

“I just wanted you to see what Sunday morning in church feels like for some people.”

Ouch.

“Pharisees R Us” indeed.

May God’s Spirit convict us of our sin and bring us home from our own far country.