Trust & Hypocrites

(all translations are from The Complete Jewish Bible)

Jeremiah 5:20-31

²⁵ Your crimes have overturned nature’s rules,
your sins have kept back good from you.’
²⁶ “For among my people there are wicked men,
who, like fowlers, lie in wait and set traps
to catch their fellow human beings.
²⁷ Their houses are as full of fraud
as a cage full of birds.
They grow rich and great, ²⁸ sleek and bloated;
they excel in acts of wickedness
but do not plead on behalf of the orphan,
thus enabling his cause to succeed;
nor do they judge in favor of the poor.

“Your crimes have overturned nature’s rules”……! 

“Their houses are as full of fraud as a cage full of birds.”

Wow! Can we say, “Climate change”?

I also got this vivid image:  a cage with tinsel bars; with dust and ashes in the feeders; with mounds of single-use plastic stuck to the filthy bottom of the overcrowded cage; with flapping, twittering, raucous, crazy-eyed, disheveled, frantic pet birds trying to beat their way out between the bars in a cloud of down and broken feathers.

Romans 3:19-31

¹⁹ Moreover, we know that whatever the Torah says, it says to those living within the framework of the Torah, in order that every mouth may be stopped and the whole world be shown to deserve God’s adverse judgment. ²⁰ For in his sight no one alive will be considered righteous^[ on the ground of legalistic observance of Torah commands, because what Torah really does is show people how sinful they are.

The Torah was the Law. If a person chose to accept the Torah, then that person became bound by the whole of Jewish religious laws and regulations. All of the laws applied. Any infraction of the laws constituted a sin. Paul says over and over again that followers of Jesus have been freed from the law. Doesn’t it follow then, that anyone in our modern age who quotes the ancient Jewish religious law code to justify a contemporary viewpoint or opinion, contravenes the whole point and purpose of the law as it was originally framed? Why is it not glaringly obvious to everyone that this kind of manipulation of the law (as a justification for an opinion already held) makes the manipulator into a modern day Pharisee?

If you want to read Jesus’ rant about Pharisees, you will find it here: Matthew 23. Jesus pulls out all the stops and really lets them have it:  “But woe to you hypocritical Torah-teachers and P’rushim! (Pharisees) For you are shutting the Kingdom of Heaven in people’s faces, neither entering yourselves nor allowing those who wish to enter to do so.” The whole chapter, in my opinion, could change the word “pharisee” to “fundamentalist Christian” without changing the meaning in the slightest. It illustrates beautifully how nothing at all has changed; that many of those who call themselves Christians— especially those in positions of authority or who enjoy public renown— blatantly disregard the plain meaning of everything that Jesus said and did, and continue to ignore the simplicity of the Good News in favor of hypocrisy, self-righteousness, and outright animosity toward their fellow human beings.

John 7:1-13

Yeshua traveled around in the Galil, intentionally avoiding Y’hudah (Judea) because the Judeans were out to kill him. ² But the festival of Sukkot in Y’hudah was near; ³ so his brothers said to him, “Leave here and go into Y’hudah, so that your talmidim can see the miracles you do; ⁴ for no one who wants to become known acts in secret. If you’re doing these things, show yourself to the world!” ⁵ (His brothers spoke this way because they had not put their trust in him.) ⁶ Yeshua said to them, “My time has not yet come; but for you, any time is right. ⁷ The world can’t hate you, but it does hate me, because I keep telling it how wicked its ways are.

Wait to act until the time is right. If you don’t want to become known, then act in secret. (Jesus did go to the festival after all, sneaking into Judea incognito. He just wanted to make sure that the authorities didn’t know he was there. “….he too went up, not publicly but in secret. ¹¹ At the festival, the Judeans were looking for him. “Where is he?” they asked. ¹² And among the crowds there was much whispering about him. Some said, “He’s a good man”; but others said, “No, he is deceiving the masses.” ¹³ However, no one spoke about him openly, for fear of the Judeans.”)

I was struck by the context here—  the “crowds” ( a phrase which usually stands for the people who gather to listen to Jesus) were actively covering for Jesus; whispering in corners for fear of the authorities; protecting both Jesus and themselves from persecution by the bureaucracy. I also think it’s important to remember who the Judeans actually were: they were well-off members of the establishment, living in an occupied country, protecting their assets by collaborating with those who had subjugated them. They were sycophants, brown-nosers, toadies, boot-lickers, suck-ups.

I’m jumping sideways now, to the question, “If modern fundamentalist Christians are analogous to the ancient Pharisees, what authority are they kowtowing to? What are the powers that rule their lives and control their security? What are they protecting? What are they afraid of? What drives their hypocrisy? I don’t see any point in being judgmental since we all tend to fear the same things, and protect ourselves from the same threats.

But here’s the thing—

Jesus’ life and death didn’t add up to some kind of magic trick, and his teaching wasn’t just a stage misdirection to get us to look in a different direction while he disappeared from one place and reappeared in another!

No, his teaching was the only point!

His life, death, and resurrection were a perfect demonstration of how it all works!

By his teaching, and his example, he showed us how to live without fear.

He showed us we don’t need to protect the truly important things at all, 
because they are eternally safe.

 He showed us how to be kind to one another.

He showed us that if we rule ourselves according to the law of Love, 
no other authority can possibly have power over  us.

I think we all have it in us:

The God-given ability to put trust before fear;

The innate understanding of what really matters.

The reason I believe that 
is because God trusts us before ever asking us for our trust in return.

Jesus showed us how to keep on trusting 
right through betrayal, humiliation, grief, and death.

That’s what it means to be a Christian— to go right on following Christ—

Risking everything for the sake of trust, because nothing can destroy love.