10^TH Sunday of the Year 2002

What was the fatal flaw of those Pharisees who rejected Jesus and ended up plotting his destruction? There is a most important lesson for us to learn from all this, for we are all tempted at times to act somewhat like the Pharisees, and even if we don't actually reject Jesus outright, this attitude of the Pharisaical enemies of Jesus will inevitably separate us from Jesus, if we do not resist this terrible temptation. So what was their fatal flaw, and how can we avoid it and avoid the terrible consequences which will follow, separation from Jesus and the loss of Eternal Life?

The fatal flaw is not be identified with any one particular act of sin, at least in the way we normally think about sin. When we think about sins that might repel God, we perhaps think about sins of the flesh, or of murder, or of theft, or perhaps of sins of the spirit like hating someone, etc. Certainly these sins are in themselves repulsive, and are truly offensive to God's goodness, but they, by themselves do not seem to have kept people away from Jesus, nor did they keep Jesus away from people who were guilty of these sins.

We see the truth of this in today's Gospel where Jesus accepts a dinner invitation at a house where he knew quite well that notorious sinners would also be invited to meet him. In fact Jesus defends this decision by saying that he sees this dinner as a real opportunity to carry out his mission. When the Pharisees criticize him for eating with sinners, he simply replies that sick people are in need of a doctor, which indicates that he has accepted this invitation not simply to be cordial, but quite consciously and deliberately to carry on his work as the divine physician. As Paul writes to Timothy [1 Tim 1:15],

"This saying is trustworthy and deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. Of these I am the foremost."

Christ dines with sinners because He has come into the world precisely to save sinners, ans this dinner is an opportunity to carry out that mission. He does something similar, and shocks his own disciples, when he engages in conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well, whom - he knows ahead of time - has had five husbands. Jesus clearly is not just making lite conversation with this adulterous woman, but gently and wonderfully inviting her to repent and receive a new life, a life which will spring up within her, if only she repents and believes in Jesus.

So when Jesus comes to Matthew's house we know his frame of mind most clearly from his response to the criticism of the Pharisees that he defiles himself by eating with sinners. Butt he truth is that Jesus has come because they are sinners, and has come not for the primary purpose of being fed, no more than he asked the woman for a drink primarily because he was physically thirsty , but he came to invite them to a much greater banquet, to feed them with a banquet of life, an eternal banquet which he alone can serve them. But of course they too, like the Samaritan woman will have to repent, come to believe in Jesus, and change their lives by his grace in order to share His banquet. Repentance is not the ultimate purpose of his mission, but the essential prerequisite necessary to reach that ultimate goal, for sinful man cannot enter into the Life of God, share God's Life in a banquet of life, unless he changes, and becomes like God, a child of light and grace, and leaves sin behind. And only Jesus can bring about this transformation of sinful man into child of God, for He alone possesses the power to destroy man's sin and recreate him, elevate him to become God's adopted child, feed man this banquet for all eternity.

What then caused the Pharisees to reject Jesus and thus reject their place at the banquet of Life? Their fatal flaw was not even their hypocrisy - we are all hypocrites at times - and not even pride in the ordinary sense that we use that word. No their fatal flaw was the most profound kind of pride, a kind of self-determining state of mind which is the ultimate alienation of man from God, the kind of pride that led to man's Original Sin, original alienation from God, the refusal to recognize God as the source and goal of man's fulfillment, the refusal to recognize the truth that man is a creature, and not His own source of fulfillment.

The Pharisees rejected Jesus because they did not see themselves as sinful creatures in need of a Redeemer. They did not see their sins as sins, as the evils they truly are, evils that alienate man from God, evils that only God can overcome, evils that require a redeemer who cannot be the sinner. The Pharisees had chosen to make themselves their own redeemer, and in doing so had made God irrelevant, and the very idea of a Messiah as a spiritual redeemer - as contrasted with a temporal leader which they were hoping for - repulsive. They were Nietsche twenty centuries earlier, for they saw the idea of God rescuing them spiritually as demeaning to them as men, an idea that Nietsche simply took to its logical outcome, that God must be eliminated if man is to be great. They were blind guides, and they detested the rabble as weaklings who could not change themselves, and despised Jesus who was presenting Himself not only as the savior of these wretches, but most outrageously as theirs as well.

This most profound alienation from God as source and goal of their fulfillment and dignity led to their refusal to recognize their sins as sins, and thus to see themselves as sinners who were in need of a redeemer. They were men in the most deadly kind of denial. People who are in denial about a physical sickness will often refuse to go to the doctor, and it may well kill them, if their sickness is serious. Likewise, sinners who are spiritually, terminally ill need a redeemer, for man cannot forgive and heal his own sins; for the dead cannot raise themselves from death. When sinners - and that includes us all - are in denial about this deadly condition, that is, deny that their sins are sins, or deny their sins' seriousness, then they will logically not seek a redeemer, and thus will not come to Jesus, and this refusal will leave them for all eternity in the condition of alienation from God, as Jesus himself warned them one day: That is why I told you that you will die in your sins. For if you do not believe that I AM,<1> you will die in your sins." [John 8:24]

The problem with the phraisees is that they refused to admit that they were sinners, that they too were sick unto death, that their sins were such that they could not save themselves. The Pharisees could not see themselves as sinners, at least not sinners like the rest of humanity, sinners whose sins were deadly, sins which could only be destroyed, overcome by a redeemer, not by themselves, sinners who could achieve their human perfection and ultimate fulfillment only through the agency of another, one sent by God to save them, as well as those they looked down upon as sinners. When the Pharisees condemned Jesus for eating with sinners, what could they have meant other than that they themselves were not sinners, or at least not the kind of sinners who were hopelessly lost. If Jesus ate with them, would they have thought he was eating with sinners? Perhaps sinners in one sense, that they too were guilty of moral failures, but not sinners who were such that they could not save themselves by their own will power. They didn't need a savior, and the ones they despised as real sinners couldn't be saved because they, unlike the Pharisees, did not have what it took to save themselves. They were weak, dispicable, and all the more so because they were looking for a savior which confirmed that they were too weak to change themselves.

Thus we can see that the Pharisees were actually blind on two counts when it came to Jesus. First, they refused to accept him because they thought they could follow the moral law by themselves. In reality, being religious legalists, they ended up distorting the law itself in order to convince themselves that they were not really sinners. People do that in every age. Today many Christians reject certain teachings of the moral law that they choose to live contrary to, and thus like the Pharisees convince themselves that they are not sinners. The church may say that x y or z is a sin, but who is the Church to tell me how to live my life; I choose to do x y or z, and reject the idea that this could be a sin. We call this rationalization, and it is really self-justification, for the only way man can justify himself is by denying that his actions are sinful in the first place. If he can deny that the law is what the Bible, or the Church, or Jesus himself says it is, then even if he acts contrary to the law, he doesn't need anyone's forgiveness, which includes therefore, Jesus. The Pharisees were masters of this self-justification by interpreting the law away, and so are many Christians today.

Jesus, the Bible and the Church all teach the same thing, that man cannot be good without following God's law and than man cannot have a true understanding of the moral law by our own reasoning, but need the teaching of Jesus, which the same Gospel teaches us that Church is commissioned and entrusted to convey to us - "whoever hears you," Jesus said to the Apostles, "hears me; and whoever refuses to listen to you refuses to listen to me." Likewise, the Church and history itself teaches us that no man can live the moral law as a child of God, with the goodness and freedom of God, unless the grace of Jesus Christ enables this to happen. The Pharisees, then, and many Christians today are blind when it comes to the moral law, and thus feel no need for and perhaps even a repulsion for Jesus and His Church.

But secondly, the Pharisees were so closed to Jesus by their moral self-righteousness, that they also were blind or closed to his ultimate mission and message, that men are called to be God's children not just in some natural, purely ethical sense, as imitator's of God's goodness in their moral lives. The call to repentance is not the ultimate purpose of Jesus' mission because the moral life is not the whole of man's final perfection as man. Repentance and God's mercy are a preliminary step. The Pharisees never made it past that step. Man's destiny is so much more than moral perfection in the natural sense. His final fulfillment, perfection, and happiness is nothing less than supernatural, for God created man for no other ultimate happiness than His own. We are created, quite literally, to become sharers in God's own life and beatitude, creatures who are to be participants and imitators of God's ontological goodness in our very being, not just imitators or his creative activity in our moral activity. God created man so that man might become God - that's the way certain Fathers of the Church summarized this greater truth of the Gospel. Men are created not simply to live a natural life, a natural goodness, and be God's natural reflection in creation by their imitation of his goodness through moral actions. We were created to be God's true children, not just his creatures, but his adopted children, participating in his Divine Nature and in His goodness in our very being, as well as in our actions.

For this to be accomplished not only would man have to be rescued from his own evils, for nothing evil can enter into any true communion with God, but his very nature, his being, would have to be transformed, elevated above its natural being to become a true participant in the very Nature of God. If God alone could enable man to live the moral law, to know what God has commanded, and do it, even more so did man need God to reach down and lift man up to himself so as to be a true sharer in His Life. Man cannot give himself supernatural life. Only God could do that, and God did do that by becoming man in Jesus Christ.

Thus God did not become man in Jesus simply to enable man to become a morally good creature, but rather Jesus enables man, by His redemptive death and resurrection, to become a morally good creature so man can reach for the stars, and attain what God always intended Him to become, a true child of the Most High, sharing His Eternal Life. Jesus ate with sinners, then, not just to help them change their moral life, but to become saints, to become His brothers and sisters, to share His Sonship, for all Eternity.

Modern man, like the Pharisees of old, tends to justify himself and looks for his purpose in life in things that he can achieve for himself. How sad. How sad it was for the Pharisees of old who ended up trying to destroy Jesus, and how sad for men of today who simply ignore Him. When we come to Mass, we begin this celebration of Life by confessing that we are sinners in need of God's mercy. That is the first step in avoiding the temptation to self-justification. The second is to recognize that we are here to find our fulfillment in God, to adore and praise and thank God for rescuing us from death and giving us Life in Jesus Christ, the Life we were created to share, and which we already do, if we are faithful to Him who is our Law, and the Grace by which we act as God's true children. Hopefully we have learned our Gospel message well, and will never again fall into this trap of self-justification, which means loss of Eternal Life. Jesus Christ and He alone is our Hope, and what we do here is the foretaste of that Hope's fulfillment.