Pr25C (Track 1) Joel 2:23-32, 2 Timothy 4:6-8,16-18, Luke 18:9-14
But when I see myself in photos other people take, I don’t look so good. Their photo inevitably catches my worst angle. The truth is probably that when I look in my mirror I see myself through the lens of how I want to look. A camera sees me as I really am.
The Pharisee in Jesus’ parable was looking in his own mirror. He saw the person he wanted to be, and wanted God to see . . . a person who fasted and tithed, someone who did the right things.
The way we want to look to others, and to God, is partly about what we are proud of and partly about what we fear. Maybe God sees that, along with all the other stuff we worry about. Maybe God sees us the way a camera does and then some. Honestly. Deeply. Fully.
The Pharisee thinks he is not like other people, but he is. As are we. We are like the Pharisee and the tax collector and everyone else. Good and flawed. Generous and grasping. Courageous and afraid.
The photo that captures our worst angle is inevitably handed to us by a friend who loves the photo they took and assumes we will too. They love the person the camera saw. They love us. Maybe we can believe that God’s love is at least like that. And then some.
Peace.
A word about Pharisees…
This week I was surprised to learn that we actually don’t know who the Pharisees were. “No history of the Pharisees was written in antiquity. [We do not have] any document written by a Pharisee, other than the letters of Paul…”1 The major sources which even mention the Pharisees are Josephus, the New Testament, and rabbinic literature.
Those sources don’t tell us much. Josephus is inconsistent. He says that the Pharisees were “skilled interpreters of the law” but then politically motivated and then too proud of their strict observances. Rabbinic literature (written long after the destruction of the Temple) provides no clear picture of the Pharisees during Jesus’ lifetime. And the gospels aren’t much help. Understandably. They are about Jesus, not the Pharisees. The Pharisees appear in them as foils: “as Jesus’ opponents, as his dialogue partners, or as representatives of Jews in general.”2
Until I learn why I shouldn’t, and when I can filter-out the anti-Jewish polemic of the gospels, I like the Pharisees. I think Jesus was one of them.3 Like them, he was “a skilled interpreter of the law.” He talked to the Pharisees, dined and argued with them and yes, was sometimes critical of them. I think that’s because they were colleagues who pretty much shared his vision and values. People who share my vision and values are exactly the people I want to talk with — to dream, argue and disagree with — about the things that matter most to me. FWIW.
Babota, Vasile. “In Search of the Origins of the Pharisees” The Pharisees. Ed. Joseph Dievers & Amy-Jill Levine. (Wm.B.Eerdmans Publishing Co., Grand Rapid, MI, 2021.) 23-40 at 23.
Schröter, Jens. “How Close Were Jesus and the Pharisees?”The Pharisees. Ed. Joseph Dievers & Amy-Jill Levine. Ibid. 220-239 at 225-227, 229.
Not a mainstream opinion, but there is scholarship that takes that position. It goes back to an 1857 book by Abraham Geiger (1810-1874) a German rabbi and scholar, who is regarded as the founder of Reform Judaism. Heschel, Susannah & Forger, Deborah. “The Pharisees in Modern Scholarship,” The Pharisees. Ed. Joseph Dievers & Amy-Jill Levine. Ibid. 361-383 at 362.
Your words of wisdom are deep and true - as well as simple. But it’s funny how their simplicity leaves me with much to ponder. Thank you, Lily.
So interesting, so thought provoking ! Thank you !