New Thoughts (12/31/05-1/2/06)
Get real! Throughout this sermon, Jesus remains centered on this theme. Righteousness, He explains, is not a matter of showy appearance, it is not about making great display of our piety before others. Rather, righteousness, like true beauty, must be more than skin deep. Righteousness that matters is ever and always wrapped up in deep devotion to God, to His concerns, His desires and His purposes. Being as we are, for the present, dwelling in these fleshly tents, we are consistently caught up in things that look and feel righteous to us, but which, when we turn back to the message God has given us, turn out to have little at all to do with what He seeks.
Therefore, the message Jesus gave to His contemporaries in the hills of Galilee is one we are in equal need of hearing today: “Get real!” In all that you do, but particularly in all that you do in God’s name, take heed that you are doing what is good in His sight, and not only what seems good in your own. We have seen the corrections on supporting the needy, and on times of prayer. Now, Jesus turns to what was another fixture of Jewish piety in His day: fasting. Men had laid down all manner of guidelines for this, as they had with every other facet of holiness. In the course of establishing these guidelines for themselves, they had slowly but assuredly slipped over into making a show of fasting. It was no longer about God at all, and was pretty thoroughly divorced from His intent. It had become a matter of ritual necessity. Men fasted not because they felt the necessity of self-denial, but because they felt they had to do it to appease an angry God. Fasting had regressed once again to idolatry.
Fasting had, in this idolatrous setting, taken on a significance completely at odds with its intended purpose. Far from the useful exercise in self-denial in an effort to turn one’s thoughts more fully to God’s desires, it was now made a perverse display of pridefulness. As a bit of an aside, here, I must insist that there is a great distinction between pride and pridefulness. Pride, within its proper bounds and in its proper setting, is a good and proper thing. We all, as God’s representatives, ought to go about our activities in a way we can be proud of. Neither is it, I suspect, a sin to take pride in that which we accomplish. Of course, any such pride we may take must necessarily be tempered by an honest acknowledgement that apart from God, we could do nothing of worth – indeed could do nothing at all, for in Him we live and move and breathe, whether we choose to honor Him for this fact or not.
Pridefulness, on the other hand, is but an expression of vanity at its worst. It is an assumption of a self-worth that has absolutely no foundation in reality. It claims for the self all manner of glory to which the self has no claim. It will declare as good and worthy such actions as Jesus is decrying here. Indeed, in looking at His correction to the way one fasts, I can see Him steering His hearers from pridefulness – the worship of self, to pride – in the God for Whom they fast, and therefore in the reflection they make upon Him in their own ways.
Fasting, if we take God’s definition of the term, is not an occasion for mourning and long faces. In fact, it is not intended primarily as a vehicle for contrition at all. This is, of course, the impression we take of it because self-denial strikes us as a matter of contrition. God, however, says, “None of this!” Were it a matter of contrition, there would be sufficient cause for you to go about long-faced and sorrowful. This would still not excuse the practice of the hypocrites, mind you, for their long faces have nothing at all to do with sorrow and contrition, everything to do with gaining attention and commiseration. What Jesus has to say, though, is that we are not to make a show of fasting, neither are we to treat it as an occasion for sorrow. Instead, we are to go about our daily lives as usual. In fact, we ought to take what might be a bit of extra care to appear at our best for the occasion. We are drawing closer to God. Where is the reason for mourning in that? Is it not a cause for celebration?
Now, lest we foolishly think that Jesus is redefining things rather than simply restoring, look at the words God speaks through Isaiah on the topic of fasting. God looked down upon Israel in a time when they knew they were in trouble, and therefore fell about in great moans of contrition and doubtless long lists of promises to do better if only He would save them. He sees them fasting as they thought they should, bowed down in abject despair before Him, lying in ashes and wearing their sackcloth. Here was the fundamental reaction to despair. How was this a display of trust in God, though? What did it have to do with knowing Him to be Who He Is? He looked upon this great display of pious regret, and passed judgment on it. “What does this have to do with humility?” He asks. “Is this what you think fasting is all about? Groveling at My feet like wicked slaves awaiting a good whipping?”
Then, He tells them what He really means. It’s not about such self-effacing actions at all. It’s about putting the desires of God before your own. It’s about putting the needs of others before your own. Here’s what I’m looking for, He says: Go out and work to break of the ways of wickedness from yourself and your people. Don’t lie there sniveling in the dust, waiting for Me to do it for you. Play the man! Do something for yourself, sluggard! Likewise, shake yourself off and go help those who are truly oppressed. You have been well enough provided for. Go and share what you have with the hungry and homeless around you rather than pretending they’re not there. Long enough you have closed your eyes to the need all around you, ignored the desperation as you pursued your own pleasures. You want to fast in a way that will get My attention? Open your eyes and do what I have equipped you to do. Go out and help others, rather than whining to me of your helplessness (Isa 58:5-7).
Fasting is about serving as much if not more than it is about denial. It is about that message Jesus keeps at the forefront of this whole corrective process: Love your neighbor as God loves you. Put his need before your own. Love as you were intended to love. Do what you were created to do. Care as you ought to care. Be about the Father’s business, not this pseudo-religious clap trap that you have picked up from the heathens. The fear of God is not about cringing servitude. Idolaters, because they worship demons instead of God, are taught to fear their objects of ‘worship’ in this way. You, however, a people who know the One True God, ought to know better than to think He desires anything of this sort. Yes, He is the All Powerful One. Yes, He is a Jealous God. Yes, His wrath, His righteous indignation, burns in an All Consuming Fire, as He witnesses the corrupting sin that has warped His creation. Yet, we who are the children of this same God ought to recognize that He is also the Father par excellence. Even as He is all these other things, He is simultaneously Love, and we who say we know Him, who call Him Faithful and True, ought to know that His Love is an anchor we can count on even in our fallen state.
There is another misconception in Church pop culture that ought to be dispelled by this passage, and that has to do with the anointing of the sick. Many places maintain their little vial of holy oil on the altar for such purposes. Come, you sick, and we’ll dab a bit of this on your forehead that you might be healed. It’s little wonder to realize that this rarely actually produces a cure. It is wrong on so many levels!
There is the issue of having put the symbol in a higher place than the symbolized in our thinking once again. For many, the neglect of this dab of oil is tantamount to spoiling the prayer. As though this bit of oil were going to make the difference with God’s hearing! These folks need to go lay hold of 1John 5:20 – and learn to beware of idols in their own list of required rites of faith. They have fallen into the same trap that the Pharisees occupied, putting rigid ritual and ceremony in the place of simple faith and belief. They no longer act as those who know God, but as those who deem Him something that must be handled ever so carefully or He’ll destroy you. There is, I’ll admit, some degree of truth to their misconceptions, but it’s not matters of ritual that will keep one at peace with God. It’s matters of true faith in the True Son.
Wiser minds in such churches as maintain this practice recognize that the oil is not powerful in its own right, and will not ascribe the healing power to the oil. Instead, they spiritualize the message of James 5:14, declaring the oil as representative of the Holy Spirit, just as God anointed Jesus and the Apostles by the Holy Spirit. On this basis, they justify their practice, and on this basis they allow it to stand as near to being a legal requirement of church polity as it may be without being written into the bylaws.
The problem with this explanation lies in its interpretation of that which arises from a foreign language and a foreign culture. In the Greek, there are actually two different terms (that I am aware of at this date) which are translated by the English ‘anoint’. But, these two words bear very distinct meanings. The one, chrio, from which the Christ, speaks of that religious anointing which signified God’s appointing of the anointed one to a specific office or purpose. The ultimate example of this is Jesus. Behind Him come the Apostles, anointed for the purpose of establishing the Christ’s Church and as leaders of the same. To these, also, there was a appointed purpose of recording the ministry of Jesus, and the events surrounding the beginning of the Church, the which comprise what we call the New Testament.
This was a longstanding mark of holy appointment in Israel, though. It had been in practice at least as long as there had been kings appointed over the nation. As such, it marked the king as God’s choice to rule over His people. Even before this time, when Israel had no king but God, the anointing by oil had been His seal upon those who served Him as priests, particularly the one serving as high priest. In every example of this sort of anointing, the issue in sight is the mark of God’s approval and indeed His selection of an individual for a particular purpose.
However, this is not the term we find in the passage from James. There, the term is aleipho, a different word for a different concept. The concept expressed by this term is occluded by our removal from the time in which these things were said and written. In our day, the idea of rubbing oneself with oil as a matter of cleanliness and good grooming is long gone. Indeed, much of our efforts in the area of hygiene are spent trying to reduce oils on the skin. But, in the time this was written, such oiling was not far different from the current use of perfumes and scents. It was the après bath of its day.
That this is the point of such oiling is made evident by its use here in the discussion about fasting. Consider the point Jesus is making. Those who fast as posture only go about having “neglected their appearance.” They seek to look as disconsolate and disheveled as they know how to be so that none who sees them can possibly miss the fact that they are fasting. Thus do they hope to garner the admiration of these observers of their ‘holiness.’ Then, Jesus offers a contrast. Rather than neglect your appearance, He says, you should give every care to your appearance, that you may look your best! Wash your face, and anoint your head. Those are the instructions (v17). Are we really to suppose He means for us to declare ourselves appointed to an office each time we do this? Can we really believe that He means us to ‘remind ourselves of the Holy Spirit’ every time we do this? I suppose it’s possible, if only just, but it seems far more likely that He means nothing more than He says directly and clearly: wash up and make yourself presentable. Your fasting is for God, not for men. To men, remember that even as you fast, you represent God. As such, represent Him well, even as you honor Him in this activity you have undertaken. Look your best, for you are bearing His image, and He is never disconsolate and disheveled.
This same term, by which Jesus instructs His listeners to take care of their own hygiene, is the term used by James to speak to the matter of caring for the sick in the Church. I notice in this that he recalls the lesson Jesus so humbly taught His disciples at their last meal. The leader in Christ shall be servant to all, even as He came to be the humble Servant of His people. See, the instruction James gives is directed both to the sick and to the leadership. To the sick, he says, call on the elders. Again, the wording may throw us a bit, but it ought not to do so. He says, “Let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord.” Now, we could hear this as a matter of the sick one allowing the elders to do their duty. But, such an understanding would be wrong, and comes more of the modern view of man as the supreme being, and captain of his own destiny. Allow this to be done to me… No, it’s not like that. Just as James’ words are a matter of command in their instruction to the sick one, so, too, they are nearer a command to the elders. To them he says, “You should pray for the sick (giving no thought to concerns of contagion) and not only that, you ought also to wash them yourselves, right down to rubbing in the oils after bath.” The leader in Christ is servant to all. Do you hear the echo?
The forehead dabbing to which we have reduced this seems to me to have lost sight of God’s intent completely. It neither reminds the leader of his proper relationship to those he leads, nor does it do a thing towards maintaining the sick one’s faith in God. Oh, we will doubtless make noises about how it is not the oil that we attribute healing efficacy to, but God. Yet, if that oil is withheld, rejected as meaningless, how the sick one will be upset by this! Far from suggesting a ritual for the fledgling Church, I feel certain James was reminding his colleagues at the help of that Church not to be so prideful as to cease from serving.
The setting of the passage might be seen as supporting such an understanding. Recall that James is the one who tells us that faith that has no works is a dead faith indeed. Notice also, that immediately having instructed the elders to serve the sick both in prayer and in cleaning themselves up, he completes his thought thus, “the prayer offered in faith will restore the one who is sick...” (Jas 5:15). The oil is lost to sight as fast as it came to our attention, for the very simple reason that the oil is not the point. Prayer is the point. Prayer is the role of faith in this whole process. The oil, if it represents anything at all, represents not the involvement of the Holy Spirit, but the works that manifest the faith that prayed. It represents the proper servant’s heart attitude of Christian leadership. It represents a leadership whose faith is strong enough to seek restoration for the sick, and in that they involve themselves in washing and attending to the sick themselves, it declares their faith in God to protect them from the same sickness as they serve. This is far more powerful than what we have made of the passage!
If I were to summarize what Jesus has taught in the portion of His message that has been covered thus far in chapter six, I would say it comes down to this: either do it for God, or don’t bother doing it at all. This is, perhaps, the real ‘Regulatory Principle’ by which the Christian is called to pursue righteousness and sanctification. The appearance of holiness does nothing. Worse than this, it stands a very real chance of convincing its practitioners that they have truly achieved the holiness to which they pretend. God is making clear that this is not the case. There is no eternal worth, no heavenly worth, to such efforts. As much as they may do to gain you notoriety amongst your peers, such notoriety is an empty thing. It earns nothing in the heavenly economy. If, then, you are going to seek any sort of righteousness, seek that righteousness which is pleasing in God’s sight, that sort of righteousness which, if it is seen by men at all, is seen quite by accident.
It has been said often enough that God seeks the heart. That’s pretty much the point here. It is the heart that pursues the pathways of righteousness in its most private moments, the heart that insists on doing what is right even when nobody would notice our wrongs, that is pleasing in His sight. What use, after all, is the approval of sinful men such as ourselves? How can they hope to render a true assessment of our piety when they are no more capable than we of assessing their own? The heart, we are reminded, is deceitful beyond all other things. We are addicts of self esteem. That shows in current philosophies of child rearing and teaching. It’s not about what you know and what you do, it’s about feeling good about yourself however much or however little you know and do.
We will each one of us insist on thinking ourselves good people, whatever we must do and whoever we must belittle to reach that conclusion. Until we are forced to measure ourselves against the only true standard, we will happily continue on in our delusion. We will play the Pharisee every time. “Thank God I’m not like that sinner over there!” True enough, my friend. You are very much your own sinner, unique in your approach to sinful pursuits, cloaked about with your clever costume. All your friends talk of how zealously you pursue your religion. However, I tell you they are wrong. You may not be like them, but you are every bit as much a sinner as they. Here is the true measure. It is time you know yourself, see yourself with clear eyes, hear your foolishness with open ears, that you may recognize your sad condition and turn to Me and be healed.
If you would pray, pray to Me, not for looks. If you would do good deeds, do them for love of Me, not for attention. If you would fast, let it be the fast that I have endorsed, not this moping about that you pass off as contrition. Do it for Me, for love of Me. For anything less is not even worth talking about.
Holy Father, forgive me. So much of what I have done in this last year has settled for looking good. So little has been concerned with what You desire. Lord, particularly as I have been studying this part of Your word, I have felt the finger of accusation pointed at me. I look at the attitude that enshrouds me when I am preparing a study for home. I consider the upset it causes me when none come to hear the teaching, and I realize that this only points up the fact that I have been teaching more for my own purpose and reputation than for Yours. Lord, I have no desire to be a fraud. I do not want to find myself no different than those farmers in my youth who so dutifully came to Your house each Sunday, but so clearly had no real desire to be there and no real interest in Your ways. Holy Spirit, this is a new year, and You know that which Pastor has spoken over my life at its opening. If this word be true, then let it be from Your informing me that anything I may teach this year springs. Let me be found suitable in Your hands, a tool fit to be used of You. Let the lessons I teach be those You have given me for that purpose, and let all self-pride be done away with in me once and for all. I pray, Lord, that You would so move on my life in this year that my daughter would find no cause for doubt in how I live at home, would find no cause to think her father a hypocrite as she compares his church persona to his family persona. Likewise, Lord, teach me how to guard my tongue in the workplace. Show me the way, Holy One, to bear the intensity that comes upon me with matters of deep concentration without allowing intensity to be shifted over to anxiety and anger. Make me like You, Lord, in every facet of this life You have given me.
