The Awful Blindness of the Pharisees

How well do you see?

In our text from this past Sunday (Luke 16:14-31), Jesus is addressing a group of Pharisees who had been listening and mocking the instructions he had been giving his disciples on wealth (16:1-13). Jesus was telling them to see their wealth (what they had of it) as something to be used with eternal purposes in mind rather than hoarding or spending it on themselves. The Pharisees disagreed, because – as Luke notes – they were “money lovers”. Somehow these men had crafted a theology that enabled them to love God and money simultaneously. Jesus rebuked their double-mindedness and went on to tell a parable warning those who would prefer the Pharisees’ word over his own.

What was most striking about this parable was the way it ended. The rich man in the story – a money lover like the Pharisees – is now suffering in Hades and is pleading for Abraham to send the poor man (Lazarus) back to his brothers. They are just like him and they will too suffer the same fate as he when they die. Abraham refuses saying they already have enough in the witness of the Scriptures (“Moses and the Prophets”). But the rich man argues that that won’t work, they need something more, such as Lazarus rising from the grave. But Abraham refuses on the grounds that if they won’t listen to the testimony they already have, then they won’t listen to someone who has come back from the dead.

It’s difficult to avoid irony here. Just as the rich man’s brothers will not listen to a freshly-resurrected Lazarus, so the Pharisees will not listen to the One telling the parable. In spite of all their accomplishments and accolades in the things of God, their love for money has so blinded them that they are unable to see the Messiah standing in front of them…and this while they’re claiming to see better than Jesus! What an awful blindness this is!

The beauty of this parable is that it is open-ended. The conclusion is yet to be written for his audience as well as for us. Do we have ears to hear? Are we able to see?

Sermon text for June 8th – Luke 17:1-10

1 And he said to his disciples, “Temptations to sin [1] are sure to come, but woe to the one through whom they come! 2 It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were cast into the sea than that he should cause one of these little ones to sin. [2] 3 Pay attention to yourselves! If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him, 4 and if he sins against you seven times in the day, and turns to you seven times, saying, ‘I repent,’ you must forgive him.”

5 The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!” 6 And the Lord said, “If you had faith like a grain of mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.

7 “Will any one of you who has a servant [3] plowing or keeping sheep say to him when he has come in from the field, ‘Come at once and recline at table’? 8 Will he not rather say to him, ‘Prepare supper for me, and dress properly, [4] and serve me while I eat and drink, and afterward you will eat and drink’? 9 Does he thank the servant because he did what was commanded? 10 So you also, when you have done all that you were commanded, say, ‘We are unworthy servants; [5] we have only done what was our duty.’”

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