IN THE WORDS OF JESUS–Part 150

YES, HE is Talking to YOU! (continued)

Love is the Fulfilling of the Law

We completed our discussion on the Parable of the Unjust Judge yesterday and find it quite different than the Parable of the Friend at Midnight although many think these are a sort of pair.

In the one we find the Master telling us that we must continue to strive and to ask, seek and knock, that is to cry day and night unto him, and not become disheartened or, in our words, not to lose focus. So long as we are focused on the things of the Lord, then our Soul Light will continue to pour into our lives and our consciousness is thereby enriched and rewarded with some degree of His Presence. As the widow gets her justice from the judge by her persistent and perhaps angry solicitation, so we get our justice from our persistent crying which is our asking, seeking and knocking at the door, the gate, of the Kingdom. Remember that we are God’s elect as we have chosen Him; He will bear with us and we are never abandoned.

The other parable revolves around the idea of doing for others, for a friend. The story itself is straightforward but the meaning is illusive. It is said to be about prayer and persistence but these play little in either the outward story or the story’s meaning. We have added to the parable proper the next group of verses which are regarding asking, seeking and knocking which can be considered prayer and persistence but this is likely not the idea of the Master. You see also how these three solicitations worked out in the previous parable above as well. In the part that we added on is found the reality of the message; just as the friend answered the door and gave the bread because he was asked to do so by a friend, so the Lord will give to us who ask, who seek and who knock. We must ask however and seek and knock; this is our responsibility as aspiring disciples or as any who have spiritual pursuits. Once we sense the Light and we respond and we experience the idea of being of the elect we then must continue in our pursuit. The asking is not a verbal questioning nor is the seeking a visual exercise and neither is there a door upon which to knock but this is all a spiritual exercise of communing with our own Souls and Christ Within. The more light we have, the more we should want and the more we will get; this, fulfilling His saying that “For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance….” (Matthew 13:12). This is made most apparent in a spiritual context by the last line in the combined parable: “…..how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?” (Luke 11:13).

This brings us to our next parable which follows immediately after the Parable of the Unjust Judge; this is called the Parable of the Pharisee and the Publican. Again we have taken the liberty of adding into the parable the sayings of the Master that follow the parable proper. In this case He is speaking about the children that were brought to Him and the theme of this conversation is for us a continuation of the theme of the main part of the parable. We must not forget that it is men that divided the scriptures into chapters and verses and it is men that devise what should be called a parable and what each should contain and, as we know,  in some cases there is little agreement. The parable goes thus:

“And he spake this parable unto certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others: Two men went up into the temple to pray ; the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess. And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner. I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other: for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted. And they brought unto him also infants, that he would touch them: but when his disciples saw it, they rebuked them. But Jesus called them unto him, and said , Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God. Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child shall in no wise enter therein” (Luke 18:9-17).

We should see here again, as in the last parable we discussed, that Luke gives us a bit of its interpretation at the outset and the Lord gives us a bit more of its understanding at the end which we expand upon with the added verses on the children. Of course, these interpretive words are meant for a better understanding of the story itself leaving yet more depth to be discovered. As noted in the Parable of the Good Samaritan, the Master is here making a point of showing us that it is those who seem to be religious, those who should be an example to their people, that are among the worst of the offenders. They should and likely do know better yet they are so self-righteous that they are blinded to the reality of what it is that they are saying and doing. They lose sight of the basic precepts and what it is that they should stand for. This is a story about them, the Pharisees, but it is a warning to all who follow in religious pursuits  and whose teachings and actions become more about themselves and their doctrine than about their God and His simple commandments.

So with this Pharisee; his fasting and his tithing become meaningless when done publicly and boasted of. Remember the Master’s words about fasting and praying and alms giving in the Sermon on the Mount. In each condemnation of the actions of the hypocrites He tells us that “They have their reward” (Matthew 6: 2, 5, 16). And to those who do these things right, that is discreetly, He says “and thy Father, which seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly” (Matthew 6:6, 18). Now we have spoken about Pharisees before and the name does carry a bad connotation in Christianity. We should remember however that these men were the religious leaders of their time and in this we should see that the Master is not only railing against them but against all religious leaders who act this same way….hypocritical. Like many men, even to today, and in all walks of life from the religious man to the politician, and with few exceptions in between, the hypocritical leader takes advantage of his office to the detriment of others or of the system that he proposes to support. These Pharisees, like men through the ages, believe that they are doing right; they devise theologies and doctrines to accommodate their behavior. This is in many ways just human nature albeit on the carnal side of the ledger. Speaking on the religious side, these ideas and their resulting behaviors are much easier to self condone and to profess when there are many persons involved in them. Many eventually take on a life of their own and become trends or denominations and sects that may then evoke societal changes; some of this for the good and some not so good. History alone tells them apart, especially to the participants.

Luke starts this parable with a statement about his perception of the nature of the Pharisee as we must assume that this is the target of the Master ire. Vincent also tells us that this was the nature of the Pharisee as we see from this idea that he quotes plus all the information we gather from the words of the Master. Vincent says first, in regard to the idea of others, that this should be rendered as the rest or, as in the Revised Version, all others. He continues in regard to the idea of other men in the next verse to tell us that: a Jewish saying is quoted that a true Rabbin ought to thank God every day of his life; 1, that he was not created a Gentile; 2, that he was not a plebeian; 3, that he was not born a woman⁴. The word plebeian reflects the common people and Rabbin should be equated with the office of the Pharisee and other religious leaders. We can see from this Pharisee’s dialogue that this is his basic attitude saying “God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are“. We should see also that this does not make them bad individually; this is what they know and how they have become; they remain the religious leaders and, in their own minds they go beyond the requirements of the law. Vincent tells us that the law was to fast once in a year thought this was expanded over time to include special days; the Pharisee’s however fasted twice in each week. They steadfastly give ten percent (the meaning of tithe) of all their gain and this is acknowledged by the Master. Their problem is that they do these things and others to be seen as Pharisees and as keepers of the law and the traditions; they do not do them for the Lord. Can this not be seen as the way of man even to today.

What of the publicans? These are a special breed and again, though they are despised by the Pharisees and likely most Jews in general, they are not really evil as a class. Vincent again gives us some insight: the word comes from the Greek words that translate as a tax and to buy. The collectors of Romans imposts. The Romans farmed out the direct taxes and customs duties to  capitalists, on their payment of a certain sum in publicum, into the public treasury. This is sort of like buying the right to collect the taxes and custom from the people. Under these persons or companies that bought the rights were the submagistri, living in the provinces; and under these again were the portitores, or actual custom-house officers who are referred to by the word translated in the New Testament (as publicans). He continues that they were often chosen from the dregs of the people and were notorious in their extortions that they were habitually included in the same category with harlots and sinners. Quoting Farrar (“the Life of Christ”) Vincent continues to tell us that: ‘if a Jew could scarcely persuade himself that it was right to pat taxes, how much more heinous a crime must it have been in his eyes to become the questionably honest instrument for collecting them. If a publican was hated, how still more intense must have been the disgust entertained against a publican who was also a Jew’. Based on these ideas, we do not know individually the nature of any of these men; we do know that this particular one was in the synagogue praying and seeking forgiveness and we do know that Levi (Matthew) was chosen from their ranks to be an apostle. Whatever reason there is is unclear; men do things that are contrary to their hearts; whether for convenience or perceived necessity we can become the tax collector, the man who forecloses another’s debt, the prison guard or any profession that has some control over another’s well being. Each of these can be seen as the publican by those that they control and there are good and bad in each of these.

Here then we have a Pharisee who is acting as a Pharisee and we have a publican who, while not being from a favored group, is in the Temple praying so that we can surmise that he is either one of the better of the publicans or that he is repentant for what he considers his sins or perhaps both. The idea here for us is that we have the self-righteous Pharisee and it is interesting to note that the only definition in the 1828 Webster’s Dictionary for thisthis term is righteous in one’s own esteem; pharisaic¹. And, we have the apparently repentant and definitely sorrowful publican appearing before the Lord. As we said, the Master interprets this parable for the people saying “or every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted” which is a message that He much uses in His teaching. He goes on also then to address the idea in more depth saying “Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God. Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child shall in no wise enter therein” So we have His lesson regarding the outward signs of self-righteousness versus the outward signs of humility and then the Master’s relationship of these traits and attitudes to being accounted worthy to receive the kingdom of God. These things are apparent in the story itself though they may not be thought of in others interpretations.

What then is the deeper message that we may take from this parable? First, we should see that a self-righteous attitude is a barrier to the Light of the Soul. We become, like the Pharisee, prone to think in our own terms the thoughts generated by our carnal personalities and worse, like the Pharisee, we attribute these thoughts to God and God’s will. This Pharisee believed that what he was saying was the Truth and that he is blessed of God and more blessed than most men. This is the second point and it affects many of us….deception; We can firmly believe that we are doing what is the Will of God speaking to us or believe that we are in strong enough contact with our own Inner Man so that the ‘message’ that we receive is the path to take but, our belief does not make it so. There is a measurement given to us by the Apostle James for WISDOM FROM ABOVE and another by the Apostle Paul regarding RIGHT THOUGHTS  and there is the message from the Master on Love and let us not forget the Golden Rule. These are our guide to the discernment of thoughts from above and from within and these are our key to receiving the Kingdom of God.

Note on the Quote of the Day