Luke 11:37-54

Luke 11:37-54

Was Jesus a bad guest? As we read this passage it appears that Jesus is picking a fight over the ceremony of hand washing. Without a doubt the Pharisees and the religious lawyers had turned the Law into a tool by which they took and maintained control over the religious community. But Jesus doesn't take a live-and-let-live approach. We do not know what the Pharisee says, how he expressed “surprise” that Jesus did not ceremonially wash his hands before dinner. We do know that when Jesus spoke He was confrontational and insulting.

The extra rules and regulations and staged rituals of the religious elite were not about bringing people close to God. They're about the glorification of the man who wrote the rules and those who acted them out. The religious elite’s hypocrisy in keeping the Law was evident and it created a barrier for everyone who took time to notice. They were obsessed with ridiculous additions to the Law, the legal loopholes and the phony faith in this lifestyle of religious game playing. They are like the person in role-playing games that becomes so immersed in the game they begin to lose touch with reality. Like the video gamer that plays the game so much their real life relationships fail. Jesus was not a bad guest, but He could not watch people ruin their lives with fake religion and not confront them.

Why was Jesus so confrontational with the religious elite and so gentle and shepherd-like with the tax collectors and prostitutes? Both were going the wrong way. The common sinners were going the wrong way in their own person. The religious were going the wrong way in the name of God. To paraphrase C. S. Lewis, that is why the self-righteous church goer up may be closer to hell than the porn star but clearly it is better to be neither one of these.

“Save me Lord from ever playing religious games. AMEN”