Grant us, O Lord our Strength, to have a True Love of your Holy Name; so that, trusting in your grace, we may fear no earthly evil, nor fix our hearts on earthly goods, but may rejoice in your full salvation; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Separating the Leaven (16:1-12)
This is not a good day for Jesus. It starts with the Pharisees and the Sadducees coming to test him, and ends with the disciples showing a block-headedness that is unusual for Matthew, but common enough in the Gospels.
The Pharisees and the Sadducees approaching Jesus together is unlikely, as many commentators have stated. But it is important to the story so that Jesus may make a break with the entirety of the religious leadership. They come to him and demand a sign, some sort of miraculous event that will prove that Jesus is who he says he is. Jesus responds by quoting what are a couple of common sayings about the weather. Eugene Peterson paraphrases it in The Message: "You have a saying that goes, 'Red sky at night, sailor delight; red sky at morning, sailors take warning. You find it easy enough to forecast the weather‚' why can‚ you read the signs of the times?" If they can see the sign in what he has already done, they will receive no sign except the "Sign of Jonah." Jonah spent three days and nights in the belly of a great fish and then was vomited on the shore. Jesus will spend three days and nights before rising from the dead. His resurrection will be a final sign for them. At the end of the paragraph, Jesus abandons or leaves them behind as opposed to the other encounters in the Gospel where he withdraws. It is his final word to them before his final confrontation in Judea. (19:3; 22:23)
No doubt still grumbling from that encounter, Jesus then reunites with the disciples. "Beware the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees." Leaven, or yeast, has many different connotations in the Bible. In this case, it is clearly negative, meaning that a small amount of their teaching can worm its way into the Gospel, thereby corrupting it. The disciples are confused, and think he's angry at them for not bringing bread. Jesus, after probably sighing deeply, reminds them about his miraculous feedings and that he's not talking about bread at all. In contrast to the Gospel of Mark, they finally seem to get what Jesus is talking about.
So what is it about the leaven of the Sadducees and Pharisees that Jesus finds so objectionable? The teachings of the two sects of Judaism are very different. What is the common thread Jesus is concerned about? It is that both sects are concerned with maintenance of "Checklists" in order to be in right relation with God. The Sadducees were obsessed with the minutiae of the worship of the temple. The Pharisees were preoccupied with maintaining moral and ritual purity. Members of both parties strove to make sure they got all their respective "t's" crossed and their "i's" dotted, and felt themselves righteous because of their hard work.
In opposition to that, Jesus often violated purity, ritual and sabbath commandments not because they were bad in themselves, but to demonstrate that they had become an object of idolatry for the religious elite. Jesus taught that the way to reconciliation with God was not through tidy wrote obedience, but through messy relationship. Jesus was concerned about the spirit and intent of the law rather than the letter. When the disciples are unable to free themselves of a literal interpretation of the leaven metaphor, they are in danger of sliding back into the kind of wrote observance that the religious elite were guilty of, and for which Jesus had just broken off communication.
When reading this passage in Lent, it is a good time to ask ourselves if we have allowed the leaven that Jesus was so concerned about to creep into our lives of faith. This leaven was certainly not confined to just the Pharisees and Sadducees. Why do we practice Lenten disciplines? Why do we go to church? Why are we participating in this Bible Study? Is it in order to fulfill another checklist in our Franklin-Covey planner under the master goal of "Be a more religious person?" Or is it to have an encounter with the living God and open ourselves up to the transformative power of the water of life? My guess is, we all have at least some of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees within us. Perhaps this is a good opportunity to separate that portion of the dough out.
The Rev. David Simmons
Rector
St. Matthias, Waukesha
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