A deeper look

The last couple of days I've been thinking about the pharisees. On Sunday the pastor at the church I've been going to talked about Mark 3 where there's a story about Jesus going to the temple on the sabbath. At the same time there's a guy there with a shriveled hand and everyone is watching to see if Jesus is going to heal him. Jesus gets angry with them for having hardened hearts and heals the guy anyway. The pastor said that they had hardened hearts because they were arrogant which is something I've always been taught, but this time I wondered if there was more to it.

The last few months I have spent A LOT of time in the Old Testament, a place I don't usually choose to spend a lot of time in. But I've gained a better understanding of man's nature to wander and also of God's jealous nature for his children. Where I'm at right now is after Manasseh (sp?) had just doomed the Isrealites to some serious punishment by breaking the final disloyal, disobedient, idol worshipping straw. And now God is going to allow his children to be disciplined out of love so that everyone will know that He is the Lord, the One in control, worthy to be trusted and worshipped. So everything has been set in place and soon the exhile will begin.

So I guess what I've been wondering about the Pharisees is if they learned their lesson a little too well. Were their hearts hardened because they were afraid to let any little thing slide? As in, "sure - it starts out innocent, like healing on the Sabbath, but where does it end? With Ashtoreh poles in the temple beside the alter? We've already been exhiled a couple times now, we'll just play it safe, if you don't mind." The problem with the Pharisees is that they lacked the relationship with God that would have allowed them to understand the meaning behind all of the rules and regulations they were so bent on enforcing. But is that even their fault that they were terrified of the slippery slope? How could they have known about the relational side of God until the curtain was torn in the temple that symbolized the end of separation between man and the Father? Their religion was dead and they didn't even know it. But is that something to scorn? Was it their fault that they had missed a big piece of the picture? Weren't they just doing what they'd been taught? I'm not saying that they weren't arrogant, because it is certainly clear in other places that they were, I'm just wondering if there's more to the story.

I think that the saddest part of the Mark 3 story is that even when Jesus Emmanuel, God WITH us, the very One who brings an end to the separation, tries to show them that there's more to it than they know, they reject it and begin to plot his death. For us, I think that it's so easy to get caught up in traditions and potlucks and miss the true heart of God. Let's face it, we're just one or two prideful steps away from being just like them. My prayer though is that when Jesus asks me to take a deeper look, that I won't be afraid.