Lenten Journey to Return to Our Calling: Finding a New Story (Week 2)

Reflection by David Lai

Education Team Leader

Growing up, it was hard for me to understand why anyone was a Pharisee. The impression I got from Sunday School was that they were not just legalistic and not very much fun, but also greedy, prideful, and spiteful. Or, as the children’s song I once learned put it:

Don’t wanna be a Pharisee

Don’t wanna be a Pharisee

‘Cause they’re not fair you see

Don’t wanna be a Pharisee

Yet as I’ve gotten older and learned more about church history, I’ve discovered that the spirit of Pharisaism is unfortunately quite alive today. Their struggle, I think, can be explained as their focus on preserving their power and influence in an ever-changing world. Put like that, it’s easy to see how institutions resort to pharisaism when their own internal survival is threatened. For example, Gateway Church, when they initially heard that their senior pastor had abused a young girl earlier in his ministry, sought merely to control the narrative rather than recognize the wrongdoing. I imagine their leadership board felt the moral pull to do right, but also feared what the cost would be to their reputation and to the good things they felt they were doing if they made such stories public. That dilemma, in turn, is the Pharisee’s struggle: focused on preserving power and influence in an ever-changing world.

A similar theme appears in this past week’s devotional readings. Friday’s reading, for example, warned that the national church is “clinging to an old world we could manage wherein we felt safe.” Sensing ever-present change, too many churches seek to cling to past relevance by marketing that faith has moralistic and therapeutic benefits. This approach promotes that Christianity naturally leads to “buoyancy, prosperity, and sureness,” and that church members live better lives. That approach leads to a focus on outward appearances, like in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter: focusing on how outsiders like Hester Prynne are immoral, leading to environments that prevent the Arthur Dimmesdales from confessing their own similar failings. 

Instead, Bruggemann calls us to be willing to give up the struggle of keeping up a happy face. He notes: “mourning and grieving and weeping have to do with relinquishment, about which we’re always reluctant.” Indeed, it’s hard to be a place that allows for weeping and offers the promise of future laughter. But it’s precisely in giving up our pride and risking our influence that we are able to experience Jesus’ hope and joy: to know that our power comes not from ourselves but in the One that we serve. It’s when we give up our desire to rule over others, to exercise authority over them, to judge others’ faults, that we then open up to unexpected sources of wisdom. Even Jesus learns from a Canaanite woman who had the temerity to demand that He include her in His promises. To court the path to danger, to allow God to show up during the night, to recognize God’s sovereignty in the flood: all that is to be willing to give up the partial Old World in faith that following Jesus will lead to much, much better.

Reflection Questions:

• Was there a time that God has called you or someone else to sacrifice power, authority, reputation, or the like? What was the consequence of following through – or choosing not to?

• How can we be more open to hearing stories of grief, of loss, of pain? How have such stories led us toward God’s redemption, toward future joy?

Prayer (from Thursday’s reading): Gathering God, draw us out beyond our cramped circles of care. Draw us toward the neighbor, the other, the outsider, the hurting one. May we practice compassion. Amen.