A reading of the holy gospel according to Luke. One Sabbath, when Jesus went to dine at the house of a ruler, Now notice this. You know, as long as I've been reading these gospels, I I never noticed this. I'm going to begin that sentence again. One Sabbath when Jesus went to dine at the house of a ruler who belonged to the Pharisees, they were watching him.
And behold, there was a man before him who had dropsy. And Jesus spoke, to the lawyers and the pharisees saying, is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath or not? But they were silent. Then Jesus took the man and healed him and let him go. And then Jesus said to them, the pharisees, I suppose, which of you having an ass or an ox that has fallen into a well will not immediately pull him out on the Sabbath day?
And they could not reply to this. And this is the gospel of the lord. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen. Maybe you wondered why I emphasized that first sentence, but notice that Jesus went to dine with a ruler who was a pharisee. So this is just another little item, which may not be so little, to give us a warning light about how we think of the pharisee or pharisees and how prone we are to generalize about them because and we certainly have good reason for leaning in this direction without a doubt.
Our blessed lord on almost all occasions had very little good to say about pharisees, and yet here today he's dining with one of them. He's the our lord is is the guest. And and, apparently, there were other pharisees around. And, notice that he doesn't wait for them to challenge him. He challenges them.
He doesn't wait for someone to say, look. You cannot cure that man on the Sabbath because that is work and that's against the law, as happened as you, I'm sure, recall on other occasions. No. Today, our blessed lord takes the initiative. So it's it's not, I think, farfetched to assume that here today, our blessed lord is not only the guest of a pharisee, but that the other guests were largely pharisees too.
And so this this concept that we have of the pharisee and of our lord's relationship with him and the his very severe well, you can't exaggerate it. A language about the pharisees. All of this needs to be carefully considered. Now, of course, today, I'm sure most some of you are aware of it, this is a touchy point with many Jews, the way Christians have treated the concept of the Pharisee. And there's some they have a lot going for them on on this point.
We have been all too prone, and this is so typical of prejudice, if you don't mind my bringing this in. This is the essence of prejudice, you see, that from a few instances, well there may be many instances, there may be a lot of instances. In other words, we may be factually correct to a certain extent in a given judgment we make about certain people, but prejudice gets into the picture when we go beyond the individual specific fact or facts or experiences and then generalize with a huge sweeping statement. We go to an experience that I have was unpleasant, another experience that I that was unpleasant, I put together an experience of mister Jones that was unpleasant. And then I put on the basis of this enumeration, which is a little short of being complete, even Roger Bacon would admit that, or Francis Bacon, I should say, why we then bring in a whole sweeping statement which has to do with a race of people or religious sect or what have you.
Now that's this is what's happened to us about the pharisees. Pharisees. You know, I'm not it's it's it's a very complex picture. Saint Paul was a pharisee, remember. There were we have plenty of evidence in the New Testament.
There were some good honest to God pharisees. And the Pharisees by in general were certainly law abiding. Take the Pharisee who came into the temple to pray and tells God how good he is. He was. He goes point by point by point.
As I say, I wish to god I was as good as that. And yet and yet, Christ met all kinds of sinners, even those who put him on the cross. Not in one single instance does Christ have a harsh word for a sinner. Not once. Not even for Judas.
He doesn't use any language which is as severe as he uses for Pharisees. And he Christ generalizes. He says, woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites. So our blessed lord himself generalized. But you see, the fact that he did that has to be taken in its context and there's there's there are elements here that we don't get a hold of because, obviously, obviously, if if our lord's whole attitude was as bitter, as closed minded as it seems to be to us as we read these texts, why would a pharisee have invited him to the his house?
Why would other Pharisees have been his followers? Why would the Pharisees have bothered with him at all? I know that some of them bothered with him to get it to get him, to put him away, and finally, to have him murdered. I know that and so do you. But the you see, that doesn't solve the problem at all.
And so when we look at our lord's life, it's a very complex thing, extremely complex. But you see, we have this strong tendency to simplify. We are so prone to say something is nothing but this, nothing but that. This was Freud's great invention. It was his great solution to all the problems.
And he dominated, whereas Carl Jung, who thought the situation was much more complex, apparently, as far as I know, achieved the notoriety and the universal, if you want to use that word, acceptance that Freud got. But this is a hazardous inclination. It can lead us astray because when things appear most simple, when they appear so clear that you say it can't be otherwise, hold it, Hold it. That's the time to say, wait, let me look at this a little better. You know, it's a good carpenter who measures twice and saws once.
See, I saw I I measure once and then I wind up a sawing several times and replacing the wood several times. But that's an you see, that's an ignoramus. A good carpenter doesn't do it. And so when things seem to be simple, take your time. When things to see things seem to be so clear that there can't be anything said against it, hold it.
That's the time to wait a bit. Because in in human relations, in dealing with with facts associated with human beings, things are not simple. This is so clearly and impressively brought out by Cardinal Newman's sermons and especially in his Apologia Provida Sue, where he's where he's a man of controversy and where he's weighing words actions and then interpreting actions in conjunction with time and environment and development and so on, then you will see how unsimple what appears to be simple often is. You see, we do not like to suspend judgment. I don't know why, but we don't.
We like to just to to move in helter skelter and say, I've been fooling with this long enough. I've got to make a decision. This is the way it's going to be. And generally, we hammer the table which shows how intellectual we are. There's something in human nature that does not like to abide doubt.
It's an uncomfortable situation to be in. And yet in many instances, that is the sign of a mature person, that he waits, he weighs, and he withholds judgment. He has the power of saying, look, it may be this way, but on the other hand, it may be that. Now this is this kind of a person, it doesn't make the most comfortable traveling companion, believe me. But on the other hand, it is being an adult.
It is being an adult. It's act it's having the ability to say things are not always what they seem even when they seem to be so clear, so apodetic, so self evident. And how true all of this is when you come to interpreting human conduct. After all, Christ said, judge not and you won't be judged. That's what he's talking about, to withhold judgment.
And so today, again, I I'm not exactly a champion of the pharisees, remember. I may have feared that, but I'm really not. I'm a champion of truth. Try to be anyway. Now that means that it's not an easy task.
Believe me, it is not. It's so much easier not to bother with it, but to take a practical point of view. You will hear there are so many people's and that of course is The USA following old Willie James and this whole pragmatic movement, which goes back to the utilitarians of Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. But The United States, we are people who are activists. We wanna settle things, get rid of all this academic debate and controversy and all that.
Take a knife and cut the pie and forget whether the pieces are all the same. See, we are, you know, we're just four square solids standing on good Texas soil, all that kind of stuff. But that's not the way you can pursue truth at all. Truth's a very delicate thing And when you get words into the picture, you're dealing with with with with something so frightfully important, so immensely valuable, and yet so tremendously dangerous. This is what we're dealing with all the time.
And so while this may not have very much to do with the the this excerpt from Saint Luke this morning, I do want to just call your attention to this fact that today our blessed Lord, who had scarcely every time a good word to say for the pharisees, here today he is a guest of a pharisee. Keep it in mind, he associated with sinners. In the name of the father, the son, and the holy spirit. Amen.