Chrysalis

We understand that the Lenten Season is more than simple fasting and releasing. At a much deeper level, Lent is about cleansing mind, body and spirit. We would not dream of putting a beautiful Easter outfit on a filthy body. Neither should we even consider the idea of trying to fill mind and body with the essence of His teachings before flushing out the negative constructs of the past. Unity's Spiritual Preparation for Easter 2009 for today is, in part:

You are filled with wisdom, the wisdom of the ages.
Let your mind be filled with faith and understanding
and your heart with peace and compassion.

Turn within to Me, and you will see your way clearly.
Walk in the light of My love. Live in the way I created
you to live--in peace and harmony with others

Open your heart to Me, My Beloved,
and you will be guided to make wise decisions and
good choices that bless others as well as yourself.

Let's take a moment to fill in a bit of background on the relationship between Jesus, the scribes and the Pharisees. While His message to His followers is of love, repentance and forgiveness, He seems terribly critical and unforgiving of the religious leaders of Israel. Understanding why "Woe to you Pharisees!" or "Woe unto you!" seems to be His standard greeting to them will help us place His ministry in a larger context.

The Pharisees set themselves apart not only from the Romans and Gentiles, but from other Jews whom they considered unclean, thereby creating a kind of caste system. The Pharisees and scribes believed that if they observed all of the laws of Moses and the oral traditions that God would protect them. There was even a belief that if every Jew observed all the laws and all the traditions on one day that the Jewish Kingdom would be restored! The scribes, also called rabbis, were those responsible for teaching and interpreting the laws and rendering judgments to the people.

The scribes and Pharisees saw Him sitting down to dinner with tax collectors and sinners or coming to their table without ritual washing before the meal and could not accept even the possibility that this man could be the Messiah, the Son of God. He allowed His disciples to gather food on the Sabbath and He healed on the Sabbath! The Messiah they expected would never break the laws of Moses, but would bring all peoples to the God of Israel and the trappings of Judaism.

What Jesus criticized in these leaders was the rigid mindset and self-righteous 'look at me and see how holy I am' stance which put them apart from and above those whom they ought to teach and lead. And He was also warning each of us to be wary of that same condition within ourselves, for none of us is immune to such thinking. If we pray to be seen by others, if we claim the best seat in the sanctuary to be seen by others, then we have forgotten the true purpose of prayer and worship. He challenged the Pharisees and scribes to come up higher and find a new relationship with God.

Jesus came to fulfill the Law, to cast aside the barriers to understanding and connection to God which the Pharisees and scribes had erected with their laws and traditions. He came to open a way for all people to praise, to love and to worship God. Last week, in the story of the Prodigal Son, we saw the Elder Son rigid in his adherence to the letter of the law, while his brother , who went into the world, awakened to a deeper understanding of and a new relationship with his Father. When we cast aside what we 'know' and seek a deeper understanding of God and the teachings of Jesus, we open ourselves to personal transformation and a life richly blessed by the love of the Father.

Now, let's take a look at The Lamp of the Body as an example of what Jesus wanted them to understand.

No one, when he has lit a lamp, puts it in a secret
place or under a basket, but on a lampstand,
that those who come in may see the light.

The lamp of the body is the eye.
Therefore, when your eye is good, your
whole body also is full of light.
Luke 11:33-34

The first verse above can be likened to the way in which the Pharisees did precisely the opposite in focusing on their own personal holiness rather than teaching and opening up the wisdom and laws of God to the people. Because we want more than just external illumination, we seek to open ourselves to the light of God, to see as God would have us see. And when we do, we often say, "Oh, I see now!" referring not to external vision but to understanding. If we are filled with light, there is no inner darkness, no doubt, because we have come to know God.

A certain Pharisee invited Jesus to dinner, setting up the next lesson when Jesus failed to perform the ritual cleansing required before eating.

Now you Pharisees make the outside of the cup
and dish clean, but your inward part is full of greed
and wickedness. Foolish ones! Did not He who made
the outside make the inside also?

But woe to you Pharisees! For you tithe mint and rue
and all manner of herbs, and pass by justice and the
love of God.
Luke 11:39-40,42

Jesus accuses them of performing the outer ritual, the letter of the law and tradition, while ignoring the very task to which they have been called. They have failed to seek inner purity and the love of God and see nothing wrong with that! This is what Jesus illuminates for all of us through the use of this example with the Pharisees. We must not perform for the praise of others, but truly seek to know God. to love God and to live God-conscious lives.

The final section today deals with the scribes, the lawyers, whom He also accuses.

Woe to you also, lawyers!
For you load men with burdens hard to bear,
and you yourselves do not touch the burdens
with one of your fingers.

Woe to you lawyers!

For you have taken away the key of knowledge.
You did not enter in yourselves,
and those who were entering in you hindered.
Luke 11:46,52

What worse condemnation could be made against those who were called to be teachers? The burden of so many laws and traditions and the guilt for failing to fulfill the full law denied the people any hope for the love of God, the kingdom of God. And because the scribes and Pharisees never sought to understand the spirit of the law, they denied access to those who wanted to know and to understand.

Jesus came into the world as the light of the world, to fulfill the law and bring all people to the love of God and the knowledge that each one of us is a child of God, heirs and joint heirs with Jesus Christ. Eric Butterworth explained it this way in his book, Discover the Power Within You.

The Christ in you is you
at the point of God... you must make the
decision to act as though you are a spiritual being.

I'm sure that all of us are familiar with the idea of the transformation from caterpillar to butterfly. One caterpillar says to another,

"Look up there at that butterfly.
You'd never get me up in one of those things!"

And he's right! As long as we are stuck in the mindset of the caterpillar, we can't see ourselves as anything more than we appear to be. As Butterworth writes:

It is self-evident that the caterpillar and the butterfly
live in entirely different worlds...yet we know that they
are simply different levels of expression of one entity.

Jesus wanted us to grow into the fullness of being, which would allow us a deeper understanding of God and the wisdom to express our true selves. Imagine the joy of awakening to your true self, unfurling the shimmering wings of light and experiencing the Kingdom of God!

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