Daily Reflection Tuesday of the Sixth Week in Ordinary Time

Today’s gospel passage from Mark 8 follows directly on the feeding of the four thousand at its start and then the Pharisees (after leaving the boat that brought them to a place called Dalmanutha- which remains unknown today), demanding a “sign” from Jesus that caused him to sigh deeply within his spirit (since it occurs immediately after the great sign of the miracle of the loaves). Now in the boat with his disciples (or rather, the Apostles and perhaps a few others), the disciples regret not bringing some of the multiplied loaves with them, for they are hungry again. This prompts Jesus to proclaim one of his more enigmatic statements, “Beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and the yeast of Herod.”
 
There have been myriad attempts to explain what Jesus meant here. It appears, at first glance, to be a rebuke to the disciples, and undoubtedly they took it as such. But Jesus is more likely simply trying to help them (albeit firmly) to become aware. Again, we must be careful not to assign to Jesus emotions and reactions that are really just our own. Why would Jesus, the Word made flesh, who was one with the Father, ever get frustrated or worse, exacerbated, impatient or even angry with people? Those emotions come from a lack of acceptance as well as a lack of humility and patience, not to mention compassion and understanding. Who more than Jesus was full of these things? That comes from a desire to see Jesus as somehow just like us in all our sinful, limited ways; to make him more relatable by making him less. But he was not just another poor human like all the rest of us, so often playthings of our emotions and lacking in awareness. If he were, then how could he possibly save us all?
 
For Jesus was well aware of the nature of the Pharisees (as well as of Herod, who, previously in chapter six, had John the Baptist, who he liked to listen to and recognized as a holy man, beheaded in an instant, even though he deeply regretted it, rather than suffer the least humiliation or loss of power before his courtiers). Jesus would call the Pharisees blind guides and whitewashed tombs who laid heavy burdens on people without lifting a finger to help them and who strained out the gnat and swallowed the camel.
 
Some say this “leaven” or yeast Jesus refers to is hypocrisy or a certain stubborn faithlessness, and that is true. But I prefer to understand it more as a trust in things that are not really of God but can often appear to be. Things like ways of doing things that we have always done that way or believing things we have always believed without any real examination. One of the biggest hypocrisies of the Pharisees was their piety. They liked to appear “holy” but it was all just appearance, on the outside (thus the whitewashed tombs that looked nice outwardly but within were filled with dead bones and filth). It was all for show. The more elaborate and ostentatious the piety, the better for them.
 
Another was their enslavement to rules and regulations and doing things that were simply accepted as true but actually were used to judge and condemn those who failed to keep these rules. And finally, they were stuck, as in cement, in their tradition and traditional understandings that could not be challenged by any new or different understanding or revelation from above. But perhaps their greatest blindness was that they saw themselves as righteous and everyone else as not.
 
Make no mistake about it, such assumptions and unquestioned behaviors can infect all religion and just a little of it (like yeast) goes a long way. As Jesus also told the Pharisees, “Go and learn the meaning of the words, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.” And the Apostle James tells us in 4:8, “Draw near to God, and God will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.” If our religion ever causes us to judge others, to look down on anyone in any way, to take offense or accuse them of being unacceptable or unlovable or unwanted for any reason, or to imagine in any way that we are somehow different or more enlightened or more loved, then the yeast of the Pharisees has infected our hearts, for we have somehow come to the erroneous conclusion that we, in ourselves, are righteous. As John’s gospel tells us in 3:17, “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” Woe to us, who seek that salvation, if we end up but bringing that very condemnation itself instead.