Clean your cup - Aug 25
“Blind Pharisee, cleanse first the inside of the cup,
so that the outside also may be clean.”
They say to never meet your heroes. They will never come close you’re your idolized version of the and sometimes that beautiful and put-together exterior is betrayed by a mean and self-indulgent interior.
By all accounts, the Pharisees of Jesus time were a pretty well put together with their tassles and phylacteries, but Jesus calls the Pharisees blind (which today we might consider and ableist insult). This day’s lectionary gospel reading is reminiscent of Jesus earlier in Matthew also about vision, “Why do you see the splinter in your brother’s eye, but don’t notice the log in your own eye?” (Matt.7:3)
These Pharisees in chapter 23 continue to have a log in their eye. They’ve been attentive to the tiny things – tithing mint, dill, cumin – but they can’t see the weightier things of the law. They can’t see the filth in their own cups.
As I often do, I find these text much more powerful if I see myself in the bad guy role. (I recognize this is a perspective this is more appropriate from someone coming from a place of power.) For me, self-righteously accusing others of being blind Pharisees only demonstrates the fact that my cup needs cleaning. Jesus’ instructions to the Pharisees, and to me is to get to work cleaning the inside of my cup.
Earlier in this text, Jesus admonishes the Pharisees for neglecting the weightier things of the law: “judgment and mercy and fidelity.” He goes on “But these you should have done, without neglecting the others.” Jesus reminds us of the weightier matters of working for justice and mercy, but not at the expense of little acts of personal piety. Piety without justice is hollow, but so is justice without the deep inner grounding borne of piety. Our cup is not clean without attending to both.