Yeshua says: The Pharisees and the scribes have taken the keys of knowledge
and hidden them away.
They did not go in themselves,
nor did they allow to enter those who wish to.
You, however, be as shrewd as serpents
and simple as doves!
(Matthew 23:13; Matthew 10:16)
Religion can be a problem. It was a problem for Jesus; his most consistent conflicts arose among those who held positions of power and authority in the religious hierarchy of his day.
As a “religious official” myself, I need to hear Saying 39 carefully and ponder it deeply.
I need to ask myself if I am hiding the heart of faith away from those whose faith I am intended to nurture and encourage.
Whenever I use my religious position for my own benefit, I inevitably put obstacles in the way of those who wish to “enter” the realm of faith.
When my position in the religious establishment becomes for me a way to promote my own sense of personal identity, I become a stumbling block for those who seek the light of love that is the presence of Christ that true faith always seeks to serve. I close the kingdom to all true seekers, whenever I cling to the perks, privileges, prestige, and sense of entitlement that can derive from my position, instead of laying aside any power that my position may bestow.
As Yeshua points out, I fall prey to these pitfalls of religious leadership whenever I “do not go in” myself. When I do not enter the realm of love and occupy in my own life the terrain of faith, I will default to using my religious position to accomplish whatever I do not find in my inner being due to my misuse of my position.
This is why Yeshua warns his audience to “be as shrewd as serpents and simple as doves!” Religious consumers need to be cautious about the leadership to which they commit themselves. We all need to seek to be “simple”, that is single-focused, not divided in our motives pretending to seek the good, the true, and the beautiful, while actually serving our own interests and ego needs.
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Today I will seek to “enter in” to an awareness of the presence of love that brings together the fragments of my life in a unity that is “simple” focused on opening to the truth and beauty I seek to find in my own life and to nurture in others.
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March 1, 2018 at 8:18 am
Michael
Beautiful post. May all your colleagues embody honesty in this way. Indeed Yeshua invites us all to “go in” as ourselves (without hierarchy). Perhaps we need only to ask what is required to be received.
March 4, 2018 at 11:21 pm
bobmacdonald
Religion is certainly a problem. (Nice phrase, ‘religious consumers’) I am reminded of the message of Qohelet (Ecclesiastes) 4:17
Keep your footing as you are walking to the house of God, and more ready to hear than to give an offering among the dullards,for they haven’t a clue that what they do is evil. (My translation in the spirit of Dr Seuss).
More seriously, How can anyone ‘nurture or encourage another’s faith’? Such a beginning, such a struggle is faith. These are private things, unavailable except in the closest of relationships and scarcely so then. I am encouraged sometimes, but I doubt that the one who encourages me is aware of this impact of his or her words. Nurture and growth – these come from the watering, but they are mystery. God gives the growth.
I think I need a good face to face discussion group. I have not seen such for a long time. I am nearly finished translating the Old Testament – just over 200 chapters left. Then maybe I will be ready to read the NT again.
What I can see now is how immensely full of decisions the process of translation is. (And some of the decisions made are not necessarily congruent with the text. Translators have axes to grind.)
What I cannot see or articulate is what I should say, if anything, about the text. What can be applied? What do we do? This only happens when one has a particular conversation with live people in the process of discovery.
March 5, 2018 at 5:12 am
Christopher Page
“How can anyone ‘nurture or encourage another’s faith’?” only by the life you live, the presence you bring, and the authenticity of your struggle, never by setting out to “encourage another’s faith.”