Sermon Notes

11 37-41 When he finished that talk, a Pharisee asked him to dinner. He entered his house and sat right down at the table. The Pharisee was shocked and somewhat offended when he saw that Jesus didn’t wash up before the meal. But the Master said to him, “I know you Pharisees buff the surface of your cups and plates so they sparkle in the sun, but I also know your insides are maggoty with greed and secret evil. Stupid Pharisees! Didn’t the One who made the outside also make the inside? Turn both your pockets and your hearts inside out and give generously to the poor; then your lives will be clean, not just your dishes and your hands. 42“I’ve had it with you! You’re hopeless, you Pharisees! Frauds! You keep meticulous account books, tithing on every nickel and dime you get, but manage to find loopholes for getting around basic matters of justice and God’s love. Careful bookkeeping is commendable, but the basics are required. 43-44“You’re hopeless, you Pharisees! Frauds! You love sitting at the head table at church dinners, love preening yourselves in the radiance of public flattery. Frauds! You’re just like unmarked graves: People walk over that nice, grassy surface, never suspecting the rot and corruption that is six feet under.”

The Gospel of Luke is the first part of a two-volume work, Luke-Acts. As such, it narrates how the gospel of Jesus was first received by Jews, later embraced by Gentile believers, and how new Christians contended with Jewish authorities and the Roman Empire as “The Way of Jesus” blossomed into the early Church that the Book of Acts explores. Because Luke writes to Gentiles, he is overwhelmingly concerned with portraying Jesus as the savior for all people. Luke’s Jesus goes beyond race and ethnicity, sex and gender, rich and poor. In fact, because Luke’s Jesus understands that his ministry is directed to the most vulnerable persons within first Century Palestine (Luke 4:18-19), he regularly challenged the rich, politically well-connected, and religious leaders to rethink their standing with God.
For Luke, the outsiders—the poor, the oppressed, the sick and infirmed, women, and those who were considered to be “the other”—move from the periphery to the center in God’s community. Naturally, as “the other” becomes prioritized in God’s family, others lose their status or prominence in a radically egalitarian Divine society.
In God’s commonwealth—as one biblical scholar calls God’s kingdom/kindom —the Pharisees stood the chance of losing their prioritized place because they cared more about rules and rituals instead of right relationships with their neighbors. The Pharisees kept the parts of the Law that elevated their own importance while ignoring the portions that uncovered their lack of love for the marginalized or service to others. In a word, they were hypocrites. The Pharisees failed to understand that the principle that undergirds God’s law is love. They forgot to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might,“ (Deuteronomy 6:5) and “you shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18). Therefore, Jesus calls them out for their hypocrisy; explaining how their law falls short, but God’s love is complete!

Luke’s Gospel is arranged in three major sections: the birth of Jesus and his initial preparation for ministry (1:5–4:13); Jesus’ preaching about the inauguration and confirmation of God’s radically inclusive community (4:14–21:28); and Jesus’ passion and resurrection (23:1–24:53). This week’s lesson comes from the second section. This section of Luke moves from the inauguration of Jesus’ initial ministry in Nazareth to his final days in Jerusalem. A primary feature of these chapters is Jesus’ ongoing interactions with the Pharisees—a group of religious leaders who were the biblical fundamentalists of their day.
As a sect, the Pharisees developed around the 2nd century BCE and their name derives from a term which means “to separate.” Thus, they separated themselves from political regimes and other groups within Palestine. Theologically speaking, they recognized that Israel’s condition was the result of sin, specifically a disobedience to the Law. It was their intention to identify, communicate, and facilitate obedience to God’s law, thus producing holiness and paving the way for the kingdom of God to be established on the earth.
At face value, their presuppositions were essentially correct. However, the Pharisees became bogged down in the minutia of dwelling on the letter of the law, to the neglect of the justice-oriented spirit of the law. Further, they completely ignored the preaching of the prophets who centered social justice as a Divine mandate for a full understanding of the law. The Pharisees primary theological error is that they elevated their man-made traditions over Divine revelation. In those matters where the traditions of the Pharisees contradicted the received Law and Hebrew Scriptures, their traditions prevailed.
Because of this, Jesus had several areas of conflict with Pharisees—their self-righteousness, their misinterpretation and mishandling of ancient Hebrew Scriptures, their traditions, to which they gave higher priority than God’s revealed Word, and above all their hypocrisy. In Luke 11, Jesus calls the Pharisees out for their hypocrisy with regards to ritualistic cleaning rituals. According to Jesus, the Pharisees are concerned about looking like they are ritualistically clean, but not actually achieving what the ritual represented—having cleans hands and a clean heart.

37-38 When he finished that talk, a Pharisee asked him to dinner. He entered his house and sat right down at the table. The Pharisee was shocked and somewhat offended when he saw that Jesus didn’t wash up before the meal.
In the first verses of this text, we get an indication that Jesus’ previous teaching (Luke 11:1-36) has motivated this Pharisee to want to spend more time with Jesus. Based upon what Jesus said—he rebuked those who alleged that he used satanic power to exorcise a demon from a man—the Pharisee asks Jesus to share a meal with him. The text does not suggest the Pharisee has evil intentions. However, there is a measure of curiosity.
The man’s curiosity quickly escalates to shock and indignation as Jesus does not participate in the ceremonial washing that was a part of the Pharisaic tradition. According to Mark 7:1-4—which Luke uses as a source for his Gospel—the Pharisees would not eat unless they give their hands a ceremonial washing, holding to the tradition of the elders. With regards to ritual cleanness, the Pharisees observed haburot—strict rules outlining how they should cleanse themselves and whom they could take meals (Mark 7:3-4). Jesus outrages his Pharisaic host by not washing after interacting with crowds while teaching and exorcising a demon from a man.
It seems that Jesus’ opting to not wash is purposeful, deliberate, and perhaps a new phase in His ministry. It is likely that Jesus may have participated in this practice early in His ministry as a means of “getting along.” Clearly, there was nothing wrong with doing so, but now, His refusal to participate was a “statement” that He would no longer uphold the needless traditions of the Pharisees. These traditions had become more important to them than the written Word of God. Thus, Jesus deliberately refrains from washing here to demonstrate the difference between Him, His teaching, and His practice, and that of the Pharisees. Further, his lack of washing highlights how his interpretation of God’s law negates their man-made traditions which seek to divide people instead of unifying them.
39-41But the Master said to him, “I know you Pharisees buff the surface of your cups and plates so they sparkle in the sun, but I also know your insides are maggoty with greed and secret evil. Stupid Pharisees! Didn’t the One who made the outside also make the inside? Turn both your pockets and your hearts inside out and give generously to the poor; then your lives will be clean, not just your dishes and your hands.
After observing this Pharisee’s response to his lack of washing, Jesus confronts the man, debating his actions, motives, and ultimately, his theology. This is the third time in Luke’s Gospel where Jesus debates with Pharisees over a meal or eats in the home of a Pharisee (5:29-32, at Levi's house; 7:36-50, with Simon, the Pharisee; 11:37-54, with a Pharisee; 14:1-24, with a leader of the Pharisees). He contrasts between body zones—the outer man, which is secondary, and the inner man, which is primary. Jesus sees the heart as being more important than appearance. He sees attitudes and motives as more important than actions. The Pharisees believed that we are made holy by working from the outside, in. However, Jesus believed that holiness (and defilement) worked its way from the inside, out.
While the Law addressed external matters, its ultimate purpose was to condition Israel’s heart towards loving like God. Jesus could therefore summarize the whole Law in terms of love—love for God and love for one’s neighbor. He taught that obedience to the Law must be a matter of spirit, and not just of letter. The Pharisees did not see it this way. Jesus told the Pharisee that the way to “clean up” was to empty the contents of the dish—what was inside—and thus all things would be clean. One cannot clean the inside of a dish if the dish is full. One of the evils of the Pharisees was greed; thus, Jesus proposed generosity as its antidote.
42 “I’ve had it with you! You’re hopeless, you Pharisees! Frauds! You keep meticulous account books, tithing on every nickel and dime you get, but manage to find loopholes for getting around basic matters of justice and God’s love. Careful bookkeeping is commendable, but the basics are required. 43-44 “You’re hopeless, you Pharisees! Frauds! You love sitting at the head table at Church dinners, love preening yourselves in the radiance of public flattery. Frauds! You’re just like unmarked graves: People walk over that nice, grassy surface, never suspecting the rot and corruption that is six feet under.”
Before the host could respond to His words, Jesus follows up with three stinging indictments—called controversy statements that are indicated by “Woe” language—against the Pharisees. (The Message uses the word Frauds to indicate The Woes.)
1. The Pharisees’ focus on fine points, but missing fundamentals. Jesus did not criticize the keeping of the Law in its small points, but He did say that the major thrust of the Law—justice and the love of God—must be fulfilled. While both are important, one is secondary; the other, primary.
2. The Pharisees’ preoccupation with position, prestige, and the praise of people. According to Jesus, the Pharisees were “full of greed and wickedness.” Motivated by pleasing people rather than God, the Pharisees could not speak the truth, nor interpret the Scriptures accurately, for then they would have been hated and rejected, just as the prophets, who did interpret the Scriptures accurately and spoke truthfully.
3. The Pharisees were a source of defilement, rather than of purification. In the Law that the Pharisees revered (Numbers 19:16), the Israelites were taught that a person was rendered ceremonially unclean by coming into contact with a grave. The Pharisees considered themselves holy, and thought they were leading Israel holiness. However, Jesus says the exact opposite was the case. He indicates they are covertly unclean, like unmarked graves—they are frauds who may be clean on the outside, but they are not clean inside. Further, those who came into contact with the Pharisees were rendered unclean, like people who become ritually unclean by walking over unmarked graves.
The Pharisees prided themselves on being and doing the ritually “clean” thing, but in fact they are spiritually unclean.

The three “woes” in Luke 11:37- 44 function two ways. First, they explain the numerous conflicts that Jesus had with the religious authorities of his time. Second, they serve to warn Christian readers against falling into similar situations of hypocrisy and false piety that obscure how impurity comes from within. Often, the people who act like they are “holier than thou,” do so to cover up their own sin. Contemporary Christians must discern how this text—and its “woes”—are relevant for the 21st century Church. Also, we should critically read this to ensure that our interpretation of the text does not function to does not reduce condemn contemporary Judaism or current Jewish religious leaders. Ultimately, Luke includes “the woes” in this Gospel because they are the teachings of Jesus to his disciples in 1st Century Palestine and to contemporary disciples as well. These controversy sayings provide an opportunity for Contemporary Christians to uncover how our personal piety/holiness obscures the kind of attitudes and practices that Jesus condemns in Luke 11.

i Robert L. Brawley, “Luke” in Gale A. Yee’s Fortress Commentary on the Bible. Fortress Press. Kindle Edition.
ii “The Gospel of Luke: Introduction, Commentary and Reflections” in The New Interpreters Bible, Volume IX. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995.