Nathaniel the Pharisee

166:1.1On Sab­bath, Febru­ary 18, Je­sus was at Ragaba, where there lived a wealthy Phar­isee named Na­than­iel; and since quite a num­ber of his fel­low Phar­isees were fol­low­ing Je­sus and the twelve around the coun­try, he made a break­fast on this Sab­bath morn­ing for all of them, about twenty in num­ber, and in­vited Je­sus as the guest of honor.

166:1.2By the time Je­sus ar­rived at this break­fast, most of the Phar­isees, with two or three lawyers, were al­ready there and seated at the ta­ble. The Mas­ter im­me­di­ately took his seat at the left of Na­than­iel with­out go­ing to the wa­ter basins to wash his hands. Many of the Phar­isees, es­pe­cially those fa­vor­able to Je­sus’ teach­ings, knew that he washed his hands only for pur­poses of clean­li­ness, that he ab­horred these purely cer­e­mo­nial per­for­mances; so they were not sur­prised at his com­ing di­rectly to the ta­ble with­out hav­ing twice washed his hands. But Na­than­iel was shocked by this fail­ure of the Mas­ter to com­ply with the strict re­quire­ments of Phar­i­saic prac­tice. Nei­ther did Je­sus wash his hands, as did the Phar­isees, af­ter each course of food nor at the end of the meal.

166:1.3Af­ter con­sid­er­able whis­per­ing be­tween Na­than­iel and an un­friendly Phar­isee on his right and af­ter much lift­ing of eye­brows and sneer­ing curl­ing of lips by those who sat op­po­site the Mas­ter, Je­sus fi­nally said: “I had thought that you in­vited me to this house to break bread with you and per­chance to in­quire of me con­cern­ing the procla­ma­tion of the new gospel of the king­dom of God; but I per­ceive that you have brought me here to wit­ness an ex­hi­bi­tion of cer­e­mo­nial de­vo­tion to your own self-righ­teous­ness. That ser­vice you have now done me; what next will you honor me with as your guest on this oc­ca­sion?”

166:1.4When the Mas­ter had thus spo­ken, they cast their eyes upon the ta­ble and re­mained silent. And since no one spoke, Je­sus con­tin­ued: “Many of you Phar­isees are here with me as friends, some are even my dis­ci­ples, but the ma­jor­ity of the Phar­isees are per­sis­tent in their re­fusal to see the light and ac­knowl­edge the truth, even when the work of the gospel is brought be­fore them in great power. How care­fully you cleanse the out­side of the cups and the plat­ters while the spir­i­tual-food ves­sels are filthy and pol­luted! You make sure to pre­sent a pi­ous and holy ap­pear­ance to the peo­ple, but your in­ner souls are filled with self-righ­teous­ness, cov­etous­ness, ex­tor­tion, and all man­ner of spir­i­tual wicked­ness. Your lead­ers even dare to plot and plan the mur­der of the Son of Man. Do not you fool­ish men un­der­stand that the God of heaven looks at the in­ner mo­tives of the soul as well as on your outer pre­tenses and your pi­ous pro­fes­sions? Think not that the giv­ing of alms and the pay­ing of tithes will cleanse you from un­righ­teous­ness and en­able you to stand clean in the pres­ence of the Judge of all men. Woe upon you Phar­isees who have per­sisted in re­ject­ing the light of life! You are metic­u­lous in tithing and os­ten­ta­tious in alms­giv­ing, but you know­ingly spurn the vis­i­ta­tion of God and re­ject the rev­e­la­tion of his love. Though it is all right for you to give at­ten­tion to these mi­nor du­ties, you should not have left these weight­ier re­quire­ments un­done. Woe upon all who shun jus­tice, spurn mercy, and re­ject truth! Woe upon all those who de­spise the rev­e­la­tion of the Fa­ther while they seek the chief seats in the syn­a­gogue and crave flat­ter­ing salu­ta­tions in the mar­ket places!”

166:1.5When Je­sus would have risen to de­part, one of the lawyers who was at the ta­ble, ad­dress­ing him, said: “But, Mas­ter, in some of your state­ments you re­proach us also. Is there noth­ing good in the scribes, the Phar­isees, or the lawyers?” And Je­sus, stand­ing, replied to the lawyer: “You, like the Phar­isees, de­light in the first places at the feasts and in wear­ing long robes while you put heavy bur­dens, griev­ous to be borne, on men’s shoul­ders. And when the souls of men stag­ger un­der these heavy bur­dens, you will not so much as lift with one of your fin­gers. Woe upon you who take your great­est de­light in build­ing tombs for the proph­ets your fa­thers killed! And that you con­sent to what your fa­thers did is made man­i­fest when you now plan to kill those who come in this day do­ing what the proph­ets did in their day—pro­claim­ing the righ­teous­ness of God and re­veal­ing the mercy of the heav­enly Fa­ther. But of all the gen­er­a­tions that are past, the blood of the proph­ets and the apos­tles shall be re­quired of this per­verse and self-righ­teous gen­er­a­tion. Woe upon all of you lawyers who have taken away the key of knowl­edge from the com­mon peo­ple! You your­selves refuse to en­ter into the way of truth, and at the same time you would hin­der all oth­ers who seek to en­ter therein. But you can­not thus shut up the doors of the king­dom of heaven; these we have opened to all who have the faith to en­ter, and these por­tals of mercy shall not be closed by the prej­u­dice and ar­ro­gance of false teach­ers and un­true shep­herds who are like whited sepul­chres which, while out­wardly they ap­pear beau­ti­ful, are in­wardly full of dead men’s bones and all man­ner of spir­i­tual un­clean­ness.”

166:1.6And when Je­sus had fin­ished speak­ing at Na­than­iel’s ta­ble, he went out of the house with­out par­tak­ing of food. And of the Phar­isees who heard these words, some be­came be­liev­ers in his teach­ing and en­tered into the king­dom, but the larger num­ber per­sisted in the way of dark­ness, be­com­ing all the more de­ter­mined to lie in wait for him that they might catch some of his words which could be used to bring him to trial and judg­ment be­fore the San­hedrin at Je­ru­sa­lem.

166:1.7There were just three things to which the Phar­isees paid par­tic­u­lar at­ten­tion:

166:1.81. The prac­tice of strict tithing.

166:1.92. Scrupu­lous ob­ser­vance of the laws of pu­rifi­ca­tion.

166:1.103. Avoid­ance of as­so­ci­a­tion with all non-Phar­isees.

166:1.11At this time Je­sus sought to ex­pose the spir­i­tual bar­ren­ness of the first two prac­tices, while he re­served his re­marks de­signed to re­buke the Phar­isees’ re­fusal to en­gage in so­cial in­ter­course with non-Phar­isees for an­other and sub­se­quent oc­ca­sion when he would again be din­ing with many of these same men.