Don't be the devil's goaltender

 This week's verse is Matthew 23:13:

“But woe to you, experts in the law and you Pharisees, hypocrites! You keep locking people out of the kingdom of heaven! For you neither enter nor permit those trying to enter to go in.

As we remember from other Bible studies, the Pharisees were the religious superstars of their day. They were the well-respected pillars of the community, the guys who win all of the Bible challenges, the tops of the worship album charts, the heads of charities, you name it. If there was a way to be seen as a good person, or to feel like one, the Pharisees were on it.

But do these things really make you a good person? What good is being a good singer if that's all you do? What good is giving money to charity if you just do it to get a break on your taxes? What good is memorizing Bible verses, or reading Bible studies, if you don't put them into practice?

But even if you got all of those things right, like you sing and dance and preach the gospel and give to charity and memorize the Bible and help old ladies across the street, what then? Are you ever good enough not to need Jesus? When he was crucified, did he say he did it for everyone except for you, because you would have made it on your own anyway?

The Pharisees acted good because they wanted to be good. They wanted to be seen as good people. They wanted to feel like they were good people. Even though they did a lot of good stuff, they didn't understand the Kingdom of God. In the Kingdom of God, the place where God is king and rules like one, the place where we yield to his model for our lives, where we allow ourselves to see the world with the same compassion he had, grace is what makes us good people, not the scoreboard we keep for ourselves or hope others are keeping.

The Pharisees kept their own scoreboard and that scoreboard always put them on top. When people wanted to honor God, they looked to the Pharisees. But instead of pointing them to God's scoreboard of grace, they pointed them to their own. So instead of entering into God's kingdom and showing others the way, they all congregated outside, in chains to their own rigged scoreboard.

If someone seemed like they were headed towards the Kingdom of God, the Pharisees would intercept them, the same way they wanted to stop people from finding Jesus. If you've spent a lot of money and time building a scoreboard, and it shows you winning, you don't want to find out it's broken and has to be torn down. But in intercepting people who were trying to enter into God's kingdom, they were basically being the devil's goalie, blocking anyone who might otherwise have won.

The only thing worse than not scoring any points yourself is not letting any of your teammates score either. And that's what the Pharisees were doing in measuring their self worth by anything but the measure of grace, and in attracting others to that same Christ-cancelling world view

But we also know that anything Jesus says for the Pharisees is not just for the Pharisees. It's also for us. How do we measure our worth compared to others? Are we harder workers? Do we get a bit more outraged than our neighbors when someone doesn't have a fashionable political opinion? Are we smarter, prettier, faster, stronger, richer? Is our career more impressive? Are we in church more, for longer, singing louder, and giving more money in donations? Any of these things, when they define our sense of self worth, can keep us from entering into the place where grace rules our lives. Are you really going to be thankful for eternal salvation if you think your winning golf game makes you pretty special on its own?

And how do we treat others? Do we condemn them for not meeting our standards? Are we unforgiving with them? Do we harass them until they change? Do we push them to aspire to achieve more, groom themselves better, study harder, and to give till it hurts, as a way of improving their worth in our eyes or the eyes of God? Then we're also standing in the way a bit ourselves. If we're ambassadors of a God who doesn't withhold his love from us when we fall short, then whose kingdom are we representing instead when we demand that they measure up before we'll accept them?

That's not to say that people can't do better in nearly every aspect of their lives, or that good deeds don't amount to anything. But if your sense of being valued or your sense of value for someone else depends on those things, you're not living under grace. You're running the scoreboard for a game that is played in darkness.

So how do we flip this woe upside down? Instead of refusing to enter God's kingdom, we should enter it gladly. Accept His forgiveness and love, and think of who else might need it. And if you see someone wanting to enter God's kingdom, instead of interfering, let them enter, even help them make the journey. Be part of the winning team, the team of winners, whose points were all scored by Jesus on the cross.