No one can know Christ unless he follows after him in life.
—Hans Denk

I have no idea what it is like to be followed by disciples on a journey to Jerusalem. I do, however, know what it is like to take three young children across the country. It can’t be much different. Like the proverbial herding of cats.

Recently my wife and I took our three sons on an epic journey that we had planned for more than a year. It was also a journey I anticipated since the birth of my first son more than a decade ago. Having traveled through a great deal of the American West myself, I wanted nothing more than to reach the day when my children could see and experience it for themselves. Now that they were all in elementary school, it seemed like the right time to fill their vista with the shapes, colors, and diversity of Arizona’s desert. I knew the sight would blow them away, just as it does me.

For a week we rambled like eager disciples along the highways, railways, and airways of the Southwest taking in the majesty of it all. It was fantastic, but not quite as grand as I had hoped. My children buried their heads in electronic games and stuffed their ears with headphones most of the time and missed out on some of the greatest wonders of the world. They may not have missed the wonder of it all, but they failed to soak it up. I had to spend a great deal of time redirecting their attention. Repeatedly I told them, “Our time here is short, so put your toys away. Look around you. Open your eyes. You may never pass this way again.”

My boys are probably no different than most of us. We set out on our journeys but hardly lift our heads or open our ears to the wonder around us. We let the time pass, the miles click by, obsessed with lesser things while the glory of a greater world surrounds us.

This is not a book about gaining more knowledge about Jesus. It is not a book, in spite of its title, about tearing down or criticizing religious institutions. I did not write it to give you facts about a rebellious first-century rabbi.

This is a book about running after Jesus, about a journey with the Christ—his journey and yours. It is a book about looking and listening to the unexpected. It is a book about opening our eyes, unstopping our ears, and soaking up the gracious wonder that he is, the wonder that surrounds us.

So put away your toys and follow Jesus. Look at him and listen. Open your eyes. Take it all in. We may never pass this way again.

Ronnie McBrayer
Freeport, Florida

Watch out for all who do not walk in simplicity.
—The Schleitheim Confession

I heard about a man who lacked the art of diplomacy. He was the type of person who couldn’t say anything graciously.

He and his wife owned a poodle. They loved the dog. It was like a child to them. The wife took a trip away from home, and on the first day away she called to see how things were going.

She asked her husband, “How are things?”

He answered, “The dog is dead!”

She was devastated. After regaining her composure, she asked, “Why did you do that? Why can’t you be more thoughtful, more tactful?”

He said, “Well, what do you want me to say? The dog is dead.”

She said, “Well, you could have given it to me in stages. For example, you could have said, ‘The dog is on the roof.’ Then when I called you the next day, you could say, ‘Everything is fine here, except the dog fell off the roof.’ When I called you the third day you could have added, ‘Oh, the dog had to be taken to the vet. He’s not doing very well.’ Finally, when I called you on the last day of my trip, you could have said, ‘Honey, brace yourself, our beloved dog has died.’ I could have handled it better than you being so severe.”

Her husband paused. She could tell he was taking it all in.

Finally he said, “OK, I see.”

Then she asked, “By the way, how is mother?”

He answered, “Well, your mother is on the roof.”

In the first church I pastored, I knew an old man who’d been a master sergeant longer than I had been alive, and he had spent most of those years drunk. He drank a pint of bourbon before lunch every day and then tried to cut his grass on one of those old Snapper lawnmowers, with his knees pointed out like door knobs, weaving all over the place. He got sober sometime around his sixtieth birthday, gave his life to Christ, and became a deacon in the Baptist church.

He was a changed man, but a part of him that did not change was his punchy, master sergeant mentality (that and the two packs of Camels he smoked every day). He griped and complained and barked orders at everyone like we were all new, green recruits. He and I fought like an old married couple, and there were times when I thought we would never agree on anything. Still, I never doubted that he loved me. We would duke it out in a church meeting one evening and meet for coffee at the local greasy spoon the next morning. I think he enjoyed mixing it up with others.

He and I argued one day because he wanted to confront someone harshly. I suggested a kinder, gentler, and patient approach.

He growled at me, “That’s your problem, preacher! You want to beat around the bush with people when something needs to be said.”

I fired back, “I might beat around the bush, but at least the tree will live when I am finished. You’re pulling it up by the roots!”

God rest his good soul, and those of master sergeants everywhere, but that man loved Luke 11:37-53. There, Jesus takes a verbal whipping stick to the religious leaders of his day.

In the story of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:30-37), Jesus is subtle and sarcastic as he draws the teachers of the law into his web. He playfully but clearly identifies them as the “bad guys.” “The dog is on the roof,” Jesus began as he told that particular parable. But not in Luke 11. Rather than shaking the outer branches of the tree, he grabs it by the trunk and pulls it up at the roots.

If Jesus did not have our attention in Luke 10, he certainly has it by the end of Luke 11:

As Jesus was speaking, one of the Pharisees invited him home for a meal. So he went in and took his place at the table. His host was amazed to see that he sat down to eat without first performing the hand-washing ceremony required by Jewish custom. Then the Lord said to him, “You Pharisees are so careful to clean the outside of the cup and the dish, but inside you are filthy—full of greed and wickedness! Fools! Didn’t God make the inside as well as the outside? So clean the inside by giving gifts to the poor, and you will be clean all over.

“What sorrow awaits you Pharisees! For you are careful to tithe even the tiniest income from your herb gardens, but you ignore justice and the love of God. You should tithe, yes, but do not neglect the more important things. What sorrow awaits you Pharisees! For you love to sit in the seats of honor in the synagogues and receive respectful greetings as you walk in the marketplaces. Yes, what sorrow awaits you! For you are like hidden graves in a field. People walk over them without knowing the corruption they are stepping on.”

“Teacher,” said an expert in religious law, “you have insulted us, too, in what you just said.”

“Yes,” said Jesus, “what sorrow also awaits you experts in religious law! For you crush people with unbearable religious demands, and you never lift a finger to ease the burden. What sorrow awaits you! For you build monuments for the prophets your own ancestors killed long ago. But in fact, you stand as witnesses who agree with what your ancestors did. They killed the prophets, and you join in their crime by building the monuments! This is what God in his wisdom said about you: ‘I will send prophets and apostles to them, but they will kill some and persecute the others.’ As a result, this generation will be held responsible for the murder of all God’s prophets from the creation of the world—from the murder of Abel to the murder of Zechariah, who was killed between the altar and the sanctuary. Yes, it will certainly be charged against this generation.

“What sorrow awaits you experts in religious law! For you remove the key to knowledge from the people. You don’t enter the kingdom yourselves, and you prevent others from entering.”

As Jesus was leaving, the teachers of religious law and the Pharisees became hostile and tried to provoke him with many questions. They wanted to trap him into saying something they could use against him. (Luke 11:37-53)

Some two hundred years before the time of Christ, the Jewish people united in a war of independence called the Maccabean War. They fought against Antiochus Epiphanies, the king of Syria. They were successful in gaining independence, but the aftermath resulted in a religious and political vacuum. The Jewish society had to learn to live in the brave new world they created. One of the groups that developed during this period became known as the Pharisees. In Luke 11, Jesus exchanges blistering words with this group at a dinner party in the home of one of the more prominent Pharisees.

The Pharisees were the “pious ones” or the “puritans,” not unlike the Puritans of our own American history. Their passion was the Jewish religion. They were deeply devoted to the written Law of Moses, the Torah, and their oral traditions, later called the Mishnah or the Talmud. It was the Pharisaic duty to obey the written and unwritten laws of God, to remain ceremonially pure, and to live righteously enough to enjoy the resurrection from the dead one day.

By the time of Jesus, the Pharisees were the largest and most influential religious party in Palestine. They ran the schools and the academies. The priests and scribes were members of their order. In time, they developed an eschatology or end-of-the-world scenario about the coming of the messiah and the end of the age. They believed the messiah would not come until people adopted and lived out proper religious practice down to the tiniest details of life. When Jewish society, through the Pharisees’ untiring efforts, became righteous and holy enough, then the kingdom of God would break into the world.

For the sake of clarity, we might benefit from seeing these Pharisees of Jesus’ day as fervent fundamentalists who were theological watchdogs. They knew what the Bible said. They knew what God expected. They had orthodoxy and tradition on their side.

Their conclusion was that life would be much better and their society and nation more successful if only everyone else got with the program—their program. If everyone else believed like they believed, acted like they acted, and behaved like they behaved, then God would show his blessing on Israel, throw off the foreign oppressors, send the messiah, and consign the remaining sinners to hell. I do not have to overstate the obvious: these Pharisees seem terribly familiar.

In Luke 11, Jesus attends a dinner party with a handful of Pharisees. While there, he makes a serious social and religious faux pas at the table. Jesus fails to wash his hands before he eats. This would have gotten me turned away from my grandmother’s dining room table as well, but for different reasons. My grandmother wanted my hands clean from germs. The Pharisees however, had an extensive hand-washing system that was religious, not necessarily hygienic in nature.

The Pharisees washed their hands with their fingers pointed upward, the water running down and dripping from their wrists and elbows. Wringing the hands free of water was not allowed. This would mingle clean water with the dirty water, and the bather would still be considered unclean. So the Pharisees would stand there until their hands had dripped dry, and then they would repeat the process with fingers pointed to the ground so the unclean water would again run off properly.

Strict Jews did this before every meal. If they were especially devout, as these dinner guests with Jesus probably were, they repeated the process even between the courses of the meal. It could take hours to finish eating. Jesus probably ignored the hand-washing bowl put before him on purpose in order to stoke the crowd. As soon as his dinner companions saw his behavior, before they even finished their hurried whispers and stopped rolling their eyes, he spoke thunderous words down on their heads.

I know a little about public speaking. I know that when speaking to a group of people, it is best to know their background, their preferences, their likes and dislikes. This is important in order for the speaker to build rapport and gain the audience’s respect. I guess Jesus didn’t take that course in seminary, because here he lets loose with a verbal tirade. Additionally, he offends his host—the one who invited him to dinner in the first place. Offense or not, Jesus tells the truth, in all of its bold, tactless ugliness.

This truth comes down in a series of “what sorrows” or, as other English translations put it, “woes.” At first, these seem like statements of condemnation. Yet, it is more accurate to view them as statements of grief, not judgment. Jesus’ words in this encounter have a pessimistic nature. “You are a pitiful bunch,” Jesus is saying. “As pathetic as you are, there is not much anyone can do about it.”

I don’t want to say Jesus viewed these religious leaders as hopeless, but I also don’t want to lessen his criticism of them. He pronounces the first three statements of sorrow specifically on the Pharisees.2 These accusations focus on three odd points: (1) the spices in their cupboards; (2) where they sit in church; and (3) graveyards...