TAXING

Our anniversary is April 15.  Although it isn’t exactly a conventional wedding date most couples would ever shoot for, most of our married life it’s been a blessing all around.  Good news versus Good news:  ”It’s our ___th Anniversary, and we’re getting back $____”!  The past 2 years, however, we have had to juggle the Good news vs. the Bad news:  “It’s our ___th Anniversary, and Uncle Sam says scrape up  $____!”  Bummer.

There’s been another tax guy this season who has really been knocking me out.  Matthew.  As in the Gospel of Matthew.

I started reading Matthew back in January.  It started as a serendipity read.  Heading out the door to work one morning, I spied my recent yard sale purchase on the kitchen counter - a black leather 1960’s King James Version with a cool cross zipper that I nabbed for a fifty cents in Lake City.  I had just finished a nine-month study of David and 2 Samuel with F.B. Meyer’s classic Life of David, and decided to totter back into the New Testament for the new year.  Settling into my daily ritual at the common area of Columbia Center downtown, I grabbed my Tully’s, settled into a gray leather chair, and started reading.  I love the language (maybe its because I’ve been away from KJV for a long time), and maybe its just the season I’m in ~ but getting into this tax man’s head has blown me away.

Early on, I started circling every time the word “offend” or “offensive”  came into the conversation.  This really hit a nerve in Matthew 15, when the scribes and Pharisees confront Jesus:  “Why do thy disciples transgress the tradition of the elders?  or they wash not their hands when they eat bread?”

I love how Jesus, in typical brilliant fashion, answers their question with a question of His own:  ”Why do ye also transgress the commandment of God by your tradition?”  Ha!  He then proceeds to call them out on their hypocrisy with 8 stinging verses following.  As I thought about it, they are basically saying, ‘Listen, Jesus, you offend us’.  And Jesus is saying, “Yeah, well you offend God!” 

Offend:  To irritate in mind or feelings; cause resentful displeasure in.

The tension had to be thick at this point, and I can just see the disciples sheepishly mumble to Jesus afterwards, ”Uh, Jesus?  Yeah, you like just totally offended them.”  [Like Jesus needed enlightenment on that point.]  I love Jesus’ response to them, “Every plant, which my heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up.”

Shall be rooted up.  This immediately made me think of our How People Change study, which continuously roots up sin in my life and our community group.   Jesus has a faithful way of rooting up every planting that He is not the root of.  In this case, Jesus was rooting up the sin of hypocrisy in the scribes and Pharisees.  He also has a way of rooting up sin in our lives as believers.  That can be offensive.  Darkness is always offended by the Light.

Then, after he has just given these religious leaders an 8 verse stinging rebuke, He directs His followers, presumably in front of these leaders:  “Leave them alone:  they be blind leaders of the blind.  And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.”

I can imagine the scribes and Pharisees feeling uncomfortably angry and offended, the disciples feeling uncomfortably confused because they have offended, but apparently no one has anything left to say.  Reading between the lines, my guess is Jesus looked them straight in the eye when He delivered his rebukes and directives.  Sort of a bring-it-on attitude from this point forward in Matthew.  (Maybe I watch too many westerns, but I could even see him spit to the side like Clint Eastwood in his early westerns.)  Every time I read after this, I see how boldly offensive Jesus is, and how uncomfortable this makes every hearer, albeit for different reasons. 

This left me with 2 immediate impressions.  One, as a lover of Jesus Christ, I am offensive.  I don’t even do this on purpose.  I just am.  Darkness is offended by the Light. 

Two, I clearly hear Jesus saying to me today on several fronts:  Don’t listen to them.  Don’t engage with them.  Don’t follow them.  Leave them alone.  Leave them alone.  Leave them alone. 

I’m not going to engage in conversations with the Dalai Lama-lovers in my world.  Blind leading the blind.  Not that there isn’t a place for challenging that theology.  He is just clearly saying to me:  Leave them alone.  I have more important “duties that lie nearest,” as Oswald Chambers puts it, and this is a distraction.

On another level, I’m not sensing the need to engage in defending my position when other Christians blog and gossip about my church family and “pity” our women, alternately skewing what’s in our heart and getting our theology wrong.

No. In striving to offend God less, I will take Jesus’ advice in Matthew 15, check my heart and motives, move forward with grace and humbleness, and perhaps offend man more. I will strive to be faithful to Scripture, faithful to being my husband’s #1 helper (which now includes a season of working outside my home), faithful to my family, faithful to my conscience and calling, while looking man straight in the eye with a clear conscience.  

I might even spit to side.