Fourth Sunday of Lent, 2023 - The Yeast (Leaven) of the Pharisees

 “Beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and the yeast of Herod,” Mark 8:15.

It is one of Jesus’s cryptic sayings that is generally overlooked and ignored. Yet, it is full of meaning and significance.

The disciples didn’t understand what Jesus meant by it. They thought he was talking about bread (Mark 8:16). But obviously, that’s not what Jesus meant. Matthew’s gospel identifies what Jesus meant. “Then they understood that he had not told them to beware of the yeast of bread, but of the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees,” Matthew 16:12.

Beware of what the Pharisees teach. Beware of how they train you to think.

When Jesus spoke of the yeast of the Pharisees, he was referring to the thinking that shaped their world. That thinking shaped how they viewed and treated others, particularly those who did not measure up to their expectations. It shaped their sense of identity. It shaped what they valued. It shaped how they used power.

Interestingly, Jesus said the yeast (thinking) of the Pharisees was similar to the yeast (thinking) of Herod. The religious world and the political-social world operated out of the same kind of thinking.

Jesus warned the disciples about their kind of thinking. Beware! It is dangerous thinking. It undermines human relationships and destroys community.

So what is this kind of thinking – the thinking that governs the religious world as well as the political-social world yet is so dangerous and destructive?

The yeast of the Pharisees and the yeast of Herod is merit-based thinking. It is thinking that is oriented towards deserving. It creates transactional, if . . . then relationships. What one receives is based upon what one does, that is, deserves.

Merit-based, deserving-oriented thinking is built around laws, rules, standards, codes, and expectations. It focuses upon behavior – what one does or does not do. It emphasizes conformity to the expectations expressed in the laws and rules and codes.

This law-focused thinking fosters rigid black-and-white, either-or, right-and-wrong thinking. What the law says is right. Anything that challenges or violates the law is wrong.

 Merit-based thinking naturally leads to us-them thinking – those who conform and measure up to the expectations, those who don’t. Us-them thinking is tribal thinking. We naturally segregate ourselves into groups of those like us, excluding those not like us.

The us-them, tribal thinking of merit-based functioning inevitably produces comparing and competing. Who is right? Whose way is best? Of course, “our” way is always right. Our way is always the best way to do things.

Comparing and competing leads to better than-less than thinking. Because our way is right and better, we are better than “them.” We operate out of a not-so-subtle arrogant “better than” spirit.

The culmination of this thinking – merit-based thinking, right-or-wrong thinking, us-them thinking, better than-less than thinking – is a hierarchal society made up of those who are “in” and those who are “out.” Those at the top of the hierarchy enjoy greater privilege, power, affluence, status, freedom, and opportunity than those lower in the hierarchy.

In this hierarchal world, power is used in self-serving ways – to protect or enhance one’s position (with its power, status, wealth, privilege, and freedom) in the hierarchy, to keep “those other people” “in their place” at the bottom of the hierarchy, to punish and reward. Power is used over, down against others, for personal benefit at the other’s expense.

This merit-based world is built on self-effort and self-reliance. It fosters appearances, not authenticity. It produces a persona – a false self that I call a constructed self. This so-called identity is based upon what the yeast of the Pharisees and the yeast of Herod told us we needed to do and be if we wanted to be accepted and valued. This constructed self has a shadow side – those parts of ourselves that we hide from others (and sometimes ourselves) for fear they would judge us and reject us if they knew about them. This hidden self is full of shame. This merit-based way of thinking and living floats on an ocean of shame.

The emotional tone underlying this merit-based way of thinking and living is one of anxiety and fear – fear of the other, fear of not getting my share, fear of losing what I have, fear of being found out, fear of judgment and condemnation, fear of being rejected and excluded, fear of not being loved and valued.

“Beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and the yeast of Herod!” Jesus’s word meant to look out for the danger in this way of thinking and living. It is dangerous thinking. Nothing good comes from it. He also meant “be aware of” this kind of thinking – in the world in which we live as well as in our own lives. This way of thinking and living is how the world – our religious world, our social world, our political world, yea even our families – trained us to think. “Be aware of how it penetrates how you think and what you do.”

Jesus used three terms to describe what it meant to be his disciple – his follower. Deny self, take up your cross, follow me. Each of these three terms plays off of his warning about the yeast of the Pharisees and the yeast of Herod. To take up our cross is to reject the way the world trained us to think and live. It is to live as an insurrectionist against the yeast of the Pharisees and the yeast of Herod. To follow Jesus is to learn from him a different way of thinking and living – the ways of the kingdom that reflect the character of God. To deny self is to surrender the constructed self the world told us we needed to be if we wanted to be accepted and belong.

This Lent, let’s give up the yeast of the Pharisees and the yeast of Herod.