“Watch out, and beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees.”
The Gospels never mention Jesus ever laughing. In fact, the word “laugh” or “laughter” only appears six times in the entire New Testament and only once in a positive way, and that in the future tense! We are told of people laughing at Jesus (Matt. 9:24; Mark 5:40; Luke 8:53) and we are told to let our “laughter be turned into mourning” (James 4:9). In Luke’s Beatitudes Jesus says, “Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh” and “Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep.” (Luke 6:21,25)
One could easily get the impression that being a Christian is a very serious and sober matter with no room for frivolity or laughter. I do believe that much of our laughter is a shallow cover for our spiritual and moral poverty. We certainly should be weeping more.
But as I read the Gospels more and more, I am convinced that the life that Jesus shared with the twelve must have included much laughter. As you read the Gospels you can begin to imagine the possibility of turning it into a movie called “The 12 Stooges.” Jesus is this brilliant, wonderful, kind, powerful man—in fact, God’s Son come to earth—and he is surrounded by these twelve guys who are earnest and try really hard but sometimes, in very humorous ways, just don’t get it!
One of my favorite examples is in Matthew 16. The Pharisees and the Sadducees come to Jesus to demand that he give them a “sign from heaven.” Jesus “refuses” (as if somehow any of the 100’s of miracles Jesus had already done didn’t matter!) and says no sign will be given to this generation except the sign of Jonah.
Jesus and the Twelve then get in the boat and cross to the other side of the lake. When they get to the other side the disciples realize that they had forgotten to bring any bread. At that moment Jesus says to them, “Watch out, and beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees.” “Watch out, and beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees.” Clearly Jesus is still replaying in his head the confrontation he had just had with the Pharisees and Sadducees.
The disciples do not have a clue. Their response is, “Yeah, man, I told you we should have brought the bread!” We can imagine them blaming each other, “Jesus, I told Andrew to grab it before we left.” “Thomas said he was going to get it!” “I thought the women were going to put it in our bag!”
At this point I don’t think Jesus is laughing. I think he is exasperated. This is serious. The yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees will destroy them. The Twelve are stuck on the question of what’s for dinner when the survival of their souls is at stake. And this is after Jesus had fed the 5,000 and after he had fed the 4,000. “Really!?! ‘What’s for dinner?’ is your biggest concern right now?”
But at some point, this story must have become humorous. At some point the disciples began re-telling this story. The way Matthew tells it, it’s clear that he is not casting the disciples in the best light. They must have laughed at themselves, “We were so clueless!” I wonder. Whenever the disciples started getting impressed with themselves or started getting critical of how clueless other people were, did Jesus just look at them and say, in mock horror, “Who brought the bread?!?”
I wonder. The very next story in Matthew 16 is Peter’s Great Confession where he confesses that Jesus is “the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” And then immediately rebukes Jesus for saying that the Messiah would have to suffer and die. Just when you think, “Oh, they get it!” I wonder. What did Jesus say the next time he was alone with the Father?
“I couldn’t believe what they said when I tried to warn them about the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees!”
“Yeah, well, you picked them!”
“Ha! So you could reveal to them that I am the Messiah, your Son, but you couldn’t reveal to them that I was speaking metaphorically about the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees??”
[This raises an interesting question. What does humor look like within the Trinity? What sorts of humor are appropriate within the Blessed Communion of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit?]
Anyway, all of this to say, I am not laughing at the Twelve. I am laughing with the Twelve. Because even with the benefits of hindsight and reading this story over and over, I am left wondering, what is the “yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees”?
The Pharisees and Sadducees were opponents. They were the two main parties in the Jewish ruling council, the Sanhedrin. They were the Republicans and Democrats, the Evangelicals and Progressives. They would have considered themselves very different from the Other.
Jesus comes along and despite whatever differences there might be between Pharisees and Sadducees (Republicans and Democrats? Evangelicals and Progressives??), their teachings contain the same yeast that can infect the whole loaf of the community’s shared life.
In our own time of polarization and partisan divide, might Jesus be saying the same thing to us? Beware of the yeast of both sides. But what is that yeast? I am curious what you would say that yeast is that marks both sides of our divides. I would love to hear from you what you think.
Might it be that both sides, the Pharisees and Sadducees as well as the parties in our divides, give a pretense of godliness but refuse to submit to the lordship of Jesus Christ? Might it be our inclination to pick and choose which parts of Jesus and his gospel we like and to ignore the parts we don’t like? Might it be our refusal to fully believe based on the miracles Jesus has already done but demanding more miracles so we can postpone our commitment to him a little longer?
