From the stories we read in the Gospel, it sounds like the Pharisees’s faith was joyless. Scrupulous, perfect, clean, being a Jewish Elder sounds hard, unyielding, harsh. One mistake and you could be thrown out, caste away, abandoned. 

Where’s the joy in that?

I think the Pharisees took their seat with Moses and enjoyed those seats of honor in synagogues and at banquets because they wanted something, some admiration, some acknowledgement for how hard they have to work to follow the Law. 

Following the Jewish Law sounds taxing, relentless, brutal. And pharisees had to do it better than all the rest, else they could lose what power and privilege they had while under the thumb of Rome. 

***

Jesus calls us to live a faith life of joy, to live a faith that is its own reward. To follow Jesus’s teachings should not be hard, unyielding, and harsh. In our efforts to follow Jesus we need not be scrupulous, perfect, clean. 

We are not to follow the example set by the Pharisees, says Christ, they who preach but do not practice. We are therefore to practice and not preach. To refuse the seat of honor and instead pick up a cross and follow in the footsteps of He who was beaten and mocked and nailed to a tree. 

And we are to do it joyfully, as if that were its own reward. 

How? How could that possibly be? Doesn’t power and privilege and pleasure sound better than pain and persecution? Isn’t first superior to last? Isn’t exaltation more enjoyable than being humbled? 

Maybe not. Maybe Jesus knows something that our lived experience on this planet has yet to teach us. 

Maybe power takes its toll. 
Perhaps privilege comes at a price.
Could pleasure lead to our undoing?
What if pain nourishes our compassion and persecution bands us together as brothers and sisters?
Might the first make mistakes that the last can learn from? Are the exalted spoiled while the humble enjoy the simple things in life?

Maybe things are not as they seem. Maybe the Creator of it all knows the tricks and secrets of this game of His own making. 

To live in such a way that the living is its own reward, rather than living painfully in order to achieve some pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. That is what I think Jesus was saying. 

If we have faith in Jesus, but the way we practice that faith causes us to suffer, and our only solace is the thought of a heavenly reward, then I think we are no different than the Pharisees. But if we have faith in Jesus, and practice that faith in a way that causes us great joy and peace, then I believe we understand Jesus’s teaching on this point. 

Make it experiential. The evidence of Jesus’s majesty is in the lived-experience of his grace in your daily life, not like the Pharisees thought, in some heavenly reward. 

Your reward is here now. The kingdom of God is here now. Your heavenly home is here now. 

Here now is all there is and all there will ever be. Don’t be like the Pharisees and live joylessly for a someday chance at a reward tomorrow. Be like Jesus and live joyfully for today, for the reward is here now. 

Following Jesus is its own reward. 

***

Pause and think about your own faith-life. Is it joyful to follow Jesus’s teachings. Or is it uncomfortable? Does the thought of a heavenly reward sustain you or does the simply joy of following sustain you?