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One of the joys of spending time with young children is seeing the world from their perspective—especially seeing them laugh. After watching I Love Lucy with her children, one mom said, “I forgot how funny this show is until I saw my kids laughing hysterically!”
The overall message of our passage today is deadly serious, but even in the middle of Jesus’ rebuke of the Pharisees, He embeds a humorous, grotesque exaggeration. If you don’t find verses 23 through 25 comical, read them to an 8-year-old boy!
Two themes emerge from our reading: backward priorities revealed as hypocrisy and the reversal of privilege in God’s kingdom. First, Jesus targeted the Pharisees for not practicing what they preached (v. 3). It’s important to remember that the Pharisees were deeply concerned with keeping pure in order to be in a right relationship with God. But they missed the point: it wasn’t about their strict dietary observance or dress code or tithing. The end result of these exertions was not to please God, but rather to receive the admiration of others (v. 7). The consequences of their hypocrisy went beyond their own failure to please God; they also burdened others and kept them from understanding how to please God (v. 15).
In God’s kingdom, those who seek their own advancement will find themselves last in line (vv. 11-12). The images that Jesus used to depict the reality of the Pharisees’ spiritual preening should shock us: blind leaders, whitewashed graves, and snakes who cause the death and destruction of the righteous prophets of God. In their dedication to the smallest matter of ritual purity—straining out the gnat—they are willing to engage in the grossest perversions of God’s desire. Their path to righteousness is as absurd and ridiculous as swallowing a camel.
If we’re familiar with this text, it’s easy to skim right past this simile. But Jesus is being deliberately provocative here. It’s an image intended to make us smile and then make us think. Trying to stuff a camel in one’s mouth is crazy—and deadly. So too is trying to please God on our own terms.
TODAY ALONG THE WAY
Children can help us adjust our perspective in marvelous ways. They can puncture our pride, reveal hypocrisy, and make us laugh at silly posturing. Thank God for His grace in this way if you have children in your life. If not, consider working in a Sunday school class, nursery, or other children’s ministry in your church. As you spend time with children, ask God to root out any deadly hypocrisy in your life. Instead of swallowing camels, seek to be a servant in God’s kingdom who points others to life in Christ.
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