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Then the Pharisees and Sadducees came, and testing Him asked that He would show them a sign from heaven. He answered and said to them, "When it is evening you say, 'It will be fair weather, for the sky is red'; and in the morning, 'It will be foul weather today, for the sky is red and threatening.' Hypocrites! You know how to discern the face of the sky, but you cannot discern the signs of the times. A wicked and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, and no sign shall be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah." And He left them and departed.
Now when His disciples had come to the other side, they had forgotten to take bread. Then Jesus said to them, "Take heed and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees." And they reasoned among themselves, saying, "It is because we have taken no bread." But Jesus, being aware of it, said to them, "O you of little faith, why do you reason among yourselves because you have brought no bread? Do you not yet understand, or remember the five loaves of the five thousand and how many baskets you took up? Nor the seven loaves of the four thousand and how many large baskets you took up? How is it you do not understand the that I did not speak to you concerning bread? -- but to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees." Then they understood that He did not tell them to beware of the leaven of bread, but of the doctrine of the Pharisees and Sadducees.
- Matthew 16:1-12
Yesterday, we read that after His encounter with the Canaanite woman, Jesus departed from there, skirted the Sea of Galilee, and went up on the mountain and sat down there. Then great multitudes came to Him, having with them the lame, blind, mute, maimed, and many others; and they laid them down at Jesus' feet, and He healed them. So the multitude marveled when they saw the mute speaking, the maimed made whole, the lame walking, and the blind seeing; and they glorified the God of Israel. Now Jesus called His disciples to Himself and said, "I have compassion on the multitude, because they have now continued with Me three days and have nothing to eat. And I do not want to send them away hungry, lest they faint on the way." Then His disciples said to Him, "Where could we get enough bread in the wilderness to fill such a great multitude?" Jesus said to them, "How many loaves do you have?" And they said, "Seven, and a few little fish." So He commanded the multitude to sit down on the ground. And He took the seven loaves and the fish and gave thanks, broke them and gave them to His disciples; and the disciples gave to the multitude. So they all ate and were filled, and they took up seven large baskets full of the fragments that were left. Now those who ate were four thousand men, besides women and children. And He sent away the multitude, got into the boat, and came to the region of Magdala.
Then the Pharisees and Sadducees came, and testing Him asked that He would show them a sign from heaven. He answered and said to them, "When it is evening you say, 'It will be fair weather, for the sky is red'; and in the morning, 'It will be foul weather today, for the sky is red and threatening.' Hypocrites! You know how to discern the face of the sky, but you cannot discern the signs of the times." My study bible tells us that a sign from heaven "implies some spectacular evidence proving Jesus' messiahship. All acknowledge that the time of the Messiah will be a time for signs. But they do not understand the signs already performed, for their hearts and hardened in disbelief. they can predict the rain and storms, but they cannot understand the Law, which points to Christ, even though they are supposed to be experts in it."
"A wicked and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, and no sign shall be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah." And He left them and departed. My study bible says, "Jesus refuses to prove Himself to a wicked and adulterous generation -- who refuse to see anyway -- except by the sign of the prophet Jonah, a veiled prediction of His death and Resurrection. Just as Jonah was delivered safely from the belly of the great fish, Jesus will rise from the grave."
Now when His disciples had come to the other side, they had forgotten to take bread. Then Jesus said to them, "Take heed and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees." And they reasoned among themselves, saying, "It is because we have taken no bread." But Jesus, being aware of it, said to them, "O you of little faith, why do you reason among yourselves because you have brought no bread? Do you not yet understand, or remember the five loaves of the five thousand and how many baskets you took up? Nor the seven loaves of the four thousand and how many large baskets you took up? How is it you do not understand the that I did not speak to you concerning bread? -- but to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees." Then they understood that He did not tell them to beware of the leaven of bread, but of the doctrine of the Pharisees and Sadducees. My study bible says that "the leaven of the Pharisees is their doctrine and their hypocrisy (Luke 12:1). The disciples are painfully slow to understand, for they have little faith. They do not fully understand Jesus' teaching until Pentecost, when the Spirit is given."
It's interesting that in the second part of today's reading the disciples fail to understand Jesus' meaning. After all, it's the leadership -- the Pharisees and Sadducees -- who demand a sign, a proof of Jesus' messiahship, His divinity. But then we get the contrast of the disciples, who also seem to fail to understand or grasp what He's talking about! But the difference is faith. They may not understand all the wisdom He's giving them. That will have to wait for the coming of the Spirit at Pentecost; that sort of illumination will come later. But they do sense who He is. They are compelled by Him from something inside of themselves that drives faith. This is a loyalty and love, but it's also a knowing and a perception. It is something grasped with the heart. The Pharisees and the Sadducees' hearts, on the other hand, are elsewhere. They are not open to this perception. The Gospel crucially illustrates this for us. It goes back to what we seek and what we treasure, it goes back to Jesus' teaching that they are to be wise as serpents but simple as doves. It is linked to the hypocrisy that Jesus charges the leadership with -- because it is in that hypocrisy that they are unable to pursue one goal with single-mindedness, to know and love God. This is the "simplicity" of the doves. It's a wonderfully humorous reading today, to my mind, because the disciples really interpret Jesus literally, and -- something like children will do -- they interpret Jesus' anger as something they did or failed to do (they forgot the bread!). Somehow such a foible shows us again their simplicity. The Gospels are like icons, pictures of human beings faced with Divinity. How do we respond? What is our real goal? The learning curve of the disciples gives us the sharpest, brightest picture of what it is to be on a journey of faith, to work together somehow with the Divine which is at work in us and among us. And the picture of a leadership greedy with its own power and position, and beset by hypocrisy because of this double vision, tells us where and how learning is thwarted. It's not about what we know already! It's about what's in our hearts, what we seek, what our aims are. The God we seek to worship will always be beyond us and call us out of what we already know into a much, much bigger picture, far beyond what a "proof" (to our minds) would give us. We will never contain God. Instead, we are on a journey to "the unity of the faith and the full knowledge of Your unapproachable glory," as a prayer goes (see Ephesians 4:13). Better preparation is the love of the very human and slow-to-learn disciples (who seem to tax Jesus' patience) than the demands of these inflexible authorities. Even a "little faith" (in the sometimes clueless!) makes all the difference.
