What Breaks Jesus’ Heart

Matthew 9:35-38

February 4, 2024 • Mount Pleasant UMC

Keith and Candy Holt were “model Christians,” trusted by their church enough that Keith would often fill in for his pastor with preaching duties. He even thought of himself as a pastor of the church though that title had never been formalized. In their home, they were raising eight children, ranging from ages 2 to 17, and their life seemed great. Until the police came to do a well check on the children, requested by concerned neighbors. The Holts refused entrance to the police twice, but when the police finally gained entrance on the third attempt, they discovered enough evidence to arrest both Keith and Candy. The children showed signs of severe neglect and abuse, and one reported that he had sometimes been beaten thirty times with a board or denied food and water and locked in a bathroom as a punishment. Keith admitted to spanking the children, and said that sometimes he “blacked out” and did not know how long or how hard he hit them. Ultimately, he was charged with child abuse, child neglect and kidnapping; she was charged with enabling his behavior. And when the pastor of their church was asked about the crimes, he said: “Really, the church has nothing to do with what goes on in a family’s business behind closed doors” (https://churchleaders.com/news/466715-keith-and-candy-holt-child-abuse.html).

Pastor Eli Regalado and his wife Kaitlin created a cryptocurrency, internet money, and marketed it to his parishioners and other Christian friends, telling them it was safe and that it “had been audited.” He said God had told him to create the currency, and that they would be rewarded with fabulous wealth if they invested in it and trusted him. Suddenly, though, the Regalados shut down the currency exchange and pocketed $1.3 million. Pastor Eli claimed that half of that amount went to the IRS and the other half went to a personal home remodel that, again, God told him to do. And still, he told his customers to stay in the cryptocurrency, that God was going to do a miracle and they would be very wealthy. One thing he had failed to mention is that, while the claim that his business had been audited was true, the auditors rated his business a 0 out of 10, calling it “technologically deficient.” To this day, the investors have not seen any return on their money and most likely never will because what they actually invested in were empty promises and nothing else. Oh, and by the way, the church website has also been shut down (https://churchleaders.com/news/466722-colorado-pastor-securities-fraud-charges-cryptocurrency.html).

I could go on and on but you’ve heard the stories—maybe not these but certainly others like them. Pastors and so-called Christian leaders engaging in horrendous (not to mention often illegal) acts that harm people in so many different ways. I have lost count of how many prominent Christian leaders have lost their ministry because of sexual scandals, power struggles, financial impropriety and other bad acts. I don’t have to list their names; you’re probably thinking of several right now. And for some of those 40 million people who used to be part of the church but now aren’t, the spiritual malpractice carried out by religious authorities was the last straw. How can you believe in a God whose representatives act so reprehensibly? And such things by a few have hurt the reputation of all clergy. As Christianity Today recently reported, “People are more likely to believe in the moral standards held by nurses, police officers, and chiropractors than their religious leaders. Clergy are still more trusted than politicians, lawyers, and journalists.” And fewer then a third of the American public today believes that clergy are ethical (https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2024/january/pastor-trust-credibility-reputation-gallup-poll-clergy-ethi.html). For many people, clergy and religious leaders in general are the epitome of bad religion.

But did you know that Jesus didn’t have a lot of esteem for religious leaders, either? At least the ones in his day—and the feeling was mutual. In a passage just before what we read this morning, Jesus has healed a couple of people (two blind men and one demon-possessed who couldn’t speak), and though he told them not to tell anyone, they “spread the news about him all over that region” (9:31). When the Pharisees heard about it, they immediately came to this conclusion: “It is by the prince of demons that he drives out demons” (9:34). Now, I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: the Pharisees and Jesus probably had more in common theologically than anyone else. While the priests protected and carried out the official religion of the Jews in Jerusalem, the Pharisees were the ones out in the countryside, trying to make sure people lived according to the Scriptures. They believed in holiness, in dedicating your life to God 100%. And so Jesus, later in Matthew’s Gospel, commends them. He said, “The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat” (23:2). “Moses’ seat” had nothing to do with Moses; it was the official teaching seat in the synagogues. We got to see a replica of one in Chorazim in Galilee and the original in the Israel Museum. You can see who is sitting on it here, who has the authority! So anyone who sat in Moses’ seat was the official teacher for that synagogue; they were supposed to help people understand God’s law. So Jesus says, “You must be careful to do everything they tell you” (23:3). In other words, they are teaching the right things. They know God’s law and are trying to help you understand it. Jesus commends the Pharisees. But then he says this: “But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach. They tie up heavy, cumbersome loads and put them on other people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them. Everything they do is done for people to see…” (23:3-5). In other words, the Pharisees would have loved today’s social media world, where you can do all sorts of things “for people to see,” even if that doesn’t even come close to representing your actual life.

That’s why, back in Matthew 9, when Jesus is traveling through the “towns and villages” of Galilee, “proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness,” he is heartbroken. That’s how The Message translates verse 36: “When he looked out over the crowds, his heart broke. So confused and aimless they were, like sheep with no shepherd” (pg. 1761). The NIV translation, which we read this morning, says they were “harassed and helpless” (9:36). And Jesus’ heart broke because the ones doing that to them were the very ones who were supposed to lead and protect them as God’s flock, the same ones who accused Jesus of being in league with the devil (cf. Davis, Come Alive: Matthew, pg. 76). Matthew is actually reflecting a much older passage here from the prophet Ezekiel. In Ezekiel 34, the prophet speaks to all the priests and teachers of the law, calling them “shepherds” and referring to the people as “the flock.” But the words the prophet shares are not complimentary. He accuses these shepherds of not taking care of the flock. It’s a whole long list of charges that you will have a chance to read if you follow the Scripture readings this week. But it boils down to this: the shepherds were taking what the people brought and using it for themselves. Sound familiar, like anything that happens today? They were not looking for those who had wandered off nor were they helping those who were hurt. In fact, the prophet seems to say they were causing much of the hurt: “You have ruled them harshly and brutally” (Ezekiel 34:4), the prophet says, and so, he tells them, the sheep have been scattered, “and no one searched or looked for them” (34:6). The determination from God through the prophet is that since Israel’s shepherds weren’t doing their job, and since they had let the sheep wander off, God himself would come and take over the job. He would come to rescue and look after those who were his people. “I will shepherd the flock with justice,” God says (34:16). And when Jesus arrived, that’s exactly what God did. In Christ, God became the shepherd of the people. Jesus claimed that title for himself when he said, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep” (John 10:11; Bauer, The Gospel of the Son of God, pgs. 177-178).

What the shepherds of Israel were doing in Ezekiel’s time, and what the Pharisees were doing in Jesus’ time, and what some spiritual leaders are still doing today is spiritual malpractice at “best” and spiritual abuse at worst. People today are still harassed and helpless, and it still is breaking Jesus’ heart. What do you think Jesus would say to Keith and Candy Holt or Eli and Kaitlin Regalado or any of the countless others who have done similar things to God’s people in the name of Jesus? When you consider the sheer number of such cases and events over the past several years, it’s no wonder people have walked away—some who have run away—from the church, from their faith, even from Jesus himself. Because it’s natural to assume that if the leaders of Jesus’ church behave this way, why would we think Jesus himself is any different? We are, after all, Christ’s ambassadors, Jesus’ main representatives (cf. 2 Corinthians 5:20). What they see in us is what they assume about him, and that’s a heavy thing to think about. If that doesn’t scare you, you might want to think through it again.

The abuse of spiritual authority, whatever form it takes, is to me the worst form of bad religion. Bishop Todd Hunter says it’s an “adventure in missing the point” (What Jesus Intended, pg. 112). Jesus even went so far as to call out the religious leaders of his day as “snakes” and a “brood of vipers” (Matthew 23:33). He drew a pretty clear line and laid before the people a very clear choice. They could follow the religious leaders into a life in which the outward things you did mattered the most or they could follow him into a life in which the inward life mattered most and the outward life would flow out of the inward life (cf. Hunter 114). It’s the kind of life described by James: “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world” (James 1:27). The first thing we have to do in responding to spiritual malpractice is to make that choice for ourselves. Which version of faith are we going to follow? Which way are we going to live our dedication to Jesus? The way of the Pharisees, doing the outward things that make us look holy, is honestly the easy way. The more difficult way, the way Jesus calls the narrow road (cf. Matthew 7:13-14), is to allow him to transform our inner life, what we call our heart, and see the good that flows outwardly from that inner transformation.

Bishop Todd Hunter tells about the small church he grew up in. He describes it as a “not-at-all-famous Methodist church,” which (like most churches in America) had only a few members. But what a difference they made in his life! As a teenager, he watched as those few members left bags of groceries on their front porch, and he couldn’t quite understand why. He may not have understood it but the people knew that Bishop Hunter’s mother was in a marriage dominated by a man who had a compulsive gambling habit, a family with six kids and not enough money at the end of the month. So these church ladies would drop off food, and they would also spend long hours in conversation with Hunter’s mom, offering kindness and goodness (fruit of the spirit) that she did not get anywhere else. They were imitating Jesus, who came, as he said, “not…to be served, but to serve” (Mark 10:45). Hunter said, “They were the little church that never shows up in the news” (115). And even though we forget it, that kind of service and care is what happens thousand of times more frequently than the celebrity pastors who engage in immoral and un-Christlike behavior. The names of those saints will never be published or known by very many, but their acts of service will light up eternity and mend Jesus’ broken heart.

However, none of that is meant to dismiss the experiences of those who have been wounded by the church, those who have been hurt emotionally, spiritually or physically by those in authority. For those who are brave enough to reveal the hurt they have experienced, there are things we can say and they do not include, “Don’t worry about it, your experience doesn’t matter, there are lots more good people than bad people.” None of that helps or brings healing. But here are some things you can say, things that will affirm the victim and help them begin to heal. I’m going to put them up on the screen but we will also put them on our social media so that you can come back to this list, maybe even memorize it.

• I am sorry.
• You did not deserve this.
• This is not your fault.
• You are treasured of God and my brother/sister in Christ.
• I see you.
• I hear you.
• I take what happened to you seriously.
• I will help protect you from the abuser. (cf. Hunter 116)

You do not have to explain the hurt. You don’t have to understand the hurt. You probably cannot fix the hurt. But you can walk alongside the one who has been hurt and point them to the Jesus whose heart is broken along with them and who wants to bring them healing. That is, after all, what it means to know God, according to Jeremiah: “‘He defended the cause of the poor and needy, and so all went well. Is that not what it means to know me?’ declares the Lord” (22:16). And so we’re invited to “know the Lord” by defending those who have been beat up and broken by bad religion.

There is an ancient Jewish tradition called tikkun olam; if you’ve been to the holocaust museum here in Terre Haute, you’ve likely encountered that phrase or that idea. It’s a phrase that means “repair or heal the world,” and it is an idea embedded deeply in Jewish thought and action. Literally it might be translated as “straightening a crooked rod.” Basically, the idea is that the world is good, God said so in Genesis (1:31), but that the creator left room for people’s actions to improve the world. More modern ideas find it harder to believe that the world is actually good, especially in light of the holocaust and other such atrocities, so the thinking is that every good thing we do, every kind action we pursue, actually is part of tikkun olam, of helping to repair the world. It’s tied into and connected with the vision in the book of Isaiah, who said a day was coming when “They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks” (Isaiah 2:4).

As believers in Jesus, we believe that vision began to come to pass when Jesus gave his life to save all people from their sin, from the brokenness of the world. Jesus’ work on the cross was the ultimate example of tikkun olam, repairing the world, even though we still haven’t experienced the fullness of that promise yet. But when Jesus uses you and me and the person next to you and the person across the sanctuary—when Jesus uses us in ways that bring healing and hope to anyone who has been hurt, bruised and beat up by bad religion, we move a little bit closer to the day Isaiah saw. To all who live in the rubble of bad religion, let’s be people who bring healing and not more hurt. Let’s be people who point them to the authentic Jesus, the one who sees them and knows they are harassed and helpless, confused and aimless. He is the one who has come to repair the world, and as the world is healed, so is his broken heart.

As a reminder of our calling, Jesus gave his disciples and us a practice, something we call a sacrament, that reminds us who we are. We are servants of a king who gave his very life in order to repair the world. We are sheep under a shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep (cf. John 10:15). And so, on the last night Jesus gathered with his disciples, he took the ordinary things on the table and transformed them into something new, reminders of the call to repair the world. Bread—his body, containing his broken heart. Wine—his blood, which coursed through his broken heart. Together, the bread and the cup combine to allow us, help us commune with Jesus. So we come to the table this morning as people of hope, people of promise, people who are committed to repairing the world for the sake of Jesus our Savior and Lord. Let us pray.