The Recycled Pharisee

The Recycled Pharisee

Prologue

This book is the result of years of prayer and experiences with God which have radically changed my life and ministry. However, the title of this book came very quickly and it did not originate with me. It was spoken by a friend of mine in just a matter of seconds! We were teaching a class on Vineyard Values at our home church in Portland, Maine over ten years ago. As part of the first session, we decided to share briefly our testimonies of how we came to know Jesus as our personal Savior. We both felt this was important because we came from such diverse backgrounds: he was a born-again, hippie, musician surfer-dude (that is how I referred to him because of his long hair and constant talk about surfing) from California. I was a retired Episcopal priest who had come into the Kingdom when the Holy Spirit showed up at a cocktail party and healed my wife of a physical ailment. Could there be any two more unlikely instructors for an evening class at a church except at the local Vineyard?

As I was sharing how God healed my wife of Bell’s Palsy when a housewife simply prayed for her, and my sanctimonious response of anger to the healing, my friend looked at me and said, “Richard, you’re just a recycled pharisee!” He wasn’t being mean or judgmental. He was simply making a truthful statement which I am convinced the Holy Spirit put in his mind and brought forth from his lips in that very moment. I say that because every time I have reminded him of the incident, (most recently just months ago), he says he has no recollection of ever making the statement!

I, on the other hand, have never forgotten it, mostly because what he said hurt my pride. First of all, my wife and I were new in the Vineyard, and I wanted to make a positive impression on the leadership. When I retired from active ministry in the Episcopal Church, we moved to a different community and started attending this Vineyard fellowship. The class was the first official task that I had undertaken in the congregation. My co-leader was one of the worship leaders, as well as an elder, so his opinion was important to me, even though I’m sure I felt a bit superior to him because of my clerical background. After all, wasn’t it the job of the clergy to evaluate the status of the lay folks in a congregation and not the other way around? I was beginning to learn first-hand some basics about life in this movement we had joined called the Vineyard! I had been to several Wimber conferences (John Wimber was the founder of the Vineyard in California in the 1970’s) and read some of his books, but now we were members of a real congregation which was a whole new experience altogether.

Also, who wants to be called a pharisee, recycled or not? I was a born again believer now, a true friend of Jesus, and the Pharisees were anything but his friends. They were the ones who constantly wanted to kill him! I always wanted to be as far away as possible from their club even before I was saved. I am reminded of an elderly woman at the cathedral in Portland where I had my first job after graduating from Berkeley Divinity School (now part of Yale Divinity School) in New Haven, Connecticut. She was in a class I was teaching, and we were exploring the General Confession from the communion service in the Book of Common Prayer. At one point in the confession, the reference is made to ourselves as miserable sinners, and I was just about to share my wealth of knowledge about that condition (after all, I was twenty-six years old and had a seminary degree). In that moment, this dear lady stood up at the other end of the folding table and informed me of her experience in this matter. “Mr. Colby,” she said firmly as she began to raise her finger, “I am not, never have been and God willing, never intend to be, a miserable sinner!” Feeling like she had made the definitive statement about the matter, she sat back down. (I can’t remember what my response was to her but I’m sure it was not nearly as articulate as her comment to me).

However, that is precisely how I always felt about being a pharisee! I never wanted to be one, never felt that I was one and God willing, was never going to be one. (After all, I didn’t want to kill Jesus; I was on his team!) To me, pharisees were mean people who always thought too much of themselves. In their minds, they were always right and had all the answers which they gladly shared with the ordinary people just to keep them in line with their traditions. They liked to be given special attention in the streets and in the temple during religious celebrations. That wasn’t me! Yet, when this lady at the cathedral referred to me as “Mr. Colby” rather than using any clerical title such as “reverend” or “father”, (which were all “unbiblical” in her opinion), I do remember feeling somewhat offended. Oops! Maybe there is something more to being a pharisee than just wanting to get rid of Jesus.

In fact, I imagine that I began to discover the truth of what it means to be a real pharisee that evening when my friend made his prophetic observation. Since then, I have come face to face, so to speak, with numerous aspects of my pharisaical nature as the Lord has shined the light of his truth on various broken areas of my wounded soul. The experiences in this book reveal that story.

For the moment, I will simply say that I now know I always have been, and probably always will be, a pharisee in my flesh. However, with enough recycling by the Holy Spirit, I have discovered what I believe Nicodemus, the pharisee, discovered when he had his night visit with the Messiah, Jesus! (see the Gospel of John, ch 3, vss 1-21) In my opinion, Nicodemus got his first recycling experience that night; he went from simply having head knowledge about God to experiencing some heart knowledge of the Father’s love. I like to imagine that after Jesus explained to Nicodemus the simple truth of being born again (“Humans can reproduce only human life, but the Holy Spirit gives new life from heaven.” John 3:6 New Living Translation), that Nicodemus couldn’t resist seeking Jesus out to pursue that new relationship. Can anyone be in the presence of Jesus and not feel the love of God in a personal way? That may be pure speculation on my part but after the way I have been recycled over the past thirty years, I believe it is a reasonable educated guess.

And, isn’t “spiritual recycling” an important part of the life of any believer? Check out the number of times that the scripture speaks of being made new by the Father’s loving care in the Old Testament or becoming a new creature through our relationship with Jesus in the New Testament. The problem for many people is this: just because we can be born again and made a new creature does not mean we become perfect in that moment. Actually I must confess that I really thought that was going to happen to me when I accepted Jesus! I was thrilled at the thought of getting rid of my “old man” (as the scripture calls our fleshly nature) who had been such a problem to me and many others for so many years. However, I soon found out that this was unrealistic and naive.
People do not change overnight; any realistic change is more of a process which I have come to refer to as our personal recycling process. Paul had experienced such a process himself and reminded the believers in the city of Philippi what they should expect. “Continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling,” he encouraged them, “for it is God who works in you to will and act according to his good purpose”. (Philippians 2:12-13, emphasis added).