Friday November 3
Here we are once again in the Valley of the Squinting Windows. The Pharisees are watching him closely. The incident is practically the same as the one we saw on October 25.
In the way he describes things Luke sometimes shows he’s an outsider, a Gentile. For example, in the reading we had on the 26th, he speaks of a “mustard seed which a man took and planted in his garden.” The mustard tree was not a garden plant; it grew wild around the shores of the lake of Galilee. It grew to a height of three or four meters and would not be an ornament to any garden! In today’s reading he mentions “a leading Pharisee,” or “a leader of the Pharisees,” as the RSV translates it. In fact, the scholars tell us, the Pharisees were not a sect with rulers or leaders and disciples. Still, he knew as much as he needed to know about them. Probably one malicious stare from a Pharisee was a full education on the whole brood!
A girl was giving me a blow by blow account of a row she had with another girl. It had escalated from a disagreement to an outright shouting match. Had they been boys the next stage would have been fisticuffs. But in this case the climax was, “I gave her a look!” Ever since then I’ve been more aware of looks! In a history of malicious looking the Pharisees would represent the golden age.
