By now, you have read several stories in our Gospels in which the Pharisees and teachers of the law disapproved of Jesus. He would heal a blind or sick or demon-possessed person, and the Pharisees would accuse him of breaking Sabbath law or of blasphemy. Everyday people marveled and praised his deeds and flocked to bring Jesus their broken loved ones, but these authority figures, the keepers of the faith, strongly condemned Jesus.
Jesus did not get permission or approval or guidance from the Pharisees as he did these miraculous deeds. He acted completely apart from their control. He was not one of them. The Pharisees’ fear was that if people grouped themselves around Jesus, they wouldn’t pay attention to the “authorities” at all, so they tried in every way to scare people away from him. In our passage today, they brought out the big guns and accused him of working for Satan.
Jesus looked at them and began to reason out loud: “If I worked for Satan, why would I free people from demons? Why would Satan let me do such a thing?” Jesus gave them, and us, some help as we try to figure out the spirit behind any action. We don’t have to stand around darkly wondering if someone is motivated by the Devil. Jesus simply said, “You can tell the heart of a person by their fruit.”
To use his own actions as an example: a demon-possessed blind and mute man was healed by Jesus. Is this healing good fruit? Well, yes. That is grade A good fruit! This man could now see and speak and rejoin the community. But the Pharisees muttered that Jesus had gone to the dark side, and the healing was proof of that. How so? Good character and actions bear good fruit. Jesus cautioned them that to label as evil something that had the Holy Spirit behind it, was the unforgiveable sin. To look at a healing, a miraculous liberation, and say it’s from the Devil? Unforgiveable.
Do we have problems telling good from evil like the Pharisees did? Do we make judgments about people based on their status or background or appearance or socio-economic status, and condemn them? Do we decide against people because they’ve affected our bottom line, whether it’s financial or social or religious? Do we get really “het up” when someone does not come under our authority as we think they should? Jesus says, “Just look at their fruit, to locate their quality.” If they bring healing, peace, creativity, compassion, justice? Good fruit, good heart. If they bring chaos, lies, strife, fault-finding, criticism, enmity, injustice? Bad fruit, bad at the heart.
Jesus finished by looking at the Pharisees and saying, “You can’t think or say anything good because of how evil you are on the inside. Out of your jealous and suspicious heart, comes evil.”
The Pharisees wanted the criteria to be: “If WE say someone is good, they are good and vice versa. Only we can figure out who is truly good. And we say Jesus is bad.” Jesus put that power in everyone’s hands. We get to decide, as we observe for ourselves, who is serving God and who is serving Satan.