The American actor Gregory Peck, not long before he died, counselled that if one is going to play the part of the devil one must look for the angel in him, and if one plays an angel one must look for the devil in him.

While I am an actor only in my dreams, in real life I am a lover of dramatic performances whether on stage or screen and what Gregory Peck says rings true. I quickly lose interest in a character that is portrayed as being completely evil or perfect. I know from my experience of others and myself that human beings just aren`t like that.

When the musical, and then the movie Jesus Christ Superstar, first appeared I was surprized at how likeable Judas Iscariot was portrayed to be. He stood out as a far more interesting disciple than any of the others and gave credibility to that great American philosopher of the last century, Mae West, who once said, "When I am good, I am very, very good, but when I am bad I am better!".

Tim Rice's and Andrew Lloyd Webber's Judas Iscariot, unlike the biblical Judas who is a flat stereotypical person, was portrayed as a passionate man wanting to believe in Jesus and yet driven by serious doubts about Jesus' position vis-a-vis the Jewish and Roman authorities. He also struggles with the very issue that we all struggle with when it comes to charismatic people. We ask ourselves "Is this person on an ego-trip or are they really spirit-filled?"

So it will not surprize you when I say that I have never liked the gospel portrayals of the Pharisees. Maybe its because, as a priest, I am one of those persons, like the Pharisees, whose job it is to defend the religious establishment -a role I assume with great ambivilance. I have suspicions that the gospel record indulges too heavily in journalistic "strawman-manship." There must be a reason for this- and there is, as I will point out.

It has frequently been said, and I believe with credibility, that we are all Pharisees at heart -in the pejorative sense in which they are portrayed in the New Testament.

We are all Pharisees because we all like to feel superior to others. Feeling morally superior is best, but if that doesn`t work for us we`ll settle for lesser kinds of superiority: better looks, more money, better wardrobe, better education- and so on. I am reminded of the story of a couple coming out of church and the wife, Alice, says to her husband, "Harry, did you see the ugly dress that the woman sitting in front of us was wearing ? And did you notice how much weight Mabel Brown has put on in recent weeks? I can`t figure out what that Smith girl sees in that boy friend of hers!" Harry replied, "no I didn`t notice those thing, Alice, I`m afraid I was dozing during the sermon." To which his wife replies, "Well, a lot of good church-going does you!".

Not so far from the mark, maybe. Now I ask you, when you get home from church what do you talk about? And just what percentage of your remarks might fall into the category of "charitable" and what percentage "gossip"? We can easily observe the external elements of our religious life without them having any impact upon our hearts. As Jesus said this morning, "Listen to me, all of you, and understand, there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile" ( Mark 7:14 ). Within its context this phrase had to do with Jesus`criticism of the elaborate practices that had grown up to guarantee what is called ritual purity- that is what one needed to do to prepare oneself to be in God`s presence. The Pharisees, the intellectual elite within Judaism, were known for their strictness in these matters.

But for Jesus and the Pharisees observing the purity laws and customs was not just about personal piety. The observance was about national politics. Jesus challenged the politics which flowed from this strict adherence to the purity laws. We lose sight of this political dimension when we reduce Jesus comment to the purely personal level. We take it to mean that the condition of the heart, whether debased or pure, is what faith is all about, not the externals. While there is much truth in this, we sometimes erroneously construe this to mean that religion is mostly a matter of inward piety rather than external behaviour, that one`s spirituality is valued more highly than one`s physical life in the world. Being saved is all about turning your heart over to Jesus Christ as if we each lived in some sort of splendid isolation from our social context.

The reading from the Letter to James is the corrective we need to prevent this distortion. This letter stresses the necessity of doing, not just hearing about or talking about, what God wants: "Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for the orphans ands widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world" ( James 1:27). In other words true religion is measured by the quality of our care for one another and all teaching, customs, and traditions exist to produce this caring. No amount of turning one`s heart over to Jesus Christ, if it does not result in this kind of action, is of the nature of true religion. When religious practises cease to bring this about they quickly become barriers to God and humanity.

But I do want to move on to the second way in which we are like the stereotypical Pharisee. This point is often missed and yet it is so totally relevant to most of the church and societal issues we deal with today.

While we know well how easily our actions can belie our beliefs and we all know well that "cleansing our hearts and minds" is what we need when we come before God as our opening prayer as Anglicans always reminds us; we may be less aware of the immense historical and political fall- out which Jesus' words have had over the centuries. I do not exaggerate when I claim that the challenge of Jesus to the Pharisees is one of the most significant incidents in the history of western civilization. Here`s why!

All human beings have a tendency to be exclusivist. We want to know who belongs to our "tribe"or who can be trusted. So groups create identity markers. The importance of the identity marker is directly related to the size of the group espousing it. Many identity markers we inherit: our race, language, culture and nationality, being the most significant. For many, but not all, religion is an identity marker inextricably bound up with language and culture. These things tell us who we are and they also tell us who does not belong. Depending on the situation, an outsider may be required to abandon their inherited identity markers in order to be accepted into a new group. Immigrants face this struggle on a regular basis.

Within all societies language and culture remain powerful identity markers. Religion less and less so within western societies. Within western societies, this would be more true of European countries, I would say, than of Canada, or even the United States. While this is a purely personal opinion, I would suggest that ethnicity still has the power to send most European nations to war but not Canada. I think that it is clear that, if French Canada and English Canada decide to separate there will be no war. Great Britain decided, in the Quebec Act of 1774, not to impose English Protestantism on French Canada, and we have lived peacefully, for the most part, with that compromise for the past 250 years.

But the remarkable shift of the last six decades is the introduction of the language of human rights. Indeed, historians usually point to the British philosopher John Locke when speaking of the what we now call human rights. John Humphries, a Canadian and key player in the writing of the 1948 United Nations Declaration, was one who insisted on the use of the language of human rights which runs like a golden thread throughout the entire United Nations Charter. On the national level the rights revolution has often been painful for majorities- the present same sex debate is one example. "When groups get rights they also get the right to change the national story, and when they do so, the results can be painful, Once rights are granted, the majority has to live with the truth, and the truth can hurt" ( Michael Ignatief The Rights Revolution, p118-119)

Let me digress a moment to comment on the relationship between human rights and Christianity. Fundamentally, the concept of human rights claims that all identity markers are secondary to the idea of the instrinsic value and dignity of every human being. The bible tells us that our instrinsic value comes from God. Starting in the Book of Genesis, scripture teaches that each us of is made in the image of God. Each of us is God`s unique and special creation. And it can also easily be traced to the further development of this idea in the politics of Jesus Christ and St Paul which shaped the Christian Church. Jesus taught that God`s covenant of grace goes beyond the Hebrews to all of humanity. And Paul insisted that new covenant be for gentiles as well as Jews. Baptism not circumcision would mark entry into Christ.

The Pharisees, you see, were thoughtful people, concerned about the future of Israel and they judged that the road to survival lay in circling the wagons and keeping the faithful safe. They believed that both God and the people needed to be protected from the hordes of unbelievers and non-Jews who surrounded them. Jesus believed the opposite and hence the conflict throughout the gospel between Jesus and the Pharisees.

Jesus inaugurated a new age, a new kingdom, by offering himself for all of human kind. If God is willing to become vulnerable to the point of death on a Cross, which is what the church teaches, then why should we worry about protecting God? And if God is willing to die for all people, not just the Jews, then why should we worry about a bunch of laws to set one people apart? And as Christians I think we need to apply this reasoning to ourselves. I don`t think God gives two hoots about whether any particular historical manifestation of the Christian Church survives. The church is not in and of itself indispensable, useful I hope, but not indispensable. God will never be without the means to be in relationship with humanity. Hopefully, the reason we will make improvements to this place will not be, first and foremost, to preserve some historical memory or ecclesiastical tradition, but to enable us to love God and serve humanity better.

Now back to human rights. Human rights is, in a way, the God-language of our time, the gospel of our time. In his Massey Lecture ( University of Toronto, 2000) Canadian writer-historian Michael Ignatief states that "rights talk ends up monopolizing our language of the good". (P 20, The Rights Revolution, The House of Ananasi Press Ltd, Toronto, 2000). Whereas, in ages past, the motivation to teach people the love of God was able to mobilize thousands of persons to live sacrificial lives serving as missionaries in distant lands, today the language of human rights is the language which motivates people to do the same.

The ideal of human rights challenges the strictures of nationalism, the credibility of wars, the rights of governments and majorities. The idea of human rights has caused churches to replace missionary societies with development agencies, has caused humanitarian agencies to flourish, and, in Canada, especially since the inauguration of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, drives a good deal of the political agenda. Ignatief points outs that constitutions do not create our rights; they recognize and codify the ones we already have, and provide the means for their protection. We already possess rights in two senses: either because our ancestors secured them or because they are inherent in the very idea of being human. This latter idea is, I believe, the outcome of the Judeo-Christian belief that all human beings are sacred-made in the image of God. Thus human rights are prior to governments. We do not rights because governments give them to us; we have rights because God gives them to us.

The bringing into being of the United Nations, in which Canada played a key role, was surely one of the most important accomplishments of the twentieth century. At this time the exclusivist forces against which it stands, ethnicity, fundamentalism,, and nationalism, are threatening to set the clock back.

But the clock will not be set back. Just as the politics of Jesus, although an apparent failure, would revolutionize the world within a few hundred years so too will the idea of inalienable human rights.

Jesus was right when he said that what is of value and eternal is inside of us. When he said that nothing outside us could defile us he was not talking about junk food and drugs, he was talking about the fact that what makes each of us valuable is not our nationality, our language, or race, or religion, it is the divine image inside of us. An image we all share and from which our infinite worth and dignity flows.

I cannot deplore, as some do, the new language of human rights, inadequate as it is, as a distraction for the Christian Church. Many see it as a plot to subvert God`s Word and draw us away from obedience. And yet I find that many of those who take this position use God`s Word, bolstered with tradition, as a law to exclude and to do just as Jesus accused the Pharisees of doing 2000 years ago. When Jesus died he died for the rich, the poor, the young, the old, heterosexuals, homosexuals, white, black, and all in between, for Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, atheists, even Anglicans -all God`s children and all intrinsically valuable.

Jesus brought a new language to his time and a new vision of human community. The New Testament calls it the Kingdom of God. This new language and vision unleashed upon the world a powerful force which survives despite distortions and abuse. I am proud to stand within a tradition that has done much to bring this new vision into being.