“You’re in for trouble”
By Rev. Michael Stonhouse
Meditation – Thursday, December 14, 2023
Matthew 23: 13-26 (Forward, p. 46) CEV p. 1014
A passage (verses 13-33) that has the refrain ‘you’re in for trouble’ a whopping seven times certainly is guaranteed to get our attention, if for no other reason than to find out what the offenders did so wrong to reap such a widespread denunciation. (The offenders are none other than the Pharisees and teachers of the Law of Moses). So, what is it that they have done so wrong? Well, to start with, they are ‘show-offs’, play actors, hypocrites, claiming to be one thing while in reality being something else. But there is far more to it than just that:
a) Mistaken expectations. To these two groups of people admission into the kingdom was a matter of learning and following all the do’s and don’ts that the learned students of the Law had composed. To them, they discounted entirely the grace and mercy of God and saw it as a
matter of ‘earning’ the kingdom. That it was both impossible to ‘earn’ the kingdom and virtually impossible to keep all their rules and regulations, effectively barred most people from the kingdom;
b) Fake evangelism. They pretended to evangelize, to want converts to the Jewish faith, but then laid upon them such impossible burdens as to make the whole process null and void. Indeed, this is the very thing that the Judaizers of Acts 15 were up to. Peter counters this by
saying, “God made no distinction between us and them, for he purified their hearts by faith. Now then, why do you try to test God by putting on the necks of the disciples a yoke that neither we nor our fathers have been able to bear? No, we believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we ae saved, just as they are” (verses 9-11). But, underlying this there was yet another problem: the Judaizers were trying to win over these new converts to ‘their’ version of the faith!
c) Spiritual deception and blindness. They split hairs over the matter of oaths and the making and keeping of oaths by debating when the oath was valid and when it was not. But in actuality, their question boiled down to a question of evasion. That is, when could a person ‘get out’ of keeping an oath--for instance, when it was no longer
convenient and comfortable? So, really, it boiled down to a matter of personal integrity and honesty—before God and before each other;
d) Useless tithing. Tithing was a major tenant of the Jewish faith and it applied to all their major agricultural crops. However, it was not at all specific about such kitchen herbs as mint, dill and cumin. These were grown in very small amounts, usually little more than a handful. So, to tithe such things was to ‘major in minors’, to spend time and effort on things that mattered very little. And, what Jesus notes here is that they thereby missed out on the things that really mattered, things like justice, mercy and faithfulness;
e) Ritual cleanliness. Many of the Jewish rules and regulations of Jesus’ day had to do with being properly ‘presentable’ to the Lord for public worship, that is, to do with ritual cleanliness or uncleanness.
All sorts of things could make a person ritually unclean, unclean outwardly that is. But here Jesus questions what is inside the person: do those things really fit a person to be with God, or not? Or, is it something else, something inside ourselves?
f) Outward pretence. Continuing with the idea of uncleanness, the authorities were most contentious about whitewashing the exterior of roadside tombs just before the major festivals—in order to prevent any passer-by from accidentally having contact with a tomb and thus becoming unclean. Jesus then uses this image to describe His critics: outwardly they look pretty great, but inwardly, well, that’s another story. They are nothing but a pile of putrid, rotting bones!
g) Insincere remembrance. These authorities, the Pharisees and teachers of the Law of Moses claim to honour the heritage of their predecessors in the faith, particularly the martyrs, but in reality they continue in their way of life. They resist hearing and acting upon the very word of God and they persecute those who bring it. Nothing has changed, or at least, not with them!
Well, all of this is ‘quite a load’, quite a load of denunciations? But does any of this apply to us? (After all, they were addressed to two groups of people from far back in the past). However, let me suggest that they can apply to just as much as they, just as much today as yesterday. So, here they are, albeit cast in more modern terms:
a) Do we ever remake a religion that is marked by our freedom in Christ into a religion of do’s and don’ts, of confining and onerous obligations and expectations that rob people of their joy?
b) Do we try to ‘make others in our own image’ spiritually, expecting others to believe and worship just as we do, whether this has to do with denomination, worship style or whatever?
c) Do we readily make excuses to get out of things we promised to do, citing such things as busyness or forgetfulness or health or convenience as our reasons for not doing them?
d) Do we focus on the small, inconsequential things and miss out on the truly big things, things like how we treat others, how merciful or charitable we are in our dealings with them, and how faithful we are to our duties or our relationships?
e) Do we pay attention to our inner selves, to things that hinder our relationship with God and others—that is, to such things as greed or selfishness or wanting our own way?
f) Do we ever ‘worry’ about ‘appearances’, whether of ourselves or of
our churches, and ignore what is really there, what is really going on?
g) Do we ever resist hearing and acting upon the word of God?
I dare say that we can probably find ourselves, and our neighbours uncomfortably described there, somewhere. And so, yes, we like those of old, are indeed ‘in trouble.’ But Jesus is like a master physician: He only gives us the diagnosis of disease, the unsettling diagnosis of sin, in order to have us face it, renounce it and be healed. And so, in this wonderful season of Advent, may this be our goal and our adventure.
Forward notes: “But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you lock people out of the kingdom of heaven. For you do not go in yourselves, and when others are going in, you stop them” (verses 13-14).
“In Matthew 23, Jesus condemns religious leaders and scribes, a group of citizens the society respected greatly, for setting so many rules and barriers that no one can live up to them. He exposes them for failing to do what their roles dictate they should: to help people find God.
“This is a universally human error. All too often, we conceal help and guidance from others so that we can hold power over them. Or we withhold something—love, approval, knowledge, material goods—that we know another person desperately wants, just because.
“God notices. Woe to us who do that.”
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