But you were not willing!

"Blind guides, who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel! Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you cleanse the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of extortion and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisees, first cleanse the inside of the cup and dish, that the outside of them may be clean also."

"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness. Even so you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.

"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! Because you build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the righteous, and say, 'If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets.' Therefore you are witnesses against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets. Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers' guilt. Serpents, brood of vipers! How can you escape the condemnation of hell? Therefore, indeed, I send you prophets, wise men, and scribes: some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues and persecute from city to city, that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. Assuredly, I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation.

"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing! See! Your house is left to you desolate; for I say to you, you shall see me no more till you say, 'Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!' "

- Matthew 23:24-39

In the readings for Monday (Whoever exalts himself will be humbled) and Tuesday (Fools and blind!) we have been going through Jesus' indictment of the scribes and Pharisees, and the practices with which he feels they are misleading those they are meant to lead in worship. Today, we continue with this list of faults that Jesus names for the multitudes and his followers. This is an open assertion against the leadership, after they have begun to seek to arrest Jesus and entrap him with their own questions.

In the past couple of commentaries, I have quoted from a note which applies across the board to this series of readings, and here I will repeat again: "In his eightfold indictment of the Pharisees (vv. 13-36), Jesus charges them with inverting God's values and with being mean-spirited, greedy, ambitious, absorbed in externals, hypocritical, and blindly self-righteous. How much worse will it be for Christians who lapse into patterns of religious life similar to the scribes and Pharisees'!"

I've included verses 24-26 in today's reading although they aren't part of the Lectionary reading. "Blind guides, who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel! Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you cleanse the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of extortion and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisees, first cleanse the inside of the cup and dish, that the outside of them may be clean also." My study bible notes, "In the ancient world, strainers were attached to the mouths of decanters, because any liquid might contain foreign matter. Pharisaic observance used the strainer also to strain out any ritually unclean substance which one might accidentally consume. This gnat and camel analogy points out how carefully the scribes and the Pharisees observed the minutiae of the Law, while neglecting its most significant aspects." It is, in fact, similar to Jesus' teaching of the two great commandments to the Pharisee lawyer who had sought to quiz him. With endless debating about the minutiae of the Law, they lose sight of the forest for the trees. It is the same criticism continued from yesterday: "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you pay tithe of mint and anise and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. These you ought to have done, without leaving the others undone." The greater matters remain unseen and undone. The "inside of the cup" is the inner life of the person. Being fastidious about sin or error is much more than following the Law, observing ritual - the true aim of all law or ritual is that the inside of the person, devoted to God with all their heart and soul and mind, becomes cleansed. They are aids in that goal of the transformation of the heart, worship with the heart. In this relationship, we are led to change, to transform - to practice repentance or "metanoia" in the Greek, which means "change of mind." It is this cleansing the inside of the cup to which Jesus refers. The outside is again "acting" for show, for appearance, as in the true meaning of the word hypocrite ("actor").

"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness. Even so you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness." This is an indictment indeed. To be dead is to lack the "life in abundance" which Jesus has sought to bring to his followers. But there is more to this than what they lack, there is also their predatory spirit - the greed and self-centeredness, and the loss to those upon whom they would prey in their selfishness. It is not only the burdens that impose hardship on those whom they would lead, but leading astray the "little ones" is to lead them away from life as well. The "whitewashed tombs" are signs of the greatest hypocrisy, religion of appearance and not true substance of love and righteousness.

"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! Because you build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the righteous, and say, 'If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets.' Therefore you are witnesses against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets. Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers' guilt. Serpents, brood of vipers! How can you escape the condemnation of hell? Therefore, indeed, I send you prophets, wise men, and scribes: some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues and persecute from city to city, that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. Assuredly, I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation." And, as we have come more and more deeply into Jesus' assertions of outrage at their behavior, we get into the most serious territory here. He calls them the descendants of those who murdered the prophets, who refused to hear criticism, and practiced even murder between the temple and the altar. Jesus will send his own prophets, wise men, and scribes whose blood will testify against their true identities as sons of the other murderers. For show, they hold up the martyrs of the past as those whom they themselves would have honored, but their actions belie their true intent, their murderous nature. There is an important understanding here of justice and of judgment - as well as what we choose to truly love. If we are not honest with ourselves, if everything is for outward appearance, then we have failed to understand who we are and we have no chance of practicing repentance or change. Our hearts are untouched by relationship, except to that which we uphold - in this case, the actions of those who murdered the prophets who came before Christ. This is, in effect, Jesus' indictment made directly to the Pharisees that was also reflected in the parables he put to them about the wedding feast (see Many are called) and The Vineyard. They choose to be what they deny: they are allied with those who have refused to hear the word of God, who have denied the action of the Spirit in the past. Thus, Jesus calls them "the fathers" of the Pharisees. We must be careful what we choose - for in that participation we also define ourselves.

"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing! See! Your house is left to you desolate; for I say to you, you shall see me no more till you say, 'Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!' " And finally, the prediction of the destruction of Jerusalem. Tied together with his indictment of the Pharisees - especially the preceding verses about the murder of the prophets and their identification with those who did the same before them - this places the blame on the leadership for what is to come. They have misled the people, repeatedly rejecting those who have "come in the name of the Lord." And finally, the Son is rejected, just as in the story of the Vineyard. By seeking to hold onto what they have, and refusing to see what has been offered, they will lose all. The great love expressed here in these words, "How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!" tells me of Jesus' own pain here. This is not something that he wants, but it is truly the result of the choice accepted by the leadership, and their alliance with those who have done the same before.

I think we get a sense of Jesus' pain here over Jerusalem, in his words describing himself as a mother hen who wishes to gather her chicks and protect them under her wings. But it is his children, in effect, who have rejected him. They were not willing to listen, nor to follow, nor to accept the great love and the great gift that was offered. This is leadership that has led astray those under their care through such rejection, through hard-heartedness. And the power of judgment and of our free will choices is clearly absolute, in the sense that Jesus can do nothing to change what they have chosen. Their free will is all. His pain does not matter in this sense - no matter how deeply he would desire things to be otherwise, to take them all under his wings of protection and guidance. His love cannot save those who do not accept it. They must, in fact, accept him in order to realize that love and care, that salvation which is, in fact, restoration to the relationship of love. Your house is left to you desolate; for I say to you, you shall see me no more till you say, 'Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord! This expresses the sadness of the One who knows they must choose for themselves, no matter how he wishes it were otherwise. Even Christ cannot and does not compel others to love him. Our free will is absolute - and we reap what we sow. Mercy is infinite, but in terms of our ability to choose perhaps we are limited: we lead ourselves down a long road of refusal and rejection to the point of hard-heartedness that may not be reachable. But we always have a choice. We have to listen to our hearts. Greed, envy, and selfish desire get in the way, and so do the choices we have made which we no longer wish to face - and so they remain unchanged, untransformed. It is like the rich man for whom entry into the kingdom was compared to a camel going through the eye of a needle. For men, this capacity may become impossible. But with God all things are possible.