O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her!

"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 23:27-39

In yesterday's reading, Jesus continued His grand critique of the Pharisees, and the ways in which they practice. Calling the scribes and Pharisees hypocrites, He claimed they shut up the kingdom of heaven to others, while refusing to go in themselves. He said they devour widows' houses, while they make long prayers for a pretense before others. "Therefore," He said, "you will receive greater condemnation." He told them, "You travel land and sea to win one proselyte, and when he is won, you make him twice as much of a son of hell as yourselves." He called them "blind guides" who taught others to swear by the gold of the temple, but not by the altar - and therefore with heaven the One who sits on the throne of heaven and sanctifies all gifts. He told them, "You pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, 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. Blind guides, who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel!" Finally, we read, "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 Pharisee, 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." Jesus continues His listing of all the reasons He condemns those who will keep others away from God, while they themselves fail in their duties of worship while hypocritically practicing that which allows them to make a show before others. This is His most scathing critique, but one that we follow with an interest in the analogy and His words of life that He will give to His followers. Here, hypocrisy in religious leadership is linked to that which kills; faith for a show before others, without the heart in depth of relatedness to the God who transforms and cleanses, is that which kills life, not adds to its true abundance in faith. Lawlessness we are to read as unrighteousness, a failure to truly follow the Law of God.

"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." Jesus is not adding guilt where it doesn't belong, to those who did not commit a crime, but is teaching what it is to follow in the footsteps knowingly of those who have. It is linked to the criticism in yesterday's reading, that they make proselytes who are worse than they are, "twice as much of a son of hell as you are." To continue walking in a way one knows is harmful is to take on a kind of guilt that didn't start with you, but neither does it end with you. A profound choice before all those with responsibility: how do we receive grace (or not)? What do we do with a wake up call?

"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." We continue in the vein of the salvation history of Israel. What will they continue? Time and again prophets have been sent, throughout their religious history! These are things in which the Pharisees and scribes are experts. Time and again, Christ Himself will send prophets, some of them among the listeners in the Temple. Again, we have a sense of the continuation of a pattern, a refusal to listen and to hear, to change, to take a God-given (and therefore loving) rebuke to heart. In this is guilt taken on; without reconsideration or repentance, the pattern continues and builds and magnifies. It speaks to the choice before each one of us, and especially the magnitude of the choice within those in leadership. It remains a timeless warning for all of us.

"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!'" In the Lord's cry here I hear a kind of desolation on His part, the kind of cry from One who loves and who is refused time and again. It is a warning that the time is here, it is both the fullness of time and the initiation of a new time: the rebuke of the Son incarnate is completeness and initiation. It is the last hope of the Father to send the One who will make all the difference, as in the parable He has told them earlier. It is both in the fullness of time that one will say, "Blessed is He who comes in the name of the LORD!" -- that is, the final Day of recognition and the wedding feast -- and it is also in repentance and true recognition of the Son, which may happen any time.

The fullness of time, and the new time initiated here means that the rebuke to the Son is a rebuke to the fullness of grace. They know better; in fact it is they who are the experts in Israel's spiritual history. "Your house is left to you desolate" is the cry of One for whom Judgment must and will come, who can not simply change to say that all things are acceptable. Love has a purpose and a meaning; it is not to accept that which harms forever, which keeps the good from its children, which perverts justice, and denies the love of a loving God. In the spurning of grace, the chance to repent and to change, to participate in loving relationship, we add to what has come before us. There are degrees to which we know and do not know. There are times when a wake up call will come again, albeit recovery may take a little more effort, a little more time, once we head further down that path away from love. But in our awareness of what truly is, we have the free will to reject absolutely the love of God, His call for grace, for turning back, His embrace, when we are too lost in our own self-image of power and position, too far away in our hearts to hear and respond. Love calls us, and continues to send its prophets, wise men and scribes. We are all in this worldly Jerusalem; can we hear the call of our Bridegroom?