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!"

 

 "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 

 

We are currently in the middle of chapter 23 of St. Matthew's Gospel.  In this chapter we are given Christ's final public sermon.  In it we find a grand critique by Christ of the ways of the Pharisees and scribes.  Yesterday we read that Jesus said, "But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!  For you shut up the kingdom of heaven against men; for you neither go in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in.  Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!  For you devour widows' houses, and for a pretense make long prayers.  Therefore you will receive greater condemnation.  Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!  For you travel land and sea to win one proselyte, and when he is won, you make him twice as much a son of hell as yourselves.  Woe to you, blind guides, who say, 'Whoever swears by the temple, it is nothing; but whoever swears by the gold of the temple, he is obliged to perform it.'  Fools and blind!  For which is greater, the gold or the temple that sanctifies the gold?  And, 'Whoever swears by the altar, is it nothing; but whoever swears by the gift that is on it, he is obliged to perform it.'  Fools and blind!  For which is greater, the gift or the altar that sanctifies the gift?  Therefore he who swears by the altar, swears by it and by all things on it.  And he who swears by heaven, swears by the throne of God and by Him who sits on it.  Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!  For 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!  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.  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."  Jesus continues His condemnation of the murderous hypocrisy of the scribes and Pharisees.  Their outward piety, while nominally good in upholding the teachings of the Law, masks an inward faithlessness and even murderous greed.  Thus, inside they are full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness.  As Jesus says, they outwardly appear righteous to men, but inside are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.  Moreover, just as Jesus told in the parable of the Vineyard, the many servants sent by God (the prophets and righteous) were persecuted in the days of their fathers.  So while they may outwardly honor the martyrs of the past, they witness against themselves that they are "sons of those who murdered the prophets," meaning that despite their words, they follow in the same footsteps as those murderers, and are therefore their "sons."

 

"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."  Jesus speaks here as the Son who was sent after all the servants (the prophets and righteous) who previously came calling the people back to God.  He prophesies of the persecutions to come from these men, and the resulting effect:  "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."  Regarding Zechariah, son of Berechiah, some patristic commentary teaches that this was the prophet at the time of Joash the king (2 Chronicles 24:20-22).  But others teach that Jesus is referring to the father of St. John the Baptist, who, according to tradition, was also murdered in the temple.  Indeed, according to commentary by Fr. Stephen De Young, the latter understanding is correct, that Jesus speaks here of the father of St. John the Baptist, for there is nothing in the Old Testament indicating that the prophet at the time of Joash was murdered, but on the contrary lived a long life.  

 

 "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!'"  My study Bible comments that God's deepest desire is the reconciliation of God's people, but most do not want God.  The desolate house refers both to the temple and to the nation itself, for this Greek word broadly meaning house can also be used to mean "family" or "tribe" (see Psalms 115:12, 135:19).  Both the temple and the nation, my study Bible says, will be without God's presence once Christ has departed.

 

 It's very easy to minimize the effects of hypocrisy in our lives.  It's such a commonplace thing, on a varying scale, that it's easy to excuse or pass off as simply the difficulty of living our lives authentically within our faith.  But the Church has its own ways of coming to terms with the ways in which we fall short of living the life of faith which Christ teaches us.  Repentance is a way of healing what is wrong in our lives, where we've made wrong turns, and forgiveness is held out by a loving God.  But when we are frozen in that repentance, for whatever reason, we unfortunately can become hardened in that place, even opposed to Christ, even despising and hating what is good.  The practices of the scribes and Pharisees described by Christ are such things as are the outcome of a refusal of repentance, of heeding the call back to God.  For God has called from the beginning for a righteousness not merely of outward practice, but of faith.  Outward practice is important, for we as human beings are physical beings; what we do with our bodies makes a great deal of difference, and our bodies are not separated from soul and spirit but we are of one creation by God.  It is the split itself, in these cases, that is the problem, and leads to evil.  And this is what Jesus condemns and is talking about.  When the outward practices of these religious leaders shield practices that defy the purposes of God, the corruption only results in a deepening problem.  Jesus describes greed and envy, murderous intention when authority or public position is threatened, and a whole history of such repeated through time, and culminating in the present moment in which He speaks these words in the temple during Holy Week.  He speaks as the Son, sent by the Father to call people back, the age of the prophets of the Old Testament period having culminated in St. John the Baptist.  But the refusal to repentance has consequences.  Jesus will hold out the possibility of forgiveness through repentance, and through all the practices of the Church, starting with Holy Baptism.  But a refusal will only leave things where they are, a constant refusal of God's grace and mercy.  Effectively, this refusal is itself a kind of blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, and without repentance will not result in spiritual healing and salvation.  So, we find ourselves today asking what this has to do with us.  But, as my study Bible says, it has everything to do with us.  Hypocrisy hasn't left us, and neither has corruption.  In our Holy Bibles we read of Abraham whose faithfulness was counted to him as righteousness; St. Paul explains that this remained essential even after the Law came, for we find it in David (see Genesis 15:6; Romans 4:3-8), and so it remains as well for us.  Without hearts drawn toward God, we miss the point of our faith, we miss the righteousness of Abraham, we run the risk of a hypocrisy that refuses God's call to change and repentance, healing and, effectively, salvation itself.  Let us take Jesus' words to heart, for He leaves His scathing testimony to us as the faithful Witness (Revelation 1:5).