Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!

 "But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!  For you shut up the kingdom 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, it is 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.  He who swears by the temple, swears by it and by Him who dwells 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."

- Matthew 23:13-26

In our current readings, Jesus is in Jerusalem, and it is Holy Week.  He has made His Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem, cleansed the temple, and engaged in confrontation, questioning, and testing by the leadership, with His own challenging responses.  (See the readings from Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.)   In yesterday's reading, Jesus began what is known to be His last public sermon, in which He gives a sweeping indictment of the practices of the leadership, particularly the scribes and Pharisees.  Jesus spoke to the multitudes and to His disciples, saying:  "The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat.  Therefore whatever they tell you to observe, that observe and do, but do not do according to their works; for they say, and do not do.  For they bind heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on men's shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers.  But all their works they do to be seen by men.  They make their phylacteries broad and enlarge the borders of their garments.  They love the best places at feasts, the best seats in the synagogues, greetings in the marketplaces, and to be called by men, 'Rabbi, Rabbi.'  But you, do not be called 'Rabbi'; for One is your Teacher, the Christ, and you are all brethren.  Do not call anyone on earth your father, for One is your Father, He who is in heaven.  And do not be called teachers; for One is your Teacher, the Christ.  But he who is greatest among you shall be your servant.  And whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted." 

"But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!  For you shut up the kingdom 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."  In this final public sermon, Jesus names the hypocrisy in the practices of the scribes and Pharisees.  We should read it like a final warning, a caution, an effort of mercy on Christ's part.  In these first verses, Jesus declares woe in response to the neglect of salvation -- the salvation of their followers and their flock.  True salvation and illumination happens in the love of God, but we can see where the focus is here:  the pretense of long prayers, the greed of "devouring" widows' houses.   Such leaders with this focus cannot lead their flock to the kingdom they fail to enter.   The widows are among the poor and powerless, the vulnerable.

"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."  How can those with the focus Jesus' names bring their proselytes to the kingdom?  My study bible says that because the example of a leader can be so influential, leaders who don't love God can hinder others from finding God as well.  They must be held to a higher standard (James 3:1).  Every word in Christ's final sermon must be equally applied to those in His Church.  His words here warn of a kind of slippery slope:  things don't stay the same but become worse with successive orders of bad leadership.  There is a parallel to His teaching in chapter 12, also contained in a passage criticizing the leadership -- in that case, for their demand from Him for a sign.  He taught, "When an unclean spirit goes out of a man, he goes through dry places, seeking rest, and finds none. Then he says, 'I will return to my house from which I came.' And when he comes, he finds it empty, swept, and put in order.  Then he goes and takes with him seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter and dwell there; and the last state of that man is worse than the first. So shall it also be with this wicked generation" (12:43-45).

"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, it is 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.  He who swears by the temple, swears by it and by Him who dwells on it.  And he who swears by heaven, swears by the throne of God and by Him who sits on it."  Jesus alludes to the practice developed of swearing by the gold of the temple and of the gifts on the altar.  But there is a failure to recognize who it is who gives value to the gold and the gifts.  There is a failure to understand God in the temple, God on the altar.  Their own blindness to the first great commandment to love God determines the rest of the mistaken practices here, the failure to know God and thereby that from which all value comes.   The lack of understanding of gifts and value is clearly tied spiritually and psychologically to the focus on greed and the failure to grasp the kingdom, the "pretense" of long prayer for show.  There is a lack of awareness of the presence of God, and this permeates all things.

"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!"  Jesus again refers to particular practices and the hypocritical ways in which they are done.  Tithing is an ancient practice still done in the Church (Jesus says, "These you ought to have done . . ."), but they have neglected what was more important at the same time.  Herbs like mint and anise and cummin would be weighed for a tithe, but the weightier matters of the law are justice and mercy and faith.  My study bible says that practices such as tithing "can be deep expressions of faith, lead a person to deeper commitment to God, and safeguard our life in Christ, or they can be observed without ever taking them to heart and lead to condemnation."  To "strain out a gnat and swallow a camel" references  the practice of attaching strainers to the mouth of vessels in order to avoid accidentally swallowing an unclean substance.  Camel here is (obviously) used for its figurative sense as something tremendously large, just as it is in the expression, "easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle" (19:24).  They are scrupulous about the gnat, and blind to the camel:   a good image of the weightier matters they have neglected and left undone.

"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."  Scrupulous attention to ceremonial cleanliness here is made an analogy to the care for appearances more than the heart.  To cleanse the inside of the cup and dish, so that the outside may be clean also, is to take care of the matters of the heart, of faith and righteousness, mercy and justice.  They are failing to cleanse the extortion and self-indulgence that keep them and those they would lead away from God.  See also this reading, in which the scribes and Pharisees criticized Jesus' disciples for failing to practice ceremonial washing, and Jesus' teaching response to them in a public sermon. 

Hypocrisy, in Jesus' teaching here (and we remember this is a public sermon, His final public discourse) is a certain failure to practice the weightier matters of God, the things that mustn't be neglected.  Hypocrite comes from an ancient word that means "actor."  It is literally "beneath the mask" such as actors in ancient plays would wear as keys to the character they portrayed.  When piety is only used as mask, we are neglecting real salvation, inviting trouble.  It is the things of the heart -- which Jesus always emphasizes -- that determine where our salvation is.  That's not to say that practices and traditions are wrong.  Jesus does not say that (for example, He says of tithing practices above, "these you ought to have done").  But when they are used to neglect the weightier matters of the heart, they become a mask.  This strikes to the core of true repentance, which is an affair of the heart, the innermost depth of who we are.  Interestingly, Origen writes a commentary on this passage in which he states that all of these "good practices" in and of themselves do not bring us salvation.  We may congratulate ourselves on our good deeds, our tithing, almsgiving, fasting, psalms and prayers, but merely of ourselves as achievements these things don't give salvation.  He likens the heart to the altar  of which Jesus speaks which confers the true measure and value of the gift.  Origen writes of a person whose heart is truly in his practice that "his heart is the altar that sanctifies his offering which is the heart of the world. The heart and the conscience of such a man 'do not feel remorse but have trust in God,' because his own heart has been rightly formed. He does not rely on his gifts as such or the words of his prayers or of his psalms—although they may seem well composed and chosen from the Scriptures—but on the heart rightly formed."  A heart consecrated and devoted in love of God produces the gifts of great value.  But without such a heart the gifts bear little worth, and do not confer the hope of heaven, wherein lies "throne of God" which Jesus names above.  In these practices, Jesus teaches us, it is where the heart is that conveys their true depth, and value, and meaning.  Hypocrisy prevents such an event of truth to pass, even when one practices the most "noble" or "holy" or traditions.  Why is it important that we love first God with all our heart and soul and mind and strength?  Because this is what confers value and wisdom in all the rest, and gives us insight and enlightenment into true works of love for others.  It is what prevents hypocrisy, living for show, with a focus on whether or not others approve of us, making such opinions weightier than the opinion of God.  That first love is what confers value upon all the rest, and gives us the tools to truly practice faith and help others with our love and with wisdom.  Let us not neglect the weightier matters of the heart in all things.

Blind guides, who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel!

 "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!  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, it is 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.  He who swears by the temple, swears by it and by Him who dwells in 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."

- Matthew 23:13-26

 In our current readings, Jesus is in Jerusalem.  He has made the Triumphal Entry and cleansed the temple.  He has been quizzed by various groups of the temple leadership, with the Pharisees in particular seeking entrapment.  None have been able to do so.  But, speaking out and responding, Jesus goes on the offensive.  In yesterday's reading, we began Jesus' grand critique of the Pharisees.  Jesus spoke to the multitudes and to His disciples, saying:  "The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat.  Therefore whatever they tell you to observe, that observe and do, but do not do according to their works; for they say, and do not do.  For they bind heavy burdens hard to bear; and lay them on men's shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers.  But all their works they do to be seen by men.  They make their phylacteries broad and enlarge the borders of their garments.  They love the best places at feasts, the best seats in the synagogues, greetings in the marketplaces, and to be called by men, 'Rabbi, Rabbi.'  But to you, do not be called 'Rabbi'' for One is your Teacher, the Christ, and you are all brethren.  Do not call anyone on earth your father; for One is your Father, He who is in heaven.  And do not be called teachers; for One is your Teacher, the Christ.  But he who is greatest among you shall be your servant.  And whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted."

  "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."  My study bible tells us:  "The Pharisees perpetuate a systematic hypocrisy which creates a wall between people and God." 

"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!  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."  Jesus begins here with what my study bible calls "His eightfold indictment of the Pharisees."  He charges them with "inverting God's values and with being mean-spirited, greedy, ambitious, absorbed in externals, hypocritical, and blindly self-righteous."  And it suggests, "How much worse will it be for Christians who lapse into patterns of religious life similar to the scribes' and Pharisees'!"  Here in these particular verses, the suggestion is that the proselytes learn only greed, and predatory behavior on the weak, from such practices, and thus become "twice as much a son of hell" as their teachers.

"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, it is 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.  He who swears by the temple, swears by it and by Him who dwells in it.  And he who swears by heaven, swears by the throne of God and by Him who sits on it."  These verses teach us about the emphasis on material gain -- the gold -- in these practices, and the neglect of the more weighty matters of God.  It in fact, "devalues" the importance of God in creating all wealth and meaning of worth in the first place.  Jesus, of course, has warned us not to swear at all -- a wise practice, given the weightiness He invokes here of just what we might swear by.  He gives just a taste of the true measure of practices and of words.  But in these practices, the Pharisees have lost sight of God.

"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!"  Just before Jesus began His critique of the Pharisees, He answered a lawyer regarding the greatest commandments.  This criticism teaches that the Pharisees have failed to honor the greatest,  "You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind,"  and the second, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself."  My study bible -- which is the Orthodox Study Bible -- says:  "These warnings are especially important to Orthodox Christians.  This historic Church has maintained the ancient liturgical obligations, beautiful holy objects, specific rituals which externally guard righteousness, and imposing tradition, handed down through God-fearing fathers.  These rites can be performed, invoked, defended and passed on without ever being taken by faith to heart; or they can be helps, safeguards and doorways into the true life of Christ in us, which transforms us from glory to glory."  It adds here:  "Jesus is not against externals, but considers them of lesser significance.  The weightier matters are of trust and obedience to God in justice, mercy and faith."   Regarding Jesus' last line here in verse 24, we're told, "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."

"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."  Finally, we come to these important verses which will lead to the rest of the critique in tomorrow's reading.  These words remind us of Jesus' teachings from the Sermon on the Mount, earlier in Matthew's Gospel, when He taught His disciples to be self-aware, to "cut off" the things from themselves that cause difficulties -- meaning that we are to watch ourselves and cast away even habits that we are fond of if they get in the way of our membership in the Kingdom, God's work in us.   Here, He puts it to them that their failure to care about the "inside" and their emphasis on good appearance isn't going to help them at all.  "Extortion and self-indulgence" aren't categories for membership in the Kingdom, but rather that which must be cleansed -- the place to start in a true desire for good spiritual life.

The consistency of the Gospel reminds us once again that Jesus' teachings are really for everybody.  The things for which He has condemned the Pharisees as hypocrites are really part and parcel of His preaching right from the beginning, in the Sermon on the Mount.  He has taught His own disciples to "clean the inside of the cup," so to speak.  He has taught them not to swear at all.  And He has repeatedly warned them about hypocrisy.  Before He came to Jerusalem, He taught His apostles several times about leadership in which the greatest among them would be the servant of all.  The Church that Jesus sought to establish, this place of "living stones" which make up that Church, is in no way separate from His condemnation or criticism of the Pharisees.  In fact, His teachings are perfectly consistent and came first to those who would be His disciples, His apostles, and those who will make up His Church -- especially the hierarchy.  Therefore, as my study bible points out, these warnings in the form of the criticism of the Pharisees' practices come especially strongly to those who call ourselves His followers.  There is perfect consistently in these teachings.  And, truly, if Jesus' harshest criticism is to call someone a hypocrite (meaning "actor" in its original Greek root -- someone who wears a mask that covers up the true person underneath), then it is our duty to take it all to heart for ourselves.  You really can't go wrong by taking Jesus' teachings seriously when He says in answer to the lawyer's question that the two greatest commandments are first to love God and second to love neighbor, because, after all, this is His Church as well that He sought to establish.  His focus in His teachings to His disciples has consistently been on the heart, to take care of the "inside of the cup" so that the outside will be clean.  See, for example, His teaching that it's not what goes into the mouth of a person that defiles, but what comes out of the mouth that is rooted in the heart.  Therefore, it's up to us who call ourselves His followers to take all of this seriously, not as if they're mere words to those in the temple 2,000 years ago.  We still have the same problems and the same temptations.  It's still easy -- in fact, perhaps far easier, given the ways in which we are saturated with media and advertisements of all sorts -- to focus on the outside and neglect the inside, to seek after appearances rather than substance and simplicity.  Can our "yes be yes and our no be no?"   It's still a world in which we're going to be tempted and judged by appearances, one in which externals count, seemingly, for everything, in which integrity is something one really has to work at.  But we have help, a merciful and loving friend and advocate, we have His words and teachings, a way to step through our lives and avoid the stumbling blocks -- and a graciously loving, immensely longing father and brother (and guidance) who simply await our return.  The promise of love is the capstone on all the rest.  When we forget the first and greatest commandment, we lose sight of the greatest treasure of all, the love of God that teaches us to be "like Him" and awaits us at every heartbeat, to show us the way.  Jesus has already taught His disciples that "with God all things are possible."