This Coming Sunday's Text (Matthew 23:1-12): A First Consideration

During the recent GodBlogCon gathering in Los Angeles, Tod Bolsinger suggested that one of the ways pastors could use their blogs to help their congregations' spiritual development was to invite them into considering the Biblical texts from which the pastors are planning to preach on succeeding Sundays.

Tod also challenged we pastors to regard our blogs as places where we dare to present the "first drafts" of our thoughts, inviting feedback.

I loved this idea!

So, obeying the rule that says, "Thou shalt steal good ideas," this is my first consideration of the text for this coming Sunday. It's one which legions of preachers, those who employ what are called lectionaries--essentially, Bible lesson plans--will use as the basis for their preaching, Matthew 23:1-12.

One of the things that most strikes me in this passage is how Jesus condemns what two commentators call, "religious ostentation." Talmudic rules gave specific regulations about how a student (the word in the Greek of the New Testament is mathetes, which we usually translate as disciple) was to relate to his teacher (or, rabbi). The disciple was to be in a position of utter deference to the rabbi. These regulations told disciples that they couldn't walk beside the rabbi. Nor could they initiate greeting him.

Jesus appears to condemn all this deference. This seems to be the case even allowing, as two commentators, Albright and Mann point out, Jesus' words were not geared to the world at large, only to those who belonged to Jesus' followers. They were to regard Jesus only as their teacher. They were only to regard the Father in heaven as their father. To give such deference to earthly people seems to be a kind of idolatry or aggrandizement that's contrary to the humble subordination to God to which Christ calls us. Albright and Mann, in fact, link verse 12 to Proverbs 29:23:

A person’s pride will bring humiliation,
but one who is lowly in spirit will obtain honor.

Here, as in many other places, we see Jesus condemning those who use religion as a way of elevating themselves over others. That's why He condemns those who like to be seen wearing phylacteries. These were little leather boxes which religious leaders wore on their arms or foreheads. They contained sheepskins on which were inscribed a passage from the Old Testament Scriptures, usually Deuteronomy 6:8 or Exodus 13:9, 16. These passages spoke, it would appear metaphorically, of keeping the Scriptures in the forefront of our thinking. But the Pharisees and Scribes used this call to devotion to God as an occasion for engaging in what I call "showdog faith": to be seen as being faithful without actually having to be faithful.

Of course, all of faithful people--including me--wrestle with hypocrisy, with not living the faith we confess. But Jesus singles these religious elitists out for laying heavy legal burdens on others without themselves being willing to obey God in spirit as well as in word. As Albright and Mann put it, among the Pharisees, "the minutiae were observed, but God's love, of which the Law was an expression, was easily forgotten."

Lest we forget in the midst of Jesus' withering criticism of the Pharisees, He doesn't condemn the Law that God has given the human race. The Law, designed to show us the perameters within which life is good, really is an expression of God's love, in the same sense that a parent's admonition to a child not to play in the street is not just a restriction, but an expression of love.

It's interesting too, that the passage begins with Jesus telling His hearers to obey what Scribes and Pharisees teach because they "sit on the seat of Moses." I want to unpack this more in my study this week. But Jewish tradition held that "councils of three" (like Jesus' "two or three gathered in My Name") were like "council of Moses," the great Law-Giver (more appropriately the Bringer-of-God's-Law).

Albright and Mann add that the "Moses Seat" was a place from which discourses on God's Law were given in the temple in Jerusalem?

Questions? Ideas? Let me know in the comments section below.