Daily Devotional • December 11
A Reading from Matthew 23:13-26
13 “But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you lock people out of the kingdom of heaven. For you do not go in yourselves, and when others are going in you stop them. 15 Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you cross sea and land to make a single convert, and you make the new convert twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.
16 “Woe to you, blind guides who say, ‘Whoever swears by the sanctuary is bound by nothing, but whoever swears by the gold of the sanctuary is bound by the oath.’ 17 You blind fools! For which is greater, the gold or the sanctuary that has made the gold sacred? 18 And you say, ‘Whoever swears by the altar is bound by nothing, but whoever swears by the gift that is on the altar is bound by the oath.’ 19 How blind you are! For which is greater, the gift or the altar that makes the gift sacred? 20 So whoever swears by the altar swears by it and by everything on it, 21 and whoever swears by the sanctuary swears by it and by the one who dwells in it, 22 and whoever swears by heaven swears by the throne of God and by the one who is seated upon it.
23 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill, and cumin and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. It is these you ought to have practiced without neglecting the others. 24 You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel!
25 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and of the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. 26 You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and of the plate, so that the outside also may become clean.
Meditation
Jesus laments the condition of the Scribes and Pharisees with a repeated exclamation of terrible sorrow. Unlike the English word “woe,” which is a noun, the Gospel’s Greek follows Amos’ Hebrew in using an exclamation, as if saying with a profound regret, “Alas!” Jesus is not promising a terrible thing for people, but rather pointing to something awful that is afoot, leaving him and us aghast. Us!For, remember that, in the face of Scribes and Pharisees, the “alas!” is about us too.
Part of this awfulness is contained in two words Jesus repeats each five times: hypocrisy (you “hypocrites!”) and blindness (“ye blind!”). These are not synonyms, but they are essentially related. Hypocrisy, a word which seems to originate in the context of an actor speaking behind a mask—therefore a “pretender”—is saying one thing and doing another, as Jesus describes it in yesterday’s reading. Hypocrisy is an incongruity between teaching and being. “Be kind,” a teacher might say, but then act cruelly; be generous, but act greedily; be humble, but act proudly; be chaste, but act in lust. The “blindness” in this is interesting. Jesus does not attribute hypocrisy here to malice, but to seeing everything the wrong way, and thus missing the truth altogether.
Hypocrisy ends in darkness: darkness about who I am, who God is, who others are, and where they are headed. The opposite of hypocrisy is not goodness, but honesty about all this. Jesus’ parable about the Pharisees and the publican demonstrates this (Lk 18:9-14). Was the publican/tax collector a hypocrite? He might have been, or ended up as one. But here, in the Temple praying in the back, he saw the truth: his sins, his need for God’s judgment and mercy. The publican stands in the “lowest place.”
The slow (or quick) slide into hypocrisy—dishonesty about one’s own self, others, and God—leads to an awful obscurity, that terrible paradox of a “day” of “darkness” (Amos 5:18-20), where nothing is seen for what it really is. Such a “day” is the Crucifixion, darkness for the whole world (Mt 27:45). When the centurion, however, speaks the truth—surely this is the Son of God! (Mt 27:54)—then the light is given an opening at last.
The Rev. Ephraim Radner, PhD is Professor Emeritus of Historical Theology at Wycliffe College at the University of Toronto. The author of over a dozen books, Dr. Radner was previously rector of the Episcopal Church of the Ascension, Pueblo, Colorado. His range of pastoral experience includes Burundi, where he worked as a missionary, Haiti, inner-city Cleveland, and Connecticut.
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Daily Devotional Cycle of Prayer
Today we pray for: