A man was being tailgated by a stressed out woman on a busy boulevard, when suddenly, the light turned yellow, just in front of him. He did the right thing and stopped, even though he could have beaten the red light by accelerating through the intersection.
The tailgating woman hit the roof, and the horn, screaming in frustration as she missed her chance to get through the intersection.
As she was still in mid-rant, she heard a tap on her window and looked up into the face of a very serious police officer. The officer ordered her to exit her car with her hands up. He took her to the police station where she was searched, finger printed, photographed, and placed in a holding cell.
After several hours, a policeman approached the cell and opened the door. She was escorted back to the booking desk where the arresting officer was waiting with her personal effects.
He said, I'm very sorry for this mistake. You see, I pulled up behind your car while you were blowing your horn, flipping off the guy in front of you, and cussing a blue streak at him. I noticed the 'Choose Life' license plate, the 'What Would Jesus Do?' bumper sticker, the 'Follow Me to Sunday-School' bumper sticker, and the chrome-plated Christian fish emblem on the trunk.
Naturally, I assumed you had stolen the car.
Jesus is still in the Temple. He’s just withstood a day of attacks. Pharisees, Priests & Elders, Sadducees, Herodians all confronted him at some point trying to make him say something that they could hold against him, something that would turn the crowds against him or that they could use to charge him with a crime. Needless to say, Jesus disappointed them. He turned every question they asked into an attack on their own motives and their own hypocrisy.
In last week’s reading, the Pharisees sent a lawyer for one last try. Again Jesus answered the challenge and after he summed up all of the Jewish scriptures in two commandments (Love God with all your heart, soul, &mind and Love your neighbor as yourself), Matthew’s Gospel tells us that they didn’t dare to ask him anymore questions.
Now Jesus is on the attack. All day on this Monday, he’s taken all comers and sent them packing. After he embarrasses his accusers one last time, they finally leave him alone. We’re not told they leave, but I imagine they didn’t want to stick around after the thrashing they’d taken.
Now Jesus, after enduring efforts to discredit him in front to the crowds, addresses the crowd himself. He starts off telling them that the Pharisees “sit on Moses’ Seat”. There are different ideas of what this might mean. Jesus may be speaking figuratively. He might mean that the Pharisees gained their authority from the line of Moses. So they have authority to teach the law because God gave the authority to Moses and it passed down through the generations to them. It could also refer to a literal seat. Pharisees taught in the synagogues. They were not priests, they were not ordained. They were very knowledgeable in the Torah. They spent many hours studying Torah and studying the oral traditions, or interpretations of Torah. Some think the Pharisees sat on the “seat of Moses,” a marble chair in the synagogue where the teacher would sit. So Pharisees would sit and teach from these chairs.
Regardless, what Jesus is saying here is that the Pharisees have the authority to teach Torah. It’s an interesting comment for Jesus to make. Jesus has spent the better part of Matthew’s gospel railing against the hypocrisy of the Pharisees. Now he tells the crowd, these guys have the authority, they sit on the seat of Moses, and so you should do what they say. You should follow their teachings. Really?
I mean, these are the same people Jesus called hypocrites and accused them of being the blind leading the blind. He spoke against them time and time again in Matthew’s gospel. And now he tells the crowds they teach with authority. Listen to them.
Let me pause here for a second. Who were the Pharisees? We talk about them a lot. We read about them over and over again in the Gospels and in Acts. But who were the Pharisees? Judaism in the 1st century was divided into 4 main groups. The Pharisees were one of those groups. The others were the Sadducees, who were mostly upper-class, and were closely linked to the Temple. They were priests. The Essenes were a sort of fundamentalist group. I think they might be the most interesting. They actually removed themselves from mainstream Jewish culture. They lived in a fortress at a place called Qumran. If you have a chance look them up. Then there were the Zealots. This group was focused on getting Rome out of Judea. They spent this time plotting and carrying out revolts against Rome. After the destruction of the Temple and the siege of Jerusalem, the Pharisees were the only of the four groups that survived. Just an interesting fact.
So Jesus tells the crowd and his disciples that they should listen to the Pharisees and do what they say. But he gives them a little caveat. Do what they say, but don’t do what they do.
So Jesus breaks out the old cliché, “Do as they say, not as they do”. Or maybe it wasn’t an old cliché then, maybe it was just good advice. Then he gives them another cliché, “They don’t practice what they preach.” So, he’s calling them hypocrites again. Then he goes on to explain what he means.
They create heavy burdens for others but do not do anything to help others lift them. This can be seen as a direct contrast to what Jesus said in Matthew 11. There Jesus said, “My yoke is easy, my burden is light.” Yoke was used in this time to refer to a rabbi’s particular interpretation of scripture. Jesus is telling the crowd that not only is the interpretation given by the Pharisees difficult and burdensome, they stressed ritual purity. They used the oral tradition to put even more restrictions on what was and wasn’t lawful. Not only that, Jesus also says that the Pharisees weren’t even doing the things they were requiring of others.
Then he goes on to talk about what they do. And what he tells the crowd is that the Pharisees are braggarts. They “make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long.” Huh? These were symbols of piety or holiness. A phylactery is a small box on a leather cord. The box is tied to your head or your arm and it contains slips of paper with scriptures written on them. Often it was the Shema that we talked about last week or other memorized prayers. The fringes referred to are the tassels of a prayer shawl. These were common and Biblical practices. They were seen as acts of devotion to God. Jesus is not denouncing the practices of phylacteries and prayer shawls, his beef is with their motivation. He says the Pharisees use broad phylacteries and long fringes. In other words, they are doing these things for one purpose, to be noticed by men. They are not doing these things as any sort of act of devotion; it is an act of pride. They want people to know how holy they are. It’s about their motivation.
Well, how does this relate to us? It’s nice to get a little history lesson, in fact it’s important. But then we have to figure out what it means for us here and now. I wonder what the equivalent of phylacteries and fringes would be for the modern Christian? Maybe bumper stickers? Little metallic fish on the back of a car? A WWJD bracelet? None of those things are bad. Just like the practice of wearing phylacteries and prayer shawls was not bad. It’s all a matter of motivation. And it’s a matter of lifestyle. If you’re all show, which seems to be Jesus’ complaint against the Phairsees, they talked a good game and wore all of the right accessories, but they didn’t do anything. They were too worried about looking good and being held in high regard and seen as important and righteous that they neglected those in need. Instead of doing the work of the kingdom, they were working on padding their resumes. Making sure they had the right titles and looked the part.
Well, there’s a good parallel for many modern Christians. Trying so hard to look the part but not doing anything. They spend more time working on their image than on doing the work of the kingdom.
Jesus sends with these 2 statements: “The greatest among you will be your servant. All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.”
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