Tuesday in the second Week of Lent, March 7, 2023

Matthew 23, 1-12

Jesus spoke to the crowds and to his disciples, saying, “The scribes and the Pharisees have taken their seat on the chair of Moses. Therefore, do and observe all things whatsoever they tell you, but do not follow their example. For they preach but they do not practice. They tie up heavy burdens hard to carry and lay them on people’s shoulders, but they will not lift a finger to move them. All their works are performed to be seen. They widen their phylacteries and lengthen their tassels. They love places of honor at banquets, seats of honor in synagogues, greetings in marketplaces, and the salutation ‘Rabbi.’ As for you, do not be called ‘Rabbi.’ You have but one teacher, and you are all brothers. Call no one on earth your father; you have but one Father in heaven. Do not be called ‘Master’; you have but one master, the Christ. The greatest among you must be your servant. Whoever exalts himself will be humbled; but whoever humbles himself will be exalted.”

“The scribes and the Pharisees have taken their seat on the chair of Moses.”  The Lord does not say, The scribes and the Pharisees have been appointed to the chair of Moses, but “have taken their seat” there.  That is, they usurped the “chair of Moses” with a galling presumption.  After the time of the Patriarchs, the Hebrews, the descendants of Abraham through Issac and Jacob and his sons, were led by Moses, appointed by God, and after him, Joshua, whom Moses appointed.  With the settling of the Promised Land, the various tribes would go to a local leader whom God would raise up to defend his people and decide their problems.  These were known as the Judges.  In a time of great crisis, the people went to the Prophet Samuel to ask God to give them a king, and he anointed Saul, and later, David, to rule over them.  Leadership did not come from the priests even after they were established in the Temple in Jerusalem.  Their primary work was the offering of sacrifice.  A guild of prophets, more or less centered in Jerusalem, would answer questions put to them by the people as to personal or familial problems.  To provide spiritual leadership, which the kings did mot do, in contrast to what the Patriarchs, Moses, and Judges did,  God raised up a series of Prophets, of which we might say the first was Samuel, though he is also counted as a Judge.  Following him came figures such as Elijah and Elisha, and then Isaiah, Jeremiah, and a number of others.  These spoke tirelessly and without fear, calling the people to repentance from their many sins, especially that of idolatry.  These Prophets, appointed by God and recognized as such by the kings and the people of the time, did fill the “chair of Moses”.  After the death of the Prophet Malachi some four hundred years before the Birth of Christ. the Greeks came and forced many Jews to abandon the ways of their fathers and to adopt Greek cultural practices.  The sect of the Pharisees formed at this time and forced their way to the chair of Moses to act as Israel’s new teachers.  But they had not been appointed by God to do this.  They took it on themselves to announce their own interpretation of the Law as the only authentic teaching.  

The Lord clearly reveals their illegitimacy but says to the people, “Therefore, do and observe all things whatsoever they tell you.”  That is, the people will not commit sin by obeying the teachings of the Pharisees, though they will not grow in holiness from doing so.  In time, the Lord will fully reveal the Law and its meaning, but until that time, the people should follow what the Pharisees taught.  At the same time, he cautioned them, “Do not follow their example. For they preach but they do not practice.”  The sign of authentic teaching is that the teacher follows his own counsel in private and in public.  The teacher who does not only shows their own faithlessness.  They may know what leads to salvation and they may be able to explain it to others, but they will not profit by what they know for it means nothing to them.  It is only something they know.  But salvation is much more than words, and the best teaching of all consists not in words but in works, especially the Death of our Lord on the Cross, the consistent lives of those consecrated to his Name in Holy religion, and the deaths of the martyrs who suffer in and for their God.

“Call no one on earth your father; you have but one Father in heaven.”  The Lord here emphasizes that Christians have one Father, and those who act as their fathers on earth share in this divine Fatherhood by caring for their children as gifts entrusted to them for a time.  

“The greatest among you must be your servant. Whoever exalts himself will be humbled; but whoever humbles himself will be exalted.”  The Lord came to serve, and so those who seek to serve him must lower themselves even more than the Lord did.  All service is for the sake of serving the Lord Jesus so that we seek the good of others, especially through prayer.  The greatest servants are those who are never seen, who stand in the background and do the hard work that is never seen or imagined though the results of the hard work are.  This what the work we do when we dedicate ourselves to prayer, without which no one is saved, and through which God is glorified.