Monday in the 21st Week of Ordinary Time, August 28, 2023

Matthew 23, 13-22

Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You lock the Kingdom of heaven before men. You do not enter yourselves, nor do you allow entrance to those trying to enter. “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You traverse sea and land to make one convert, and when that happens you make him a child of Gehenna twice as much as yourselves. “Woe to you, blind guides, who say, ‘If one swears by the temple, it means nothing, but if one swears by the gold of the temple, one is obligated.’ Blind fools, which is greater, the gold, or the temple that made the gold sacred? And you say, ‘If one swears by the altar, it means nothing, but if one swears by the gift on the altar, one is obligated.’ You blind ones, which is greater, the gift, or the altar that makes the gift sacred? One who swears by the altar swears by it and all that is upon it; one who swears by the temple swears by it and by him who dwells in it; one who swears by heaven swears by the throne of God and by him who is seated on it.”

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites.”  If the Lord’s rebuke of the scribes and Pharisees is a continuation of his teaching about them in Matthew 23, 2-12, then he is still speaking to “the multitudes and his disciples” as per 23, 1, and so he is not addressing them directly, though his words would surely get back to them.  The Lord was at that time speaking on the Temple grounds, likely near the treasury.  

The Lord rebukes the scribes and Pharisees for two main reasons.  First, he publicly points out their egregious errors and sins so that they must repent or lose face with the people, and also to convert them so that they would not be lost.  Second, he distinguishes the sins of the leaders from the sins of the followers, which are lesser, and by doing this he draws the people to act virtuously and not in the way of their leaders.  His rebuke is sharp.  He calls the scribes and Pharisees “hypocrite”, which is from a Greek word used in the Septuagint to translate the Hebrew word for “godless”.  The scribes and the Pharisees act as though there is no God to watch them or to hold them accountable.  There mind is that of the fool who is quoted in Psalm 14, 1: “There is no god.”  Further in the Psalm, the author describes such as these: “Their throat is an open tomb; with their tongues they act deceitfully: the poison of asps is under their lips. Their mouth is full of cursing and bitterness; their feet are swift to shed blood. Destruction and unhappiness in their ways; and the way of peace they have not known: there is no fear of God before their eyes.”  This is the way of those who reject God.

“You lock the Kingdom of heaven before men. You do not enter yourselves, nor do you allow entrance to those trying to enter.”  despite their godlessness, they have usurped the teaching authority and “lock” the Kingdom of heaven from others by their piling up of burdensome laws and rules and by their own contemptible example.  “You traverse sea and land to make one convert, and when that happens you make him a child of Gehenna twice as much as yourselves.”  In general, the Jews did not proselytize, though they might do so if a prominent Gentile showed interest in the worship of the true God.  But rather than convert him to true Judaism, they converted him to Pharisaism.  “If one swears by the temple, it means nothing, but if one swears by the gold of the temple, one is obligated.”  It is this loose practice of swearing and the mess of arbitrary rules around it that our Lord forbids in his Sermon on the Mount.  He uses this occasion to point out that it is the Temple that is sacred, the altar that is sacred, not the gold or the sacrifice.

You and I are consecrated to God through our baptism even more so than the old Temple was consecrated to him through a multitude of animal sacrifices, so let us appear before the world covered with the gold of good deeds.