Tuesday in the Third Week of Lent, March 1, 2021

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.”  By understanding what Jesus meant here, we can see the root of the bitterness of the scribes and Pharisees towards him.  The “chair of Moses” meant the authority of interpreting the Law for the people.  It had gone unfilled since the death of Moses, and, indeed, no one could fill it until the arrival of the Messiah.  To sit in that seat, that is, to claim to interpret the Law, would have signaled that someone was equating himself with Moses.  And this could not be done because “there arose no more a prophet in Israel like unto Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face” (Deuteronomy 34, 10).  Moses appointed Joshua to lead the Hebrews after he died, but he was to make no new laws, and he could not take the place of Moses.  The Pharisees, who arose during the times of the Maccabees, were the first to claim to interpret the Law, claiming that the Law was “living” and could therefore grow to fit modern Jewish life.  In effect, they sat themselves in “the chair of Moses” although they had no authorization to do so and were therefore usurpers.  The scribes, who were mostly of the Pharisees, assisted them in finding ways to justify their interpretations.  These, then, stood between the people and the Law, insisting that they had to follow it according to their way of thinking, which actually clouded the purpose of the Law and made it more difficult to follow.  Quite literally, “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.”

The Lord’s injunction, “Therefore, do and observe all things whatsoever they tell you, but do not follow their example”, may have been a rhetorical device to advise the people to do the opposite of what he was saying, as though to say, Therefore do all they say, but look at how they make heavy burdens for people, and how they do not practice the very things they teach.  Comparing them to Moses probably also had the effect of showing them for who they really were.  And far from living as champions of Jewish life, the Pharisees had gradually adopted many Greek customs, such as even naming their children with Greek and not Hebrew names.  

The Lord wants no part of these self-appointed busybodies and he warns his disciples from listening to them.  This is the context for his saying, “Do not be called ‘Rabbi.’ You have but one teacher, and you are all brothers.”  This was a title which they assumed for themselves.  Originally, a “rabbi” was simply one who taught the Law.  He was not a synagogue official, nor did he necessarily receive any special education or training.  He might speak in the synagogue on the Sabbath, but others would also speak, giving their views on the Scripture that was read.  The Lord will not have his disciples becoming these unofficial teachers.  Instead, he himself will commission them as teachers to speak, officially, in his name.  In the same way, the Lord told them, “Call no one on earth your father; you have but one Father in heaven.”  The disciple, especially a young one, would look upon his teacher as, and sometimes address him as, his “father”.  We see something of this in 1 Peter 5, 13, when St. Peter writes, “The church that is in Babylon, chosen together with you, salutes you. And so does my son, Mark.”  Peter does not mean that Mark is his biological son, but that he is a younger man who is always at his side as his interpreter and secretary.  The meaning the Lord has in mind, given the context, is that his followers should not become the “sons” of the Pharisaical rabbis.  Likewise, when the Lord says, “Do not be called ‘Master’; you have but one master, the Christ.”  “Master” in the sense of one who teaches not merely the Law but also how to live within his own group of followers.

“The greatest among you must be your servant. Whoever exalts himself will be humbled; but whoever humbles himself will be exalted.”  The Pharisee, whether as teacher, father, or master, lived to exalt himself, to be given “places of honor at banquets, seats of honor in synagogues, greetings in marketplaces, and the salutation ‘Rabbi.’ ”  His students — his “sons” — helped establish him as a man of importance both by their number and by their coming from respected families.  Every detail of his life was tended to gain these things, even to his phylacteries and tassels.  But the follower of Christ must not do this; rather they must become “the servant of all” for the sake of and in imitation of Jesus Christ.  As St. Paul says: “I made myself the servant of all, that I might gain the more. And I became to the Jews a Jew, that I might gain the Jews: To the weak I became weak, that I might gain the weak. I became all things to all men, that I might save all” (1 Corinthians 9:19–22).

Only the Son of God sits in the chair of Moses.  He does so not as a ruler on a throne dominating his subjects, but as one who has come to serve Amd to save.