Matthew 23: Like a Hen Gathers her Chicks

-

Everybody wants to be somebody, sometime.

Would you rather be the performer on the stage taking bows to a standing ovation or the man in the lobby of the theatre, wiping up the melted snow from the boots of the attendees with a big, fat mop and a dirty pail? Would you rather be the queen waving to her subjects from her carriage or the person who cleans up behind the horses in her stable?
Chapter 23 is aimed straight at the teachers of the law and the Pharisees, not because they are not learned keepers of the texts of the Talmud and the Torah, but because their knowledge and actions don't match. It's their hypocrisy that's in focus, and hypocrisy's effects are felt in proportion to the power that the hypocrite holds. Who cares if the homeless man professes to be honest and then steals a toque from Walmart? But when our leaders preach justice, mercy and faithfulness and don't themselves practice it, what has anyone to learn from them? What becomes of the congregation?
Matthew's gospel was for the instruction of the early church and his emphasis on the horizontal nature of the Kingdom can't be missed. “But you are not to be called ‘Rabbi,’ for you have one Teacher, and you are all brothers. And do not call anyone on earth ‘father,’ for you have one Father, and he is in heaven. Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one Instructor, the Messiah. The greatest among you will be your servant. For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

There follows a section titled Seven Woes on the Teachers of the Law and the Pharisees. As closely as I can ascertain what this list of their sins are—and for which they will suffer woe—are:
  1. You don't listen to my gospel and do your best to prevent others from hearing it,
  2. You make every effort to win converts to your thinking, and then turn them into worse hypocrites than yourselves,
  3. You respect the trappings of religion more than the one for whom they exist,
  4. You tithe meticulously, but pay little attention to real matters: justice, mercy and faithfulness,
  5. You're all gleam and polish on the outside, self-indulgent when you're not observed,
  6. Same as the above,
  7. You lament that your ancestors killed their prophets; meanwhile, you kill the prophet in your midst,
You continue to persecute the bearers of the truth as you have always done, Matthew sums up. How can you do this when God has sought to give you every good thing: “I have longed to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing.”

In the horizontal Kingdom, leaders are the ones who wash your feet, every person has value equal to every other one, people's public and private standards are indistinguishable.

In the horizontal Kingdom, the focus is not on niceties, but on justice, mercy and faithfulness. It's for each age to determine what is just, how mercy shall be exercised and what faithfulness requires, I guess.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Please hand me that Screwdriver!

-
Image
  The shower in our bathroom malfunctioned. When turned on, water sprayed out of places it shouldn’t, showering everything in the little room. It had to be fixed, and one look told me that a normally educated human with a normal battery of intelligence, education and experience should be up to performing a repair. I bought a new shower head and set to removing the offending part, but having no wrench that fitted the connecting nut, had to improvise with a pair of pliers, and a clumsy vice grip from my scanty tool collection. With my daughter’s help the repair did happen and blissful, uneventful showers were again possible.   Later in the same day, a screw holding the seat of a dining chair to its frame fell out, and although I do own a screwdriver with about 15 interchangeable screw tips, none would fit, and I improvised by forcing the issue with an inappropriate Phillips tip.   We all rely on whatever tools we own when it comes to navigating our way successfully through life in a co
Read more

Do I dare eat a peach?

-
Image
  All the talk of Joe Biden’s unfitness for the position of president of the USA must have others of his age—80 plus—wondering about their own fitness. Most of us octogenarians are well aware of our physical limitations, I think, but mentally? How can I know, for instance, if the lines I’m writing are logically sound, or if they fall somewhere between inane and gibberish? How can I know if my diminished capacity can be trusted to make such a judgment? And what if my friends are too kind to tell me when to close my laptop? Hearing an aging loved one tell the same stories to the same people every day has the able-minded nodding knowingly and cluckingly (that’s a word, isn’t it?). We’re obviously too kind and too hip not to know that people experiencing obvious dementia deserve to be “handled with care,” and we’ve devised places and strategies to preserve for them whatever dignity is still possible. But it’s not dissimilar from the pain-relieving, ointment applying, chair-exercising, p
Read more

A Sunday morning reflection on Sunday mornings

-
Image
  Eigenheim Mennonite Church, ca 1950 Exodus 20: 8-11: “Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work. But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God, in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy …” I sometimes think about this on a Sunday morning when I’m all dressed and ready for church, sitting in my recliner with a hot coffee on one armrest and a bowl of oatmeal on the other and the sun streaming in across the carpet and the Post Office closed, Bigway closed although the Coop Gas Station will undoubtedly be open. And I know the Seventh Day Adventists hold Saturday to be that seventh day and so gathered for worship yesterday and observed in their way what they understand is meant by “the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord.” And I did some Spanish study preparatory to a month in Mexico and learned that Saturday in Spanish is Sabado . In German, the se
Read more