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.
The temptation is often to, as the saying goes, throw out the baby with the bath water. In this passage, Jesus was going to reveal the depths of the corruption of the Pharisees. But in doing so he was careful to assert the legitimacy, not only of the law, but of the Pharisees themselves as legitimate interpreters of the the Jewish tradition. The chair of Moses was authority established by God, the law was immutable, and the traditions of understanding it and interpreting it were necessary. One should not therefore use the bad example of the Pharisees to justify rebellion against God. But neither should one wholehearted embrace the character of the Pharisees as a model to emulate.
For they preach but they do not practice.
To preach was easy, and rewarding. To practice, well, when one tried to do so it seemed frustrating at best. The Pharisees therefore did what we are all wont to do. They used their knowledge of the law as a substitute for living it out. They then used their own imagined superiority to assert their dominance over others.
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 law was meant to ensure the freedom of a people set free from slavery in Egypt. But when we subvert the law to merely human purposes, using the law to aggrandize ourselves, it does the opposite. It becomes endless rules and restrictions that oppress us because we cannot consistently live by them. In some sense, this happens to all of us when we discover that we are fundamentally unable to practice what we preach on our own strength or ability. Even Christians can forget that we are not meant to carry our burden alone and succumb to the temptations of the Pharisees. We ought not, and should remember that Jesus has done more than lifting a finger to help, he has invited us to share his own burden, the weight of which he himself bears. Without God to help us we too can be no more than Pharisees When we try to teach we can do no more than laying burdens on the shoulder's of others that we ourselves could not and did not bear. But Jesus himself received the culmination of these burdens, the ones given by the Pharisees and the ones we ourselves contributed, as the cross was laid on his own shoulders. This was the heavy yoke he bore for us, and which he now invites us to share as something which we can experience as easy and light.
For they preach but they do not practice.
Could the Pharisees have done otherwise, before the giving of the Spirit, before Jesus himself first bore the burden too heavy for humanity? How might they have responded better to their station and the challenges they faced? When they discovered that they could not embody the law to the degree of perfection required by God they might have responded with humility rather than pretense and bravado. When they saw that the burden was too heavy for them they could have become empathetic for those whom they taught. They could have taught the law from the perspective of humility and not from pride. Humility and empathy for those whom they taught could have allowed the law to be received by their hearers as something ordered toward freedom as it was meant to be, rather than a burden imposed from on high. They might have even lived a sort of inchoate faith that anticipated Jesus himself, prophetic signs that pointed the way to freedom.
All their works are performed to be seen.
We take comfort in the authority of the chair of Peter, the knowledge that we, unlike the Pharisees known the correct doctrines of the fullness of revelation. But are we not still very much like the Pharisees? When we are concerned primarily about how we appear, when our Christian life is merely a performance to be seen, we realize how inadequate is our ability to live that life. That is meant to make us turn toward Christ who bears our burdens. But it often makes us double down on appearances. This, in turn, makes us dangerous when we try to teach others. We impose burdens on others with no regard for them, because doing so makes us feel better about ourselves. We are meant instead to be less concerned with appearance and more with truth. When we experience our own limitations we are meant to turn to God with whom all things are possible. It is from this perspective of humility that we become effective in mission, able to imitate Jesus, and to bear one another's burdens as he first bore our own.
In short, we must not try to sit on the throne of our own lives as though we ourselves are master and king. We must regard ourselves as stewards, and give the throne to God himself. When he is at the center we will understand the law in context as a blessing and not a burden. We will not need to impose ourselves on others for the sake of a feeling of superiority. We will willingly decrease that he himself may increase. Our inability and limitations will therefore also shrink as we make room more and more for his power to shine through us.
The voice said to me:
Son of man, this is where my throne shall be,
this is where I will set the soles of my feet;
here I will dwell among the children of Israel forever.
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