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Woe to you Pharisees!
You pay tithes of mint and of rue and of every garden herb,
but you pay no attention to judgment and to love for God.
Again we see the Pharisees acted with extreme precision in minor matters that didn't have an effect on their hearts. They exercised this apparent control and religious mastery as a way to express the completeness of their religious practice.
These you should have done, without overlooking the others.
Jesus did not upbraid the Pharisees for their attention to detail. Rather, he pronounced a woe that these minor things were severed from the most important ones, like jewelry decorating a body without a head. Without attention to justice and to love for God there was no way for anything else to remain in balance or to be done according to the original intention of the law, which was precisely love for God and neighbor. Indeed we see elsewhere that even their pretense of tithing was actually done in a way that is not only not indifferent to the purpose of the law, but directly contrary to its purpose.
But you say, ‘If a man tells his father or his mother, “Whatever you would have gained from me is Corban” ’ (that is, given to God)— then you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or mother, thus making void the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And many such things you do (see Mark 7:11).
The Pharisees were concerned above all with appearances, with seats of honor, and greetings. They wanted to appear as those who were doing everything the right way, who had a correct understanding, and who were generally superior to the unwashed masses. And to that end they could be quite deceptive. People were all too likely to fall for the presented personas without realizing the poison within.
You are like unseen graves over which people unknowingly walk.
Jesus may be insulting us as well by the proclamation of these woes. We tend to focus on the minutia we can control rather than on the deep matters of the heart that are forever beyond our power and that can only be tamed by the power of grace. We tend to desire a certain appearance before others, and even in our own eyes, whether or not we have actually earned it. We do not like to admit we were wrong, to apologize, or to repent. What would people think of us then? Indeed, what would we think of ourselves? Would we have to acknowledge that our ideas of self-worth based on our competence were false and fabricated? And with what would we fill the void?
And he said, “Woe also to you scholars of the law!
You impose on people burdens hard to carry,
but you yourselves do not lift one finger to touch them.
Jesus was unlike the scholars of the law and the Pharisees. He did not proclaim woes merely to condemn and feel superior. He gave the diagnosis in order that the patients might desire the medicine which, in turn, he alone could give. The scholars and the Pharisees found themselves still under the law as a tutor that condemned. But to anyone who would acknowledge his need, and entrust himself to him, Jesus would offer the medicine of the Holy Spirit, the power by which such burdens might be lifted. This medicine would give a new relationship to the law. It would no longer be a disjointed series of external observances, but something that issued from the inside, from renewed hearts and minds, directed by love. Jesus himself perfectly carried the burdens of all humankind as he carried the weight of his own cross to Calvary.
In contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace,
patience, kindness, generosity,
faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.
To ensure that we are not scholars who tie up burdens only to leave one another with no recourse let us always remember to seek this Spirit more and more. He be more than our starting place. He must be our every step.
If we live in the Spirit, let us also follow the Spirit.
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