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.
The Pharisees example and teaching made it difficult for others to recognize and enter the Kingdom of heaven. They used their positions of privilege to build up their pride, and their knowledge of spiritual things they used to justify the choices they had already made.
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.
They were interested in making a convert only insofar he would come to depend on them and to treat them with honor. The convert was even worse off than the Pharisee in such a case because he would assume that religion was meant to be a pyramid scheme where those greatest sat at the top and enjoyed the esteem of others, doing little themselves, yet dictating to others what they must do.
Jesus came to open the Kingdom of heaven to others. He held a key that opened the Kingdom in a way that prevented the Pharisees from ever again locking it. He entrusted this key to Peter and, in a lesser way, to the other apostles. He made clear that the purpose of this key was to open doors whenever possible, to close them only when necessary. He taught his followers that they must not make hard demands of their followers and then do nothing to help, must not only not become barriers to entry, but must help others to bear their burdens. Jesus himself was the chief example of this, since he came into this world as a servant, and himself offered to help share the weight of his yoke.
Woe to you, blind guides
The Pharisees were blind because they relied on their own lights rather than seeking the enlightenment that God could provide. Because of this, their supposed light was actually darkness.
Some of the Pharisees near him heard these things, and said to him, “Are we also blind?” Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would have no guilt; but now that you say, ‘We see,’ your guilt remains (see John 9:40-41).
They were blind because they intentionally and obstinately did not look to Jesus who was himself the light of the world. They were afraid that what had been secretly kept in the darkness of their hearts would be exposed and made known. But only if the light was allowed to shine upon it could it be healed and only in this way could they be converted.
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?
The Pharisees had what amounted to an elaborate system of excuses, clever ways to escape responsibility, novel means of setting aside obligations in favor of more immediate convenience and comfort. They had imagined that they had found a delicate balance in the laws of God that allowed their own desires to take the first place. But in doing so they inevitably confused the purpose of the laws, reading them by some other rubric than the divine purpose at work within them. Without divine enlightenment they had only their human wisdom on which to assess value, and such wisdom inevitably missed the marked, choosing, not what mattered to God, but rather to themselves.
But when anything is exposed by the light, it becomes visible, for anything that becomes visible is light. Therefore it says,
“Awake, O sleeper,
and arise from the dead,
and Christ will shine on you.” (see Ephesians 5:13-14).
We have been enlightened by the light of Christ, the light that we celebrate in a special way at the beginning of the Easter vigil, the 'lumen Christi' that casts out the darkness. We have seen the light of the world and have allowed him, in some measure, to shine in our own hearts, exposing the darkness and transforming it into light.
We must not become too comfortable simply because the light shone on us in the past. We are called to abide in the light that is found only in the presence of Jesus himself. Otherwise it is all too easy to succumb to each and every temptation that made the Pharisees the target of the woes of Jesus. We can quickly find our purpose subverted from those trying to open the Kingdom to others and find ourselves functioning as roadblocks instead. We can easily find ourselves using our religious knowledge for excuses and justification rather than truly seeking the will of God for us.
Hopefully we have experienced the Gospel not in word alone "but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with much conviction". But let us pray that conviction does not become a mere memory, but something that sustains our own "work and faith and labor of love and endurance in hope of our Lord Jesus Christ". Having seen his light, may we abide in it.
No comments:
Post a Comment