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 way the scribes and the Pharisees taught had the opposite effect that it should have. Rather than finding their way to the Kingdom and helping others to enter they locked the entrance and themselves remained outside. They sought converts, but helped to make them children of Gehenna rather than children of God. Being raised on their teachings made those teachings even more entrenched in their disciples than themselves, making it even less likely that they would change their minds.
The reason the teaching of the scribes and Pharisees was problematic was that they were blind guides. They claimed to lead the way but lacked the spiritual insight or wisdom necessary to find and remain on the path. Since they couldn't perceive objective spiritual reality they fell back on their own innovations. An example of this was the problem with oaths. People often seemed to feel that without an oath no one would take what they had to say seriously. It didn't seem like enough for one to just give her word. Oaths were so common that to not have one seemed like a suspicious omission. But rather than help people to understand and appreciate the solemnity and severity of oaths, which they ought to have understood, they manufactured an oath gradient with various options appropriate to one's level of commitment. Now there were oaths, not only for situations when one needed to make absolutely certain she would be believed, but also for other times when she hoped to be believed, or when it would at least be convenient if others gave her the benefit of the doubt, or even, perhaps, if she herself knew she was probably wrong about the veracity of her statement but still hoped that others might think otherwise. They tried to create this complex system of oaths based on the sanctity of that by which one swore. But in doing so they inverted the whole sacred order, giving value to the anthropocentric rather than the divine.
If one swears by the temple, it means nothing,
but if one swears by the gold of the temple, one is obligated.’
Blind fools, which is greater, the gold,
or the temple that made the gold sacred?
Jesus was not saying that one ought, in such a case, to swear by the gold. He was pointing out that all of the possible options had value because of their relation to God himself, and that they added believability to claims only insofar as they brought God's own credibility to bear on a specific situation. There was therefore no way to use an oath for a trivial purpose. This was why Jesus advised his own disciples to avoid oaths when possible, to let their yes be yes and their no be no (see Matthew 5:37).
Oaths were merely a symptom of a larger problem with the whole system of the scribes and the Pharisees. It was filled with human traditions that possessed a certain semblance of wisdom. It had the nuance and complexity that made it seem like it must correspond to something true. But the innovations, which may have been at times well intended, still managed to miss the point more often than not. They issued from human wisdom rather than divine truth. And those who took them seriously found it difficult to accept the straightforward teachings of Jesus. It was obvious that Jesus was consistent with the Scriptures. But it was equally obvious that his teaching seemed more otherworldly or alien than some kind of logical or obvious development normal men might have attempted. Once they were heard they could not be unheard or ignored. It was exactly the teaching what one would expect if the source of this new revelation was God himself. But it was at such odds with the teachings of the scribes and the Pharisees that those teachings were a definite hindrance to accepting it.
We must be careful by our teaching and example not to lock the Kingdom of heaven before others, and to ourselves strive to enter through the narrow gate. We may begin with decent motives, trying to solve common problems. But if we do so without a direct reference to God we may end up, not only not helping, but causing harm. Much more so if we teach or lead more for the sake of our self-image than for the souls of others. Then we too will end up generating systems of labyrinthine complexity that serve only to imprison others rather than pointing them to freedom, a conceptual manifestation of our own spiritual prisons. We must ensure that God, and self, is as much as possible at the center of our intentions.
Sing to the LORD a new song
of praise in the assembly of the faithful.
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