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You pay tithes of mint and dill and cummin,
and have neglected the weightier things of the law:
judgment and mercy and fidelity.
It wasn't wrong that they were fastidious even about apparently knit-picky details. High levels of precision weren't the problem. Rather it was that these details were all they saw, such that they missed the bigger picture. The fine detail of their tithing made them unable to see things from the perspective of the whole, and of what really mattered. They were so fixated on the details that they failed to notice the principles of judgment and mercy and fidelity that were the reason for everything else. It would be like being extremely attentive to the rubrics of the mass without remembering the sacrifice that was made present every time it was celebrated. All of those little details existed because of the sacrifice and the communion with God and neighbor it helped to achieve. Trying to enforce the details without remembering the point would initially result in a lack of proper proportion of one element to another, and, eventually, with losing the plot entirely, and with the liturgy becoming something other than it was meant to be. So too with these sacrifices. They were meant to emphasize the primacy and transcendence of God and our utter dependence on him. But they had become a means of asserting one's proficiency in spiritual things, a way to prove one's commitment, and a way to compare oneself favorable with those less detail oriented. Even if the action was good in itself, evil intentions such as these could spoil it.
Blind guides, who strain out the gnat and swallow the camel!
When we set up mental and behavioral filters to keep the metaphorical water we drink clean it won't matter if we avoid the smallest things if we ignore the largest and the most egregious. So, when we are giving attention to ensure that the drinking water of our lives is pure, our priorities for what to avoid must not ignore the more obviously problematic. Trying to remove many small venial sins when some significant problems with mortal sin remain can only yield limited fruit. There are other applications of this principle as well, from the shows we watch, to the candidates we support. We may successfully avoid a number of small and problematic issues. But if we do so only by ignoring other larger and more important ones we do so at our peril.
You cleanse the outside of cup and dish,
but inside they are full of plunder and self-indulgence.
The scribes and the Pharisees priority of looking good made it difficult for them to ever actually achieve being good. When we begin from the perspective of what matters to others and what others notice we will never address the deeper underlying issues that make us tend toward sin. We won't be approaching our issues with repentance, with hearts that desire change, but rather with avoidance, the desire that our darkness not be revealed. And yet cleansing what is within is more difficult than that which is without. We more easily become aware of those external imperfections of ours which are visible to others. The ones within are often hard to see, especially since we don't particularly want to see them. The only surefire way to attain the purity to which we are called is to have an external and objective frame of reference. And this is something that only God himself can be for us. But this is precisely what Jesus was trying to be for the scribes and the Pharisees. And, if we are open, he will be so for us as well.
The word of God is living and effective,
able to discern reflections and thoughts of the heart.
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