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.
It was and remains possible to major in the minors, to fixate on fine points of minutia while forgetting about the big picture. Pharisees made sure their tithing extended even to small things which would be easy to neglect. But this action wasn't motivated by a big picture love for God, or even concern about judgment. It was more likely that it was done for the sake of appearances, since it would seem likely to others that one who was that concerned with the fine points of detail wouldn't miss anything anywhere else either. And even for the sake of their own self-image as professionally religious individuals this tithing seemed to them to be proof that they were in fact 'doing the thing' since this was something that was actually fairly easy to control and didn't really demand much of them. Which is not to say they were wrong to be concerned about the details. But they ought not have let that concern make them overlook the other more important things.
Woe to you Pharisees!
You love the seat of honor in synagogues
and greetings in marketplaces.
The Pharisees were more motivated by the respect they garnered from those who highly regarded them than be any sincere desire to please God. If a Pharisee could do what he ought with no need to be recognized by others because he knew it was pleasing to God this would be a sign of maturity. But if he couldn't find motivation to act unless it led to these places of honor and greetings from others it proved he was seeking an earthly reward rather than a heavenly one, and that he was not acting for God but rather for himself. This desire to make a good showing before others made such Pharisees particularly dangerous. They avoided the appearance of impurity and yet were fundamentally motivated by selfish pride. For us, in order to avoid this trap, we must ensure that we are content to do our duty to God and neighbor whether or not we are recognized for it.
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.”
We can imagine teachers like this in our own day and even in our own Church, pleased to tell the world what must be done, but failing to point to the grace by which the difficult becomes possible and the heavy becomes light. Some such teachers even seem to delight in the fact that people fail to live up to their words, and secretly savor their imagined eventual condemnation. Their teaching is motivated, not by the desire to make a difference, but by the desire to broadcast their superiority. They make it sound as though they are perfectly compliant with the heavy burdens of the law precisely in and through their own strength and competence. They imply that others are failing because they simply don't try hard enough. But it is not the case that we are meant to carry our burdens on our own strength or imply that others must do so. For our burdens and those of others we know that there is no better solution than to bring them to Jesus in order to share his yoke and his burden. We see in Jesus the exact opposite of the behavior of the indifferent scholars of the law:
Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light (see Matthew 11:28-30).
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