The Eight Woes – Part 1
Matthew 23:13-14, NKJV - But woe to you, scribes
and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut up the kingdom of heaven against men;
for you neither go in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go
in. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you devour widows’
houses, and for a pretense make long prayers. Therefore you will receive
greater condemnation.
Matthew
23:13-36 is often called the “seven woes” to the Pharisees and other teachers
of the law. You might have noticed that
the title of this reflection is “The Eight Woes.” This discrepancy points to something we have
discussed before – textual variants.
Most English translations of the New Testament do not include Matthew
23:14. Thus, most translations only list seven woes. But if you include v. 14, which I do, there are
eight. This is very significant in the
structure of Matthew’s gospel. This
address in the temple is the last public address Jesus will make before He is
crucified. These eight woes correspond
to another list of eight that Jesus rattles off in His first public address in
the Gospel of Matthew – the eight beatitudes in Matthew 5 that kick off the
Sermon on the Mount. The eight beatitudes
talk about the those who are blessed and by contrast the eight woes talk about
how the religious establishment of the day have cut off those blessings.
Matthew’s
intent here seems to be for us to see the ways in which the religious community
can become the very opposite of God’s intention. These “woes” are not as much a “the pharisees
are bad” are they are a warning that all religious institutions have these
antithetical tendencies. I believe the
proper way to hear these woes is ask ourselves to what extent we are guilty of
the very same hypocrisies. Our next few
reflections will proceed with that approach.
The
first beatitude in Matthew 5 is “blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is
the Kingdom of God” (Matthew 5:3). The
first woe condemns the religious leaders for their spiritual arrogance – they have
not only rejected the Kingdom Jesus came to usher in, they have tried to lead
others to reject it as well. The
contrast is drawn between people who know they need God and those who think God
needs them. It is so easy to become “puffed
up” about what we think we know about God and God’s ways. The pharisees and other religious officials
of Jesus’s day had begun to act as though their convictions and their teachings
were synonymous with God’s word. They
believed that when they said something, it was as if God had said it. There are plenty of Christians in our own day
in time who act much the same way.
Convictions about where God stands on a particular issue are important,
but they should always be held with humility.
We should always leave room for God to reveal something new to us. I don’t always do that. I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one.
The second
beatitude is, “blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” It is the promise that God is about comforting
those who are hurting. The second woe
brings an indictment on the religious leaders for doing the opposite. It points to a practice where Pharisees and
other officials would approach widows after their husbands had died with an
offer “to help” them. They would take
care of their deceased husbands affairs and care for them. This practice might have begun with
compassionate intent, but by Jesus’s day, it had devolved into the leaders taking
advantage of widows and assuming control of their assets. The leaders actually added to the misery of the
widows’ grief – the exact opposite of God’s intention to comfort those who
mourn.
To be honest,
this charge is hard to hear in a personal way.
None of us wants to think of ourselves as people who would take
advantage of someone in a bad situation in the guise of “helping” them. It’s a pretty despicable thing. But I would encourage us to let down our
defenses enough to see that the church today is sometimes guilty of adding
insult to injury. I think of divorcees,
LGBTQ community members, and other “sinners” that have been shunned by their
congregations. I think of Christians
picketing and harassing mourners at funerals for a number of “righteous”
reasons. And lest I try to exclude myself,
I think of the times that I have added to someone’s suffering by failing to
respond in compassion in their time of need.
The antidote to this is to see all those who are hurting, regardless of
the reason for that hurt, as people God wants to comfort.
The
thread that runs through the first two beatitudes is spiritual humility; the
thread that runs through the first two woes is spiritual arrogance. Spiritual humility
was in short supply in Jesus’s day and it is no less true today. Likewise, there was a need for Jesus to
confront spiritual arrogance in His day in the name of those who were spiritually
and physically vulnerable. The same is
needed today.
Question: Not having
to share your answer with anyone but yourself and God, are there ways in which
you have been guilty of spiritual arrogance or at least lacked spiritual humility?
Prayer: God, show me my
own arrogance and inability to see people the way that you do. Help me align my heart with yours. Amen.
Prayer Focus: Spend
some time confessing to God the times that you failed to respond in compassion
when you had the opportunity to do so.
Song: The God Who
Stays – Matthew West
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