The Eight Woes – Part 4
Matthew 23:29-36, The Message - “You’re hopeless,
you religion scholars and Pharisees! Frauds! You build granite tombs for your
prophets and marble monuments for your saints. And you say that if you had
lived in the days of your ancestors, no blood would have been on your hands.
You protest too much! You’re cut from the same cloth as those murderers, and
daily add to the death count.
“Snakes! Cold-blooded sneaks! Do you think you can worm
your way out of this? Never have to pay the piper? It’s on account of people
like you that I send prophets and wise guides and scholars generation after
generation—and generation after generation you treat them like dirt, greeting
them with lynch mobs, hounding them with abuse.
“You can’t squirm out of this: Every drop of righteous
blood ever spilled on this earth, beginning with the blood of that good man
Abel right down to the blood of Zechariah, Barachiah’s son, whom you murdered
at his prayers, is on your head. All this, I’m telling you, is coming down on
you, on your generation.
Matthew 5:10-12, The Message - “You’re blessed
when your commitment to God provokes persecution. The persecution drives you
even deeper into God’s kingdom.
“Not only that—count yourselves blessed every time people
put you down or throw you out or speak lies about you to discredit me. What it
means is that the truth is too close for comfort and they are uncomfortable.
You can be glad when that happens—give a cheer, even!—for though they don’t
like it, I do! And all heaven applauds. And know that you are in good company.
My prophets and witnesses have always gotten into this kind of trouble.
Our
contrast between the blessings of the eight Beatitudes at the beginning of
Jesus’s ministry and the condemnation of the eight Woes at the end concludes
today with the persecuted over against those who persecute them. More to the point, Matthew 5 describes those
who have so embraced God’s message to them brought by God’s messengers that they
are willing to endure ridicule, shame, and even worse instead of renounce the
truth they have embraced. Matthew 23 describes
those who not only reject the message of the prophets, but they also harass,
flog, and even kill the messengers. Reading
through the first passage above, one can sense the rising emotion in Jesus’s
voice for He knows that He, Himself, is one of those messengers who will be
rejected, flogged and killed. He knows
it will happen in the matter of a couple of days. He feels the hate that will motivate these
actions emanating from the leaders he is presently condemning.
I’ve
asked us to work to receive Jesus’s warnings in these eight Woes as personal
warnings. Perhaps of all of the Eight,
this one is the hardest to personalize.
We like to think of ourselves as people who would never reject God’s
message, much less persecute the messengers.
I do want to remind us though, that the leaders hearing Jesus’s words in
the Temple that day, liked to think of themselves that way too. This is why Jesus specifically addresses what
He knew they were thinking:
“And you say that if you had
lived in the days of your ancestors, no blood would have been on your hands.
You protest too much! You’re cut from the same cloth as those murderers, and
daily add to the death count.” (v.
23:30)
Put yourself in the Pharisees place for a moment. They have just been told that they are no longer
necessary as mediators of God to the people.
They have been told that they are hypocrites in every way possible. Jesus’s words are a repudiation of everything
their lives have been about since they were children and they have received
this judgement in front of the people they have had the responsibility of
leading. To the extent that we can squarely put
ourselves in the place of these condemned leaders, we can almost understand the
holy rage they will unleash upon Jesus in the coming days.
To place
ourselves in the Pharisees’ place is to connect with the emotion of being
confronted with truth that beliefs you have held strongly for most of your life
are unfounded. Maybe you are familiar
with that emotion and maybe you are not.
But regardless, God’s truth continues to confront wrong-headed
beliefs. To say that it is impossible
for us to be people who are sometimes on the wrong side of God’s truth is to
make the same mistake that the religious leaders of Jesus’s day made.
Don’t
do that. The Beatitudes guard against
falling into the Woes. Humility. An openness
to others suffering. Meekness. A passion for God and people. Mercy. A pure heart. Peacemaking. Conviction that withstands
persecution. These are the ways of the
Kingdom of Jesus.
Question: How open
are you to the possibility of being wrong?
Prayer: Lord forgive
our arrogance and hard-heartedness. Help
us see your Truth being revealed in the present time even if it challenges
long-held practices and/or beliefs.
Install the beatitudes in our heart.
Amen.
Prayer Focus: Pray
for peace where there is war today.
Song: (What's So
Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love & Understanding - Nick Lowe & The Southsea Alternative
Choir
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