MT 23: 1-12 & 37-39

Matthew in the Margins… 22nd S. After Pentecost…Revised 2017 

For ‘scholars & Pharisees’, try ‘bishops’, ’priests', 'pastors', 'elders', ‘wardens’, ‘church leaders of all shapes & sizes’! Jesus’ use of the term ‘Moses chair’, his ‘kathedra’, again raises the question of Authority implicit in our recent passage about the coin & ‘rendering to Caesar….’! There’s a clashing of far more than cultures here. The ‘A’ question probes much more deeply than that. 

Jesus tells crowds & His disciples in general, "Look at these Pharisees & Scholars! Do what they teach, but don't do what they do!” In saying this He’s underlining the importance of the Authority God delegated to Moses & that those He’s complaining about are heirs to. As we are, too, now. Back then they’re undermining that authority by blurring the lines between God’s Authority & their own. They’re wind-bags. Full of hot air.  As Jesus sees it, some of them are more interested in dressing for show than being clothed in righteousness. Once, long ago, an archbishop asks me to ‘vet’ a ‘nomadic preacher’ wanting authority to preach in the diocese. Sadly, I have to report back that the fellow is a puffed-up windbag! Full of self-importance! Are we, any of us, more interested in being celebrities than servants; rather than getting our hands dirty at ground zero in life’s margins alongside Jesus? 

We all live in cultures using some system of honorifics to mark contributions to civic, political, military, or other areas of life. I take Jesus to mean that any title we’re given needs to be one that indicates a commitment, a) to God’s Authority &, b) to His own Servanthood. Is it time to cut ourselves back to size before God does that for us, one way or another? Perhaps that hymn, 'Brother, sister, let me serve you, Let me be as Christ to you’ could become the ‘Christian Internationale’ for those who inhabit the margins of life & those who serve them out there? Sing it loud & clear in what we do for God & each other? 

Jesus has many harsh things to say about the Hebrew church as He experiences it. Maybe it's just as well we're skipping most of the rest of this passage today in our Christian sanctuaries! Weigh up the stones we’re about to cast before they bounce back on us! 

A mural / icon of saints dancing above & circling the interior of the church of S.Gregory of Nyssa in San Francisco¹ incorporates a lot of people as unlikely as Jesus himself! Can we see our-selves there? Dancing round our own churches? Inside them & outside? Blessed, indeed, is everyone who, like Jesus, comes in the Name of the Lord!

¹ You can see this mural / icon through your search engine.