Daily Reflections ...

The ‘woe to you’ condemnations and accusations of being ‘blind fools’ and ‘hypocrites’ in today’s Gospel reading don’t sound like something that would come from the mouth of the gentle Jesus, meek and mild I learnt about as a child! But Jesus was fully human as well as fully divine, and his words here arise out of righteous anger.

The only people who caused Jesus to utter harsh words were those who were more interested in outward appearances than what was in their hearts. Jesus was angry with the religious leaders because they failed to listen to God’s word and misled the people they were supposed to guide in the ways of God: “You make the new convert twice as much a child of hell as yourselves” (v 15).

Jesus gives a series of examples that demonstrate how the false teaching of the scribes and Pharisees leads others astray. If the laws about swearing oaths that Jesus refers to sound convoluted and confusing, it is because they are, and intentionally so. Oaths made to God were considered binding, but the Pharisees found clever ways to evade these obligations when it suited them to do so. But they themselves imposed unnecessary and burdensome rules on the people which obscured the heart of the Kingdom of God – love of God and love of neighbour.

It’s easy to side with Jesus and condemn the hypocritical scribes and Pharisees, but maybe we need to ask the Holy Spirit to guard us from the danger of following their example and confusing the externals of our faith with what lies at its heart.

by Elizabeth Harrington