Psalm 43, Micah 3:5-12, 1 Thessalonians 2:9-13,17-20, Matthew 23:1-12
How Not to be a Religious Leader
There’s an old story about three boys who are bragging about rich their dads are. The first boy said, "My dad is so rich. He writes a few paragraphs on a piece of paper. Calls it a poem. And he gets $50 for it."
The second boy said, "That’s nothing. My dad is so rich. He makes a few dots on a piece of paper. Calls it a song. And he gets $100 for it."
The third boy said, "That’s nothing. My dad writes a few paragraphs. Calls it a sermon. And it takes four men to carry the money down the aisle!" [hat tip: Marc Axelrod]
If I had a son, he couldn’t tell that story, could he?! I do write some paragraphs and call it a sermon (or, a homily), but never in all my days of filling a pulpit, did it ever take more than a wee toddler to carry the money down the aisle!
Now we laugh at a story like this, because of the childish presentation of vices which are very adult indeed. And, these are what Jesus is pointing to here when he warns his disciples about the ruinous vices of the religious leadership of Israel. You see, Jesus has prepared his disciples to become leaders in the Church, the Church’s first leaders. And, Jesus knows that while he is training his disciples, the most visible, most widely recognized examples of religious leadership are the Pharisees and the Sadducees. It is exactly these kinds of people that our Lord does NOT want his disciples to mimic when they become leaders of his church on the other side of his resurrection from the dead.
In the previous chapters of Matthew’s gospel, Matthew has recounted many of the final encounters between Jesus on one hand, and the Pharisees and the Sadducees on the other hand. In the encounter we saw last Sunday, these religious leaders finally gave up, and Matthew tells us that they never asked him any more questions.
It is at this point that Jesus turns to the crowds who have been watching this religious sparring and particularly to his disciples and warns them against following the examples of the Pharisees and the Sadducees. As far as the multitudes are concerned, Jesus is concerned to warn them against following leaders like the Pharisees and the Sadducees.
What, then, are these errors. they seem to be three.
First of all, the Pharisees and the Sadducees love authority, but not service. Jesus says they sit in Moses’ seat. This is a way of saying that they occupy the teaching authority originally conferred to Moses by God. That is why Jesus tells the people to follow what the Pharisees tell the people to observe. This is a striking endorsement, but it is qualified by this: do not do as they do, for they say and do not do.
Jesus doesn’t fault the Pharisees and Sadducees for teaching false doctrine. He DOES fault them for failing to observe the doctrine they teach. Moreover, they are zealous to lay all sorts of onerous and difficult obligations on the people, which they themselves do not follow.
To give you an example, at the time of Jesus, the Pharisees taught that it was a violation of the Sabbath to travel more than a certain number of paces from one’s home. But, of course, there was a loop hole to this. If one were walk the maximum number of paces from one’s home and beyond that distance was some item that belonged to you, you could walk as far as that item in order to retrieve it. Now, if you’re a Pharisee, and on the Sabbath you wish to visit your Pharisee brother who lives a few hundred yards beyond the limits of your Sabbath boundaries, this is what you do – a day or so before you make the Sabbath trip, you are careful to lay various items of your own property along the route, and on the Sabbath you simply move from one item to another to retrieve them. And, here’s the fun part – what you are allowed to pick up does not have to be more than a single thread from a garment or cloak that you own.
What made them hypocrites is this: they laid on other men huge burdens, great difficulties that one must overcome if one were to be considered spiritual and righteous and holy. But, none of these burdens fell on themselves, for they had all sorts of loopholes which they had devised, to make life bearable for themselves, but they would never consider lifting such religious burdens from others. Meanwhile, they kept for themselves the reputations of being holier than thou – in the most literal sense of that phrase.
And, that brings us to the next thing for which our Lord faulted the Pharisees and Sadducees: they loved and sought the approval of men.
“But all their works they do to be seen by men. They make their phylacteries broad and enlarge the borders of their garments.”
A phylactery is a leather box which contains a scrap of parchment with writing from the Torah. The practice comes from Deuteronomy 6, in which Moses tells the Israelites this: “And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. 7 You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. 8 You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. 9 You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”
What the Jews did was to take a small scrap of parchment, write a phrase or verse from the Torah on it, roll it up tightly, and place it in a small, cube-shaped box, which they would then strap to their foreheads and to their left wrist. It was a visible way of showing that they knew and understood and were complying with Moses’ teaching.
In Numbers 15, the Lord, through Moses commanded this: 38“Speak to the children of Israel: Tell them to make tassels on the corners of their garments throughout their generations, and to put a blue thread in the tassels of the corners. 39 And you shall have the tassel, that you may look upon it and remember all the commandments of the LORD and do them, …”
What Jesus was condemning is this: the Pharisees and Sadducees were making their phylacteries very large, so that no one could possibly miss seeing them. And, they were making the tassels on their garments exceedingly long so that no one could possibly miss seeing them. And, the reason they did this is so that everyone WOULD see them and think, “Oh, my! How holy that fellow must be.”
And this points to the third mistake of the Pharisees and Sadducees. Not only were they were hypocrites and loved the approval of men, they continually sought out the privileges of their reputation. It was not just the reputation they lusted for, it was all the perks that come with it: the best seats at the feasts, the front seats in the synagogue, the greetings in the market places, they way that people would hail them “Rabbi! Rabbi!”
Against this hypocritical, man-pleasing, perk pursuing lust, Jesus had some pointed things to say, and I think this was aimed primarily at his own disciples and those who would follow them as leaders in the Church. “But you, do not be called ‘Rabbi’; for One is your Teacher, the Christ, and you are all brethren. 9 Do not call anyone on earth your father; for One is your Father, He who is in heaven. 10 And do not be called teachers; for One is your Teacher, the Christ.”
At this point, I must make a brief digression to answer a question that is most appropriate to raise at this place. In light of what Jesus says here, why am I listed in the bulletin and on the signage outside with the title “Father?” There is a wing of Christendom that thinks that when I use this title, I am in blatant and precise transgression against the commandment of Christ. What do I say to such folk?
Well, there’s plenty to say that would file the space of two or three of these homilies. So, I’ll confine myself at this place to the following brief points:
First, if anyone wishes to apply Jesus’ teaching in this way, I wish they would at least be consistent and condemn every Christian who ever speaks of his male parent as a father. After all, Jesus said “do not call ANYONE father.” The people who would charge me with transgression have no credibility if they do not charge everyone in the Church who calls anyone a father.
Second, among those who must be charged with transgression are the Apostles themselves. Paul, for example, writes to the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians chapter 4, “14 I do not write these things to shame you, but as my beloved children I warn you. 15 For though you might have ten thousand teachers in Christ, yet you do not have many fathers; for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the gospel.”
Or the Apostle John in 1 John 2, writes, I write to you, fathers, Because you have known Him who is from the beginning.” Paul, in 1 Timothy 2 calls himself a teacher of the Gentiles; The Apostle James in chapter 3 of his letter writes, “My brethren, let not many of you become teachers, knowing that we shall receive a stricter judgment., …” Shouldn’t James have said, instead, Let NONE of you become teachers because Jesus said you should never be called teachers?
No, the example of Jesus’ own disciples shows that whatever it was that Jesus was saying here in Matthew 23, it is not supposed to be read as a prohibition to giving or receiving the title rabbi, or father, or teacher.
But, if that’s NOT what Jesus is talking about, what DOES he mean? Well, it’s not hard to figure this out, if we look at his words in their context. Jesus is warning the crowds, and especially his disciples, about errors of the religious leadership of the Jews. They are hypocrites; they love to show off and garner the celebrityship of those who think they’re really, really holy men. They love the perks that comes with this. And, they love the titles and greetings of those who applaud them.
What Jesus warns against here is the warped perspective that slowly but surely pushes God out of the picture. And, when Jesus issues this warning, he does so in an exaggerated, over-the-top style that is typical of Jesus’ teaching when he’s driving a point home. If we were to paraphrase his words slightly, it would go like this: “Don’t EVEN call ANYONE on earth your father, for you have only ONE father, who is in heaven.” Over and over, Jesus drives home the point that behind any father, behind any teacher, behind any rabbi, stands God the Father of all Fatherhood in heaven, and the one whom this Father has sent, his Son Jesus Christ.
It is an irony that those who think they are scrupulously keeping the letter of Jesus’ teaching so many times miss the spirit of it. Let’s take these warnings in Jesus’ teaching today and ask how it applies to our contemporary scene.
Take that first warning against hypocrisy. Does it fit today the way it fit in Jesus’ day? I certainly think it has fit many times, even in some spectacular examples in living memory. Take sex scandals in the Church, for example. What makes them scandals is that the pastors who fall into them would not dream of trying to teach that it is OK to commit adultery, or commit fornication, or to sexually abuse choir boys. These crimes are “ordinary” crimes in this sense – they involve transgressions that you can find in every age, in every land, at every level of society. What makes them MORE than ordinary, what makes them scandalous is when these ordinary sins are done by those who make it their vocation to teach that these kinds of things are wrong, yet they excuse themselves when they do these sins themselves.
But, you know, even here I do not think these kinds of scandals are what Jesus is talking about, and the reason for this is simple: At least the Pharisees had some kind of handle on the truth; but so much of professing Christendom today has turned loose of what even the Pharisees held on to. If Jesus were giving this warning today, I think he would be far more apt to condemn rationalization among Christian leaders than he would hypocrisy.
When we consider the warning against doing good works in order to be seen by men, today’s scene is surreal compared with the one in which Jesus was speaking. Huge segments of modern American Christendom has taken what Jesus said was a fault – to behave in ways that seek the applause of the crowds – and have turned this into a major religious industry that insists that the Church MUST act in ways that the world will applaud so that the world will come in the front door.
The entire premise of the seeker-friendly philosophy of worship is to AVOID what the world will not like, and instead to PROMOTE what the world will applaud. In Jesus’ day, it was religious showoffs that Jesus criticized, because they were playing to the religious populace. In our day, religious leaders are showing off for the world. The audience has changed, but the error is the same. Please men, and don’t sweat what God thinks of any of this.
In the gospel, Jesus warned his disciples that he who would be greatest in the Kingdom would be a servant. And he who exalted himself would be humbled. What dismays me as I read these words is the culture of celebrityship that has so infected the church is EXACTLY what Jesus was warning about here.
Many years ago, when I was in seminary, we went to Chapel Monday through Friday. As you can imagine, this program chewed through lists of chapel speakers like a weed-eater through dandelions. What amazed me is this: the chapel speakers were invariably men who had some claim to celebrity. They were pastors who were always famous for something. Well, okay – it’s not that there was a problem with their being famous; rather, it was WHAT they were famous for that discouraged me, and discouraged a great many of my classmates.
What if they had brought us a man to speak in chapel who was famous for being run out of town in tar and feathers? What if they brought us a man to speak in chapel who was famous for having been attacked by mobs of infuriated pagans. What if they brought us a man to speak in chapel who was kicked out of three or four churches in a row because their elder boards refused to accept his preaching against abortion? Or divorce? Or gluttony?
You know, we never heard from guys like that. I know they are out there, for I ran across them from time to time. And, with the internet, I found even more such men – leaders in Christ’s church whom ordinary Christians almost never hear about, because they’re not celebrities, or because they’re famous for getting themselves hated, persecuted, rejected for the sake of the Word of Christ.
In this light, let me close with the example of early Christians which we find in Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians, in the lesson read earlier from the New Testament. Keep in your mind, if you will, the current climate of the Church, where America’s Christian leaders are celebrities and where the most successful Church programs are aping the world, insisting that it is the Church’s mandate to please the World for the sake of the gospel. Keep that in mind as you listen once more to what Paul wrote to some of his earliest disciples:
“13 For this reason we also thank God without ceasing, because when you received the word of God which you heard from us, you welcomed it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which also effectively works in you who believe. 14 For you, brethren, became imitators of the churches of God which are in Judea in Christ Jesus.
“For you also suffered the same things from your own countrymen, just as they did from the Judeans, 15 who killed both the Lord Jesus and their own prophets, and have persecuted us; and they do not please God and are contrary to all men, 16 forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that they may be saved, so as always to fill up the measure of their sins; but wrath has come upon them to the uttermost.”
God grant that in this day we may esteem the servants of Christ, not by the fame they garner from the crowds, but by the fact that they suffer for the testimony of Christ. May we seek out and learn from those who are humble, those whom the world scorns because they are old-fashioned, those who receive the word of the Apostles as it truly is – the word of God. And, may we who are small, we whom the world ignores, may we take courage that our obscurity will one day be reversed in God’s own timing. Let all who are humbled for the sake of Christ rejoice, for he has promised that when he returns to the earth, they will be exalted.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
