CHAPTER 33
Matthew 23:1–39
LISTEN to the Story
1Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples: 2“The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. 3So you must be careful to do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach. 4They tie up heavy, cumbersome loads and put them on other people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them.
5“Everything they do is done for people to see: They make their phylacteries wide and the tassels on their garments long; 6they love the place of honor at banquets and the most important seats in the synagogues; 7they love to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces and to be called ‘Rabbi’ by others.
8“But you are not to be called ‘Rabbi,’ for you have one Teacher, and you are all brothers. 9And do not call anyone on earth ‘father,’ for you have one Father, and he is in heaven. 10Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one Instructor, the Messiah. 11The greatest among you will be your servant. 12For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.
13“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to. [14]
15“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when you have succeeded, you make them twice as much a child of hell as you are.
16“Woe to you, blind guides! You say, ‘If anyone swears by the temple, it means nothing; but anyone who swears by the gold of the temple is bound by that oath.’ 17You blind fools! Which is greater: the gold, or the temple that makes the gold sacred? 18You also say, ‘If anyone swears by the altar, it means nothing; but anyone who swears by the gift on the altar is bound by that oath.’ 19You blind men! Which is greater: the gift, or the altar that makes the gift sacred? 20Therefore, anyone who swears by the altar swears by it and by everything on it. 21And anyone who swears by the temple swears by it and by the one who dwells in it. 22And anyone who swears by heaven swears by God’s throne and by the one who sits on it.
23“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former. 24You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.
25“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. 26Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean.
27“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. 28In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.
29“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You build tombs for the prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous. 30And you say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our ancestors, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’ 31So you testify against yourselves that you are the descendants of those who murdered the prophets. 32Go ahead, then, and complete what your ancestors started!
33“You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell? 34Therefore I am sending you prophets and sages and teachers. Some of them you will kill and crucify; others you will flog in your synagogues and pursue from town to town. 35And so upon you will come all the righteous blood that has been shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Berekiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. 36Truly I tell you, all this will come on this generation.
37“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing. 38Look, your house is left to you desolate. 39For I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’ ”
Listening to the Text in the Story: Genesis 4:8–10; Leviticus 11:41–45; Numbers 15:38–41; Deuteronomy 6:8; 22:12; 2 Chronicles 24:20–21; Psalm 118:26; Isaiah 5:8–30; Jeremiah 12:7; 22:4–5; Ezekiel 10:18; 21:26; Amos 4:4–5; 5:18; 6:1–7; Micah 6:8; Zechariah 1:1; 11:17; Malachi 1:6; 2:7–9.
Some might say Jesus didn’t take his own advice. During the Sermon on the Mount, he warned his listeners not to judge others because it would incite them to return judgment by the same standard (Matt 7:1–2). Yet, before it was all over, Jesus decided to do it anyway, judging the scribes and Pharisees for their hypocrisy, even going so far as to call them “blind guides” and “snakes” (23:16, 24, 33). This isn’t the sweet and gentle Jesus we prefer to admire—always patient, never uttering an unkind word. Instead, Jesus acts like he’s fed up with his opponents, finally blasting them with such vitriolic words that it makes us cringe. It’s not that we couldn’t see it coming. From the start Jesus threw down the gauntlet, challenging the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees—essentially picking a fight with them (5:20). And they didn’t take it lying down either; they came after Jesus with their own accusations, trying to make him look bad. Indeed, throughout Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus has been at odds with the scribes and Pharisees, a conflict without resolution that eventually led to their climactic battle of wits (22:15–22, 34–45)—a fight Jesus clearly won (v. 46). So, one might be led to think, “Well, he got the best of them. It’s over. Now he can move on to tackle more important problems, having exposed the hypocrisy of these pretenders.” Yet that’s not what happened. Rather, Jesus acted like he couldn’t let it go, emptying both barrels of his shotgun sermon against the Pharisees, skewering them one last time with the red-hot poker of his righteous indignation. And, just as Jesus predicted, his judgment provoked them to judge him by the same measure. Convinced that Jesus was the real pretender, they mocked him as he hung on the cross, appearing as though they were the ones to have the last word (27:41–43). What goes around comes around.
What makes Jesus’s invective against the scribes and the Pharisees even more difficult to appreciate is the subject matter. To be sure, not practicing what you preach is a serious charge (23:3). But the essence of his beef with these religious leaders seems very Jewish—something gentiles have a hard time relating to: criticizing certain clothing accessories (phylacteries and tassels), questioning titles (calling someone rabbi or father), nit-picking over certain kinds of oaths (swearing by the gold in/on the temple or the gift on the altar), tithing herbs and straining gnats (but neglecting more important legal matters), washing dishes and white-washing tombs (purity maintenance). Those issues don’t interest us today. Talk about weightier issues of justice should take priority—just like Jesus said. And yet, we never hear Jesus critique specifically the unjust behavior of the scribes and Pharisees. That is to say, he criticizes them for ignoring the more important matters (v. 23), but he never points out exactly what they were doing wrong. Instead, Jesus spends most of his time questioning their motives (vv. 5–7), delving more into the matters of the heart than what the Pharisees actually did wrong. In other words, Jesus judged them for what no one else could see, claiming to know the condition of their soul. According to him, the scribes and Pharisees were corrupt “on the inside” even though they appeared right “on the outside” (vv. 25–28). Yet who can know the heart of a person except God?
To sum it all up, when we consider the way Jesus attacked his rivals, it looks like he did two things that are unacceptable according to our modern sensibilities: he used “hate speech” to denigrate his opponents in public, and he judged their motives as evil simply because they opposed him.1 But the fact that Jesus directed his comments to the crowd and his disciples (vv. 1–12) before he turned to pronounce seven “woes” upon the scribes and Pharisees (vv. 13–32) should help us understand why he did it (rather than dismissing it). Those who dismiss it tend to read this discourse in isolation of its context, as if it were an unnecessary addendum—separate from the rest of Jesus’s “temple sermon” that started way back in Matthew 21. But it makes better sense to see Matthew 23 as the end of Jesus’s attempt to warn the people about the approaching judgment of God. When he first entered Jerusalem and visited the temple, he criticized the trustees of the temple (the high priests and the Sadducees). Before he left the temple, he eventually got around to denouncing the teachers of the law as well (the scribes and the Pharisees). If we take everything Jesus did in the temple as his prophetic warning against the religious leadership of Jerusalem (from the temple clearing to his final pronouncement, “your house is left to you desolate”; 23:38), then it shouldn’t surprise us that he wouldn’t leave the temple until he gave the scribes and Pharisees a piece of his mind. Indeed, we might consider his critique of both groups as bookends, with the honor contest between him and them (the Sadducees and Pharisees, high priests and scribes) sandwiched in between (21:23–22:46).
That’s why Jesus first directed his comments to the crowd and his disciples: it was the last part of the honor contest that started when the Sadducees and Pharisees questioned his behavior. It also explains why Jesus ended his “temple sermon” with woes against the scribes and Pharisees: during his entire time in the temple, Jesus talked and acted like a prophet. Like a prophet of old, Jesus pronounced “woes” against the leaders of Israel (see Isa 5:8–30). In other words, even though Jesus’s verbal attack on these religious leaders violates our cultural script, what he said very much conformed to the prophetic script of his day (which is why he sounds like John the Baptizer). Jesus was acting like a prophet, and everyone knew it, especially the part about what usually happens to prophets in the end. Moreover, like a prophet Jesus saw that coming too (Matt 23:30–38).
EXPLAIN the Story
Whether Matthew intended chapter 23 to sound like a “Sermon of Woes”2 to be contrasted with the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus’s oracle against the religious leaders of Jerusalem covers much of the same ground as his prophetic predecessors. In fact, the issues Jesus raised are similar to the topoi of polemical attacks that were commonly used against one’s enemies in the first-century world: behavior that doesn’t match teaching, emphasizing the trivial at the expense of the significant.3 Essentially, Jesus found the attitudes and behavior of the scribes and Pharisees as dangerously reprehensible due to their influence. The way he saw it, they were not only his enemies but the enemies of the people. Of course, we think it’s unfair of someone to paint an entire group of people with a broad brush, condemning all of them. Surely there must have been a good scribe or Pharisee in the bunch (in fact, other Gospels suggest there were; see Mark 12:32–34). But that’s not the way the first-century world negotiated social situations. Everyone was either your friend or your enemy. There was no in-between, no benefit of the doubt. In the social world that prized honor above all else, no one could afford ambivalence. Guilt by association ruled the honor game. Therefore, the binary world of friends and enemies made it easier to negotiate a world that didn’t celebrate diversity as a virtue. Therefore, Jesus had to make it plain: these scribes and Pharisees are not your friends even though they act like it. They are your enemies, and here’s why.
The Hypocrisy of Self-Promotion
At the beginning of his ministry, Jesus warned the crowd and his disciples not to “practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them” (Matt 6:1). The reason he issued the warning had to do with rewards. The people may be impressed, but God won’t like it. In fact, those who show off their piety lose their reward with God (vv. 2–5). When it comes to righteousness, maintaining your privacy is a matter of self-interest, guarding your divine investment. This time, however, when Jesus warned the people about these hypocrites, it had more to do with their deleterious effect on others—why their duplicity ends up being so destructive. The Pharisees eventually lead others to hell, sealing God’s judgment against them (23:15, 32–35). So, in this case avoiding hypocrisy is a matter of self-preservation, avoiding the wrath of God—which also may explain why Jesus used such a harsh tone.4 There’s a lot more at stake than missing out on divine rewards. Hypocrisy is a deadly problem.5
If not practicing what you preach (Matt 23:3) condemns you to hell, then that might encourage all of us to stop preaching. But Jesus doesn’t go that far; he expects his disciples to preach the gospel (10:7; 28:19–20). Of course, he also takes “living the gospel” (practicing what we preach) very seriously.6 Yet he knows his disciples will mess up, sometimes saying one thing but doing something else (26:31–35). So, the problem with hypocrisy seems to be more than deeds not matching words. As scholars have noticed,7 Jesus seems to be more concerned about chronic hypocrisy because it leads to self-deception. After a while, duplicity becomes such an ingrained habit that hypocrisy is no longer recognizable to the hypocrite. In fact, if a person does anything for a long period of time, it will eventually be seen as acceptable behavior in their eyes.8 That’s the problem with the scribes and Pharisees: they have been hypocrites for so long they don’t know it. They say the right things (the law) but they’re not helping anyone do the right thing (keep the law; 23:3). They think they are helping others, trying to get Israel to obey the commandments, strapping the law on the backs of their disciples (v. 4). But they turned the law into a burden rather than a blessing9—the same criticism appears in the Sermon on the Mount. They sat in “the seat of Moses,” pretending to carry on his tradition as a spokesman for God, but their endgame was to receive the adoration of men (23:5–7). That’s why they wore big phylacteries—leather pouches that held Scripture verses—on their foreheads (Exod 13:9; Deut 6:8; 11:18). That’s why they had long tassels dangling from their robes (Num 15:38–41; Deut 22:12). Both clothing accessories were supposed to be visual reminders—for them more than others—to keep the law. According to Jesus, however, these hypocrites wore broad phylacteries and long tassels so that everyone would admire them. How did Jesus know that? When someone called them, “Rabbi,” or gave them the best seat in the house, they soaked it up like a dry sponge. They didn’t care about others. Everything they did—even teaching others about the law—was to promote themselves.
They were so selfish that when Jesus opened the door of the kingdom to those who needed it the most, the scribes and Pharisees tried to slam it shut. Rather than help Jesus guide sinners to God, they made every effort to block the entrance, refusing to go in and preventing others from entering (Matt 23:13). Yet they would go to great lengths, “travel over land and sea to win a single convert” to their cause (v. 15), trying to get God-fearers circumcised10 or getting other Jews to join their ranks.11 Jesus came to save the people; the scribes and Pharisees were out to expand their membership. They also majored on the minor, trivializing the sacred while exaggerating the miniscule. For example, the scribes and the Pharisees valued the gold in the temple more than the temple or its divine resident (vv. 16–17, 21–22). They cared more about the gifts on the altar than the altar’s sacred purpose (vv. 18–20). They were fanatical about tithing (Lev 27:30), but ignored injustice (Matt 23:23). They strained their wine for gnats (Lev 11:41–45), but had no problem swallowing the camel of their hypocrisy (Matt 23:24).12 Like dirty dishes that were clean on the outside (v. 25), like whitewashed tombs that housed unclean corpses (v. 27), the scribes and Pharisees wanted to look good, trying to hide their corrupt, dead hearts (vv. 26, 28). In other words, they were the complete opposite of what Jesus required of his disciples. While the scribes and Pharisees exalted themselves, those who followed Jesus would learn what it meant to humble themselves as slaves (vv. 11–12).
The Hypocrisy of Pretense
There was only one other time in Matthew’s Gospel where Jesus quotes the teaching of the scribes and Pharisees (15:5), which reveals, of course, that he had spent some time listening to them. He had heard them give their rulings about a variety of laws, interpreting for the people what would be a violation of the commandments. Evidently, commoners asked these experts (both the paid professionals, the scribes, and the lay leaders, the Pharisees) about the finer points of the law. After all, the law was vague in certain places, requiring specific interpretations that would ensure compliance. As we mentioned before,13 not all rabbis agreed, offering different interpretations of the same commandment (the Mishnah is filled with various opinions of more than a hundred rabbis). It’s not the differing opinions among the teachers that bothered Jesus but the pretense that they knew everything—ferreting out every detail supposedly embedded in the law—even claiming the ability to distinguish between swearing oaths by the temple or by the gold in the temple (23:16). How could anyone know that God would hold a man to the latter but not the former? To make such a claim was the height of arrogance—not to mention the fact that they were wrong (vv. 20–22). Furthermore, their microscopic vision blinded them to the more important macroscopic issues of justice, mercy, and faithfulness (v. 23). This is why Jesus had to call them out: they were blind guides (blinded by their pride), who were misleading blind followers (blinded by their ignorance), all headed straight for hell (15:14). To be so wrong, thinking you are so right—self-deception!—was a dangerous situation that had eternal consequences. We may prefer to see Jesus’s remarks about hell (23:15, 33), filling up the measure of the sin of their forefathers (v. 32), and the impeding wrath of God on Jerusalem (vv. 37–38) as little more than a rhetorical flourish—his last attempt to dissuade the crowds from following the scribes and Pharisees. (Is that what “hell,” “sin,” and God’s “wrath” have become to us? Words that are used only for rhetorical effect?) But these were not empty threats, intended only to strike fear in the hearts of his listeners. No, when Jesus talked about hell, sin, and the wrath of God, he was deadly serious.
Even though it was somewhat common for one Jew to tell another group of Jews that they were headed for the judgment of God,14 such damnation was still offensive—as offensive as when one Christian damns other Christians to hell. In certain respects, to damn the Pharisees to hell was inconceivable. For just as most Christians are convinced they are going to heaven when they die, so also the scribes and Pharisees were convinced that they would inherit the kingdom of God. Moreover, these religious leaders were so convinced they were right, they claimed that they wouldn’t have made the same mistakes as their ancestors who killed the prophets God had sent to Israel (v. 30). (Don’t we all think we’re smarter than generations past?) The irony was more than Jesus could take. Here stands the very Son of God, talking like the last prophet of God, and the Pharisees considered him as nothing more than the great pretender. Jesus therefore connected the dots for them: since they claim to be the descendants of prophet killers, they will prove that they belong to their notorious ancestry when Jesus sends his prophets, sages, and teachers to them, and history repeats itself (vv. 31–34). Like a prophet, Jesus predicts the scribes and Pharisees will torture and kill Jesus’s disciples just like their ancestors did to the prophets. Therefore, all the injustice of ages past will fall on their heads; this generation of scribes and Pharisees will bear the entire guilt of all prophet killers of all time (past, present, and future). The blood of every biblical martyr, from the first murder victim (Abel) to the last prophet murdered according to 2 Chronicles (Zechariah), will cry out for judgment against these scribes and Pharisees (Matt 23:35–36). And God will make them pay for all of it, for every last drop of righteous blood as if they were the criminals who killed them all. That’s quite a reversal. The scribes and Pharisees have gone from expert teachers of the law to the worst criminals in Israel’s history.
The patience of God led prophets to assume that even though the Lord was waiting for Israel to repent, her sins were piling up high to the heavens, inciting the day of divine judgment. God couldn’t let things go, ignoring past indiscretions. Rather, the prophets worked with the presumption that Israel needed to repent, change her ways, and obey God to avert the day of God’s wrath. Yet even if that never happened, the prophets warned the people that a day of reckoning would come. Once Israel had exhausted God’s patience, he would judge the people for all their sins—past and present.
That the current generation would have to pay for the sins of their forefathers sounds completely unfair to us.15 We believe that individuals should be held accountable for their own actions. Furthermore, to make the people pay for the wickedness of their rulers isn’t justice according to our standards. Yet we blame politicians for getting us all in a mess, such as bad decisions that lead to war or economic policies that have an adverse effect on the environment. We understand that future generations will suffer the consequences of our sins, our bad decisions. So, when Jesus pronounced judgment upon all of Jerusalem for the sins of their forefathers and religious leaders (vv. 37–39), he not only sounded like an Old Testament prophet but an observant poet. To quote John Donne, “No man is an island.”16 None of us can live only for ourselves. What we do affects others. That’s especially true for leaders, whose decisions will always have consequences—not only for them but also for those who are led. To whom much is given, much is required.
Such influence, such great power, should compel leaders to humility. After all, the way the prophets saw it, God was the one who shared his power with Israel’s leaders. He made kings. He established priests. He inspired prophets. So, where did the scribes and Pharisees fit into the divine government of religious life? They weren’t “called of God,” inspired by the Spirit to say, “Thus saith the Lord.” They weren’t predestined to serve God, a birthright determined by tribal identity. Instead, they took it upon themselves to be experts in the law. We could even say the scribes and Pharisees were self-appointed teachers of the Scriptures. The only evidence to substantiate their claim that they spoke for God when they interpreted the law was that the people listened to them. According to Jesus, however, those days were over. Jerusalem should have listened to Jesus, but they didn’t. Rather, it “kill[s] the prophets and stone[s] those sent to” it (v. 37). Jesus presumed to be their savior, like a hen protecting her chicks (“the day of the Lord is coming! Duck and cover!”), but they refused. Therefore, since judgment begins with the house of God, Jesus declared “your house is left to you desolate” (v. 38)—either referring to Jerusalem (your house) or more likely the temple (your house; 24:2).17 Like Ezekiel’s vision (Ezek 10:18), Jesus declared that the glory of the Lord had departed. And since there was no divine power left to protect the temple, it would be a matter of time until the whole thing would implode, “not one stone left upon another” (Matt 24:2). Jesus was done, and he was leaving. But he would be back. And when that day comes, Jesus predicted Jerusalem will have finally learned to say what they should have said on Palm Sunday: “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord” (23:39).18
LIVE the Story
“What’s the worse thing you can call another Christian?” I recently asked the question during a Sunday-morning sermon, and the congregation nearly responded with one voice: “Hypocrite!” Isn’t that interesting? No one said “murderer” or “adulterer.” (Nor did anyone shout out the more inflammatory accusations of “cheater” or “liar.” Call someone a liar today, and they’ll get very angry even though we all lie. When students are caught red-handed, they always deny they cheated—what a surprise, cheaters lie). But in Christian subculture, the “chief of sinners” is a hypocrite and a Pharisee. Lay people know that because they’ve heard countless sermons from preachers warning their parishioners about the dangers of hypocrisy. Yet Jesus wasn’t concerned about hypocrisy among the laity of Jerusalem. His sermon of “woes” wasn’t directed against the people.19 When it came to hypocrisy, they weren’t the problem. The teachers of the law were the hypocrites, both the professionals (scribes) and the amateurs (Pharisees). One wonders if the same is true today. If Jesus were to preach his sermon of woes in our churches today, would he direct his comments to the laity (like many preachers do)? Or would he instead warn the people about the hypocrisy of the current “scribes and Pharisees”—our preachers and Sunday-school teachers? After all, lay people don’t preach and teach. They sit and listen to preachers and teachers every Sunday. They may be guilty of not practicing what they hear—a problem to be sure (Jas 1:22–25). Yet that didn’t disturb Jesus as much as those who don’t practice what they preach. They are hypocrites bound for hell.
Hypocrisy rooted in self-deception is hard to shake. It’s one thing to act like a hypocrite, knowing that your actions don’t match your words. Such “actors” are playing politics, feigning sincerity to sway the masses to their own advantage. They still know the difference between right and wrong—their acting proves it. But what about sincere hypocrites, those who don’t (can’t? won’t?) recognize their own duplicity? They can see the hypocrisy of others; they just can’t see it in themselves. “What? Me, a hypocrite? You’ve got to be kidding.” Many scholars think that’s what Jesus is criticizing here20—not teachers who are intentional fakers, trying to pull the wool over everyone’s eyes, but hypocrites who were blind to their faults (Matt 23:16–17). In other words, the Pharisees weren’t con men playing on the ignorance of the masses, trying to dupe the crowds. Rather, these hypocrites were teachers who believed what they said. The problem, according to Jesus, was that they didn’t live up to what they taught, and it didn’t bother them. They were sincerely wrong, but didn’t care. Why not? Because by their own words they were convinced they were right. Having deceived themselves, no one could tell them otherwise.
I cannot help but wonder if the scribes and Pharisees were more susceptible to hypocrisy due to the role they played in the religious life of Israel. Not the Sadducees, the Herodians, or the Essenes—when it came to obeying the law, the people looked to the Pharisees as the voice of reason.21 The Sadducees and the Herodians played power politics among the elite. The Essenes withdrew from society. But the Pharisees existed for the common person—of the people, for the people. Their scribes copied the Scriptures for the synagogues, and their lawyers interpreted the law for everyday life. Therefore, as local experts the Pharisees were required to talk a lot to the people. Words were their craft. It was their job not only to produce the Scriptures but also explain the Scriptures. And, the people listened to them. Why wouldn’t they? So, consider the implications of their influence. The Jewish people attended synagogues to hear Scriptures that were copied by Pharisees, read by Pharisees, interpreted by Pharisees, and then modeled by Pharisees. When people thought about the law, they considered the Pharisees. When the law was lived out before their eyes, they saw the Pharisees. When the people heard the law—the very voice of God—it sounded like the Pharisees.22 That must be a pretty heady thing: stand before a group of people week after week and speak with the voice of God. After a while, you might begin to believe everything you say is true.
It’s easy to believe our own voice. If I say something often enough (especially when I think I’m speaking for God), I’ll convince myself that it’s true. I may not do what I say. But at least—I think to myself—I’m saying what needs to be said. And yet, when I preach a sermon on James 2:14 (that a genuine faith cannot rely on our words), I begin to feel a little sheepish. How can a sermon about the importance of works do any good? “Listen to me. If you have a faith that relies exclusively upon words, that faith won’t save you from hell. Let me explain. . . .” The irony is more than I can take sometimes. I’m using words to convince my listeners that words aren’t enough. Yet I keep on talking, preaching, writing words. But if I’ve fallen in love with the sound of my own voice, if James is right that an unbridled tongue only leads to self-deception, and I keep talking, who will save me from this body of death? I can’t talk myself out of self-deception. My words are the problem. And, if I keep talking, it will only get worse because hypocrisy lives comfortably in the family room of my words. Perhaps it’s time to shut my mouth for a change and listen to the hypocrisy of my ways. Then perhaps the words of the prophet might penetrate my heart. Then I might have ears to hear and hands to do what I see in the mirror of God’s word (Jas 1:23–25). Then I will have a “religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless,” which “is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress” (v. 27)—the weightier matters of the law. On the other hand, “those who consider themselves religious and yet do not keep a tight rein on their tongues deceive themselves, and their religion is worthless” (v. 26). Of all things, I don’t want to have a worthless religion. I don’t want to be deceived by my own words. I don’t want to prove once again that the occupational hazard of preachers and teachers is self-deception because we don’t know when to stop talking.
But that’s not the only problem—knowing when to shut up. If the tree of hypocrisy is rooted in self-deception, then its fertilizer is self-promotion. In Jesus’s day, the honor game encouraged self-promotion. In fact, it was required. If you didn’t constantly maintain your social standing in the community by boasting, then your honor would be lost to stronger competitors vying for the approval of the same group. That’s why the Pharisees loved receiving choice seats and proper greetings (Matt 23:6–7); it proved to everyone they were still important. To be seen in the right places (synagogues), dressed the right way (tassels and phylacteries), called the right things (rabbi) was the primary goal of everyday life. Today, things haven’t changed much at all. Social media have fostered a world of self-promotion where everyone seems to compete for attention: “Look at me!” (One wonders how much the Pharisees would have taken social advantage of the “selfie.”) Since a picture paints a thousand words, to be seen is more important than being heard. In the old days of social media, blogging was the venue for establishing a voice in the world of self-importance. Now, creating and maintaining a carefully crafted image through pictures is far more crucial to self-worth. You don’t have to be a good talker to matter. Consequently, the claim to fame is a game everyone is playing—not just for those who think they have something to say.
We recently returned from a trip to Italy, a place I’ve always wanted to visit. For a New Testament professor, seeing the Colosseum and the Forum in Rome or walking through the ancient streets of Pompeii—well, I couldn’t help myself, snapping hundreds of pictures. (In the old days one had to be selective, carrying a half-dozen rolls of thirty-six-exposure film. Framing the right picture was crucial in a world of limited snapshots. But these days, digital cameras encourage a lack of restraint.) Even though this was supposed to be a special family trip for our graduating senior, my wife and daughter let me go crazy with the cameras, often leaving them to find that perfect picture. Of course, the place to take that perfect picture was easy to find. Typically, there was a huge crowd of tourists lined up with their cameras at the punto panoramico (“viewpoint”). I would stand at the back of the mob, waiting my turn until the others cleared out of the way before I took my picture. But things were different this trip. When we took our oldest daughter on her senior trip to Germany a few years ago, the lines moved fairly quickly. Tourists would snap their picture and move on. This time, it seemed to take forever. Why? Everyone (and I mean nearly everyone) would pose for their own camera using a selfie stick. After several minutes of posing (and most of the time, it had to be a dramatic pose), they would take a picture, review their work, then decide to take another, and another, and another until they got that perfect angle of themselves in front of this attraction or that site. I just wanted to take a picture of what I saw. Everyone else was trying to take a picture of themselves. It was maddening. After a while, I lost patience and pushed my way through the “paparazzi” to snap my picture and leave. I was completely shocked by the spectacle. I should have seen it coming, though. Everywhere we went, peddlers were selling selfie sticks, dozens on their arms, pushing them to the hoards of tourists heading for this or that attraction. I thought to myself, “Why are they selling those things? Who needs a selfie stick?” Evidently, I did. When it comes to tourism these days, to be seen is far more important than seeing the sites.
Leaving the Forum, I muttered to my wife and daughter, “I don’t understand. They spend so much time trying to take the perfect ‘glamor shot’ of themselves in front of the arch of Titus that they don’t even see the sacking of Jerusalem carved in the side of the monument. Unbelievable. They have no idea what they’re missing. Why are they doing that? I just don’t get it. Do you see this? They did the same thing at the Colosseum.”
At which point my daughter, Grace, said, “Dad, it’s bragging rights. They’re taking selfies to prove to everyone where they’ve been. That’s far more important these days.”
To which I replied, “It’s all about image, isn’t it?”
Then Grace continued to explain the social dynamics of our foolish world to her out-of-touch father, ending her little tutorial with a wry smile and saying, “To be seen is the only thing that matters.” I looked back to see the gang of tourists with their selfie sticks, posing in front of the arch of Titus, ignoring the dramatic scene of the aftermath of the destruction of Jewish temple in AD 70 carved in the wall, wondering what the ancient people of Jerusalem who suffered the tragedy would have thought of the charade. Then, with the words of Jesus echoing in my ears, “For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted” (Matt 23:12), I couldn’t help but connect the dots:
Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing. Look, your house is left to you desolate. (vv. 37–38)
Indeed, it was. There’s even a crowd of people taking pictures of themselves in front of the monument that celebrates the desolation, the victory of an empire that used to rule the world—the remnant of which is little more than a pile of rubble, a tourist attraction for people who want to be seen.
Hypocrisy is a deadly, serious problem. There are even monuments to prove it, surrounded by tourists with selfie sticks and preachers who would rather talk about the vanity of others.
1. See the critique by Luz, Matthew, 3:138, 174–77.
2. Bruner, Matthew, 2:430.
3. See Davies and Allison, Matthew, 3:259; Talbert, Matthew, 256–57.
4. France noticed that when Jesus speaks to the crowd about the scribes and Pharisees, he is polite. But when he talks directly to the scribes and Pharisees, he uses a caustic tone (France, Matthew, 867).
5. See above, 112–13, 143–44, 152–54, 436–41, 444 [125–28, 132–33 comments on hypocrisy, Matt 6:1–18].
6. Nolland, Matthew, 924.
7. Luz, Matthew, 3:103.
8. There have been some interesting neurological studies on how repetitive activity rewires the brain, eventually making any behavior seem acceptable; see Joel B. Green, Body, Soul, and Human Life: The Nature of Humanity in the Bible (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008), 79–105.
9. Garland, Reading Matthew, 234.
10. See Scot McKnight, Light among the Gentiles: Jewish Missionary Activity in the Second Temple Period (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991), 106–15.
11. See Nolland, Matthew, 934.
12. Jesus may have relied upon a pun, heard only in Aramaic, qalma (gnat) and gamla (camel); see France, Matthew, 874.
13. See above, 112–13; 239–43.
14. The literature produced by the Jewish “monastics” at Qumran are filled with condemnations against the “wicked” in Israel—God will judge them as if they were gentiles; see 1QpHab 2:1–9; 8:8–15; 12:7–13; 1QS 3:20–24; 4:9–19; 5:1–2, 7, 11–15; 1QH 14:29–35.
15. Luz calls this “the logic of collective guilt” (Matthew, 3:156).
16. John Donne, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1978), 108.
17. “Thus Jesus’s death is a sign of judgment. That God has abandoned his house means also that ‘Immanuel’ will no longer be seen” (Luz, Matthew, 3:162).
18. Scholars are divided over whether Jesus’s pronouncement is a promise or a threat, a reason to hope that Jerusalem will receive her king one day or resignation to the fact that it will be too late for them on the last day. It is as difficult to understand as Paul’s claim that one day “every knee will bow . . . and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus is Lord” (Phil 2:10–11). Is it compulsory or voluntary submission? See Garland, Reading Matthew, 236–37.
19. At first, Davies and Allison misplace the emphasis, suggesting that the “contemporary application of Matthew 23 should target the church” (Matthew, 3:262). But then they turn their attention more appropriately to the hypocrisy within church leadership (ibid., 3:263).
20. For example, see France, Matthew, 869.
21. Josephus, Ant. 18.1.3.
22. “The scribes and Pharisees were walking copies of the Law” (Nolland, Matthew, 923).