Be Careful Who You Follow!          A Sermon based on Matthew 23. 1-12.
Preached at First Presbyterian Church, Clarks Summit, Pa on November 5, 2023.

David Brooks began his column in The New York Times the other day with these words: “We’re living in a brutalizing time: Scenes of mass savagery pervade the media. Americans have become vicious toward one another amid our disagreements. Everywhere I go, people are coping with an avalanche of negative emotions: shock, pain, contempt, anxiety, fear.”[i]

            At such a time as this, reading the twenty-third chapter of the Gospel of Matthew is fraught with danger. The reading you just heard comprise the first twelve of thirty-six or thirty-nine verses in which Jesus addresses his disciples and the crowds and points out the faults and foibles of some, but not all the scribes and Pharisees.

            For much of two millennia these verses have been interpreted by some, and thankfully not all, as a basis for anti-Semitism.  So let’s pause here to remember first and foremost, that Jesus was a Jew and Matthew was a Jew, and that their criticisms of the Scribes and the Phari-sees were intramural struggles, in house disagreements about how the words of Scripture were put into practice.  We must guard against allowing a passage like this to fuel anti-Semitism, particularly in the highly charged climate of our brutalizing time.

            Greg Carey, a New Testament professor provides some context as we make our way through today’s reading.  He writes: “Jesus almost surely did engage in controversy with the scribes, Pharisees, and other authorities, but this particular speech also reflects Matthew’s distinctive point of view…  Almost all interpreters believe Matthew’s Gospel emerged during a formative and conflicted moment in the emergence of rabbinic Judaism. With Jerusalem and its temple decimated, Jews began the process of imagining what it would mean to follow God without a central temple for pilgrimage and sacrifice.  During this period authoritative teachers of the Torah (the law of Moses) emerged.”[ii] 

            We do a disservice to the scribes and Pharisees if we give into the temptation to dismiss them all as mistaken at best, or worse yet, as evil.  One commentator offers a timely, timeless reminder when she writes: “While Jesus critiqued aspects of the behavior of some Jewish leaders, he also ate in their homes, talked with them about their teaching and his, and honored Jewish traditions and the authority of the Torah.”[iii]

For most of the fall, as Bill Carter led us through Paul’s Letter to the Philippians, our Affir-mation of Faith has been the words through which Paul, the Apostle, urged followers to “let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.  We’ll recite that ancient hymn again today. Living it is not easy, but if we let it, it becomes the needle on the heart’s compass set on the true north of  Christ.

            The true north of Christ is embedded in the law of Moses, which Jesus said on the mountain he came “not to abolish, but to fulfill.”[iv]  That law he condensed into two commandments: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind…and love your neighbor as yourself.”

            Those are easy words to say, but hard words to live.  So easily we forget what we’ve been taught. Hence, we must constantly relearn the key lessons Jesus teaches.  So we turn our atten-tion to that day in the temple, a couple of days before he would take a towel and a basin to wash his disciples’ feet.

            Jesus was in the temple for the third time in the week we call Holy.  The Palm Sunday donkey ride and his table-turning arrival in the temple were behind him.  Each day had been full of memorable moments like the cursing of a fruitless fig tree.  Chief priests and Israel’s elders, scribes and Sadducees, Pharisees and Herodians, had all lined up to ask questions designed to provide evidence for the arrest warrant they were preparing for Jesus. In between the debates, he told a story about two sons asked to work in their father’s field, neither of whom matched their words with their deeds.

Having been silenced with answers to trick questions about paying the emperor a tax to fund Israel’s own oppression, and a farcical tale about one woman widowed by seven brothers, his critics slipped away. Then Jesus turned his attention to teaching his disciples, with the crowds listening in. He said, “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat; therefore, do whatever they teach and follow it  (Mt. 23. 2)

            The first thing Jesus told his listeners that day was to listen to the scribes and the Pharisees and to learn what they had to teach.  By the time Matthew was writing his Gospel, the Jerusalem temple was in ruins, and the Pharisees and the Scribes were the best and the brightest. They were committed to help the Jewish people hold on to their identity by living according to the words written in the Torah and lifted up by the Prophets.

            One commentator fills in some gaps for us, writing, “Moses’ seat represents the Jewish leadership, tradition (and) law.  Matthew uses Jesus’ teaching as a rhetorical device to find common ground here.  There is validity to the Pharisees’ teachings, so heed them. The Torah is relevant to our life, so read it.”[v]

            But wait, there’s more.  The honor and praise Jesus gives the scribes and Pharisees is followed with a stern word of caution: “but do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they preach” (v. 3).

            What Jesus singles out in today’s passage is one of those very human tendencies, which if we’re honest, we can all admit to exhibiting from time to time: the tendency to say one thing and do another.  The Scribes and the Pharisees have the best teaching going.  They go back to the basics expounded from the beginning. But pay attention, because they don’t always do what they say. So be careful not to follow their example instead of their words. At issue is the correlation between the words of life we cherish and the deeds we do.  You’ve heard it in the popular phrase: walking the talk. If you talk the talk you’ve got walk the talk!

Every week, and for some, every day, those who follow Jesus Christ pray, “forgive us…as we forgive.” Whether the word attached speak of debts, trespasses, or sins, putting those words into practice is no easy task.  People like the grieving families of those Amish students downstate a few years ago, let us know that practicing what we pray and preach is possible.  Jacqueline Lewis points us to the mother from Minnesota who demonstrated “radical forgiveness. “She made prison visits to the sixteen-year-old boy who murdered her twenty-year old son. She got to know him, forgave him, and arranged for him to live next door after he was released from prison.  She said “Yes, he murdered my son, but the forgive-ness is for me.”[vi]          

            Theology professor, Gregory Love brings us back into our reading from Matthew, when he sums things up this way:  “After insisting on respect for (these) teachers of the law, Jesus gives a harsh criticism: they do not practice what they teach, so do not follow them as models.  A person’s conduct must cohere with her or his proclaimed values and loyalties.”[vii]

            Jesus seizes some other very human proclivities as he warns about following those who have allowed beliefs and practice to diverge.  Ever notice how some folks are oh so good at telling you what needs to be done, but never get around to doing it themselves?  Have you suffered under the eye of someone who insists that you complete a task according to their precise instructions, yet never lift a finger to help get it done?  Reminds me of the time Doug Simcoe and I were painting a white picket fence for Mrs. Hall, a very much faded former silent film star. When we attempted to tie back the sticker bushes so we could paint without getting stuck, she stormed out of the house and insisted we reach through the bushes with our brushes… but don’t get any white paint on the bushes!

            You see, the kinds of things Jesus points out about the Pharisees and scribes are universally human.  Another of the foibles he points out is how they have lost sight of the reasons for doing some of the things they promoted.  They’re doing some of things the Scriptures directed them to do, but for the wrong reasons. Professor Love explains: “The scribes and the Pharisees pray three times a day,  and wear the required small boxes containing portions of the Torah and the blue-and-white tassels on the four corners of their prayer shawls.  While both were meant to remind the praying person of God’s law, they were being worn in such a manner as to draw public attention to their superior piety.”[i]

Have you been part of an organization where the past presidents expect to be seated at one of the tables up front at the annual banquet?  Have you run up against the arrogance of entitlement which ex-pects the seas of a crowd to part for them whenever they make their grand  entrance.  Reminds me of a pastor’s wife who swooped into the Pastor’s reserved parking spot at 10:55 and into her saved seat as the Prelude concluded so everyone could note her arrival as the chimes struck eleventh hour.

            Jill Duffield, former editor of The Presbyterian Outlook wrote: “Daily interactions with others matter. How we walk the talk and move around this life profoundly impacts, for good or for ill, our witness. Are we aware of this reality? (Are we) Conscious of the fact that when our neighbors see us pulling out of the driveway for worship every Sunday morning and then read our nasty emails…on Monday morning, the dichotomy colors their view not only of us, but of Christians and maybe even Jesus.”[ii]

            Theology Professor, Sammy Alfaro points out that “…Jesus’ words to the disciples remind us of this powerful truth: “excellence in character will always be a far greater indicator of true leadership than charisma or competency alone.”[iii]

            Alfaro also sees the words of Jesus in Matthew 23 as “reminiscent of the prophet Micah’s condemnation of Israel’s wayward leadership, (who) led God’s people astray; neglected to uphold justice, and took bribes.” He goes on to say “Jesus’ own accusations of the scribes and Pharisees place him in the tradition of the prophets who were sent by God to correct leadership.”[iv]

            In these brutalizing times, when so many voices are quick to point out all that is wrong with those with whom they disagree, it is helpful to note that prophetic speech is not spoken merely to condemn, but to correct.  Our words should do the same. When Jesus walked in the footsteps of the prophets and called out the inconsistency between belief and practice his purpose went far beyond merely pointing out what was wrong.  The goal of his words was to lead people back to the Way that celebrates Truth and leads to Life.

            One of the lessons I learned from my father came in response to complaints about teachers who didn’t teach and leaders who didn’t lead.  He told me that you can learn something from anyone: you can learn how to be from those who are good examples, and you can learn how not to be from those who are not. Another lesson, shared by a retired minister who lived in the first village where I was pastor, was this: “Even a broken watch is right twice a day.”

As Jesus pointed out both strengths and the weaknesses of the scribes and Pharisees, he was offering the disciples and the crowds an opportunity to learn.  “Finally,” Professor Alfaro writes, “Jesus reveals the main lesson his disciples needed to learn from the negative example set forth by the scribes and Pharisees: “The greatest among you will be your servant.”

            The road back from being “vicious toward one another in our disagreements,” is to choose to follow the example of the One teacher, Jesus.  We have the opportunity to dig our way out of the “avalanche of negative emotions,” by embracing the words found after Paul said finally for the second time in the Letter to the Philippians.  He in his own way pushed for moving beyond sound teaching to live authentically and faithfully.

            “Finally, beloved,
                whatever is true, whatever is honorable,
                whatever is just, whatever is pure,
                whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable,
                if there is any excellence, and if there is anything worthy of praise,
                think about these things.

                Keep on doing the things you have learned and received and heard and seen in me,
                and the God of peace will be with you.”
                                                                                                            (Philippians 4. 8-9)

[i] David Brooks, “How to Stay Sane in Brutalizing Times,” The New York Times, Electronic edition, Nov. 2, 2023
[ii] Greg Carey, workingpreacher.com, November 2, 2014
[iii] Amy Moiso, Connections – A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship, Year A, Volume 3, (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2020, p. 456
[iv] Matthew 5. 17
[v] Jacqueline J. Lewis, Feasting on the Gospels, Matthew, Vol. 2, Chapters 14-28, (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2013), p. 213
[vi] ibid., p. 215
[vii] Gregory Anderson Love, , Feasting on the Gospels, Matthew, Vol. 2, Chapters 14-28, (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2013), p. 212
[viii] ibid., p. 214
[ix] Jill Duffield, “Leading and following – Looking into the Lectionary for Nov. 5, The Presbyterian Outlook, blog, presoutlook@pres-outlook.org, Mon, Oct. 30, 2017, p. 2
[x] Sammy G. Alfaro, Connections – A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship, Year A, Volume 3, (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2020, p. 454
[xi] ibid.