Patrick Comerford
We are continuing in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar and the week began yesterday with the Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity XIII).
This is a holiday weekend in England, and today is a bank holiday that really marks the end of the summer holiday period here. Before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, for reflection, prayer and reading in these ways:
1, today’s Gospel reading;
2, a reflection on the Gospel reading;
3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;
4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.
Matthew 23: 13-22 (NRSVA):
[Jesus said:] 13 ‘But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you lock people out of the kingdom of heaven. For you do not go in yourselves, and when others are going in, you stop them. 15 Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you cross sea and land to make a single convert, and you make the new convert twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.
16 ‘Woe to you, blind guides, who say, “Whoever swears by the sanctuary is bound by nothing, but whoever swears by the gold of the sanctuary is bound by the oath.” 17 You blind fools! For which is greater, the gold or the sanctuary that has made the gold sacred? 18 And you say, “Whoever swears by the altar is bound by nothing, but whoever swears by the gift that is on the altar is bound by the oath.” 19 How blind you are! For which is greater, the gift or the altar that makes the gift sacred? 20 So whoever swears by the altar, swears by it and by everything on it; 21 and whoever swears by the sanctuary, swears by it and by the one who dwells in it; 22 and whoever swears by heaven, swears by the throne of God and by the one who is seated upon it.’
Today’s Reflection:
In the Beatitudes at the beginning of Saint Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus says eight groups of people are blessed: ‘the poor in spirit … those who mourn … the meek … those who hunger and thirst for righteousness … the merciful … the pure in heart … the peacemakers … those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness …’ (Matthew 5: 3-10).
Now, as we come close to the end of this Gospel, we come across seven groups of people who are condemned as hypocrites and against whom Jesus pronounces seven woes.
In today’s readings, we hear the first three of these seven woes: woe to you who ‘lock people out of the kingdom of heaven’ (13) … who ‘make the new convert twice as much a child of hell’ (15) … and ‘blind guides’ who swear by the ‘gold of the sanctuary’ (16-22).
We hear two further woes tomorrow (Matthew 23: 23-26): those who tithe mint, dill, and cummin but neglect the weightier matters of justice, mercy and faith; and we hear the final of the seven woes on Wednesday (Matthew 23: 27-32): a double woe on those who on the outside look righteous to others, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.
A ‘woe’ is an exclamation of grief, similar to what is expressed by the word alas. In pronouncing woes, Jesus is prophesying judgment on the religious leaders of the day for their hypocrisy. He calls them hypocrites, blind guides, snakes and a ‘brood of vipers’.
In some translations, notably the King James Version, there is an eighth woe in verse 14: ‘Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you devour widows’ houses and for the sake of appearance you make long prayers; therefore you will receive the greater condemnation.’ However, older manuscripts do not include this verse.
Before Jesus condemns the hypocrisy of religious leaders, they have been following him to test him and try to trick him with questions about divorce (Matthew 19: 3), his authority (Matthew 21: 23), paying taxes to Caesar (Matthew 22: 17), the resurrection (Matthew 22: 23), and the greatest commandment of the law (Matthew 22: 36).
Jesus prefaces his seven woes by explaining to the disciples that they should obey the teachings of the religious leaders – as they teach the law of God – but not to emulate their behaviour because they do not practice what they preach (Matthew 23: 3).
The first of these seven woes condemns the scribes and Pharisees for keeping people out of the kingdom of heaven: ‘But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you lock people out of the kingdom of heaven. For you do not go in yourselves, and when others are going in, you stop them’ (Matthew 23: 13).
The missing woe in verse 14 is found in footnotes in the NRSV and many other modern translations but not in the main text. The most important authoritative early manuscripts do not include verse 14.
Although part or all of the verse is found in some versions, it is almost certainly not original. Elsewhere, Christ condemns these woeful practices (see Mark 12: 40 and Luke 20: 47), and this verse are not disputed textually.
We might ask whether some scribe long ago omitted this woe, and the omission was then repeated in several subsequent manuscripts, or whether some scribe accidentally copied a marginal note from one of the parallel accounts.
Most Biblical scholars argue for the accidental insertion theory. But the woe in verse 14 is still included in what could be described as conservative evangelical versions, albeit often with brackets around the text or a footnote.
It is absent from Codex Sinaiticus and Codex B (both early 4th century), Codex D (5th century), Codex Z (6th century), Codex L (8th century), Codex Θ, minuscule 33 and 892 (9th century), and other later manuscripts on into the middle ages. Many early Old Latin manuscripts do not contain it, such as ita (4th century), ite (5th century), and others. The majority of the Latin Vulgate manuscripts, including all of the earliest copies, also lack the reading. The verse is missing in the earliest Syriac manuscript, the Sinaitic Palimpsest (4th century), as well as some of the later Palestinian Syriac copies. Most of the Coptic manuscripts also lack the verse, including the middle Egyptian manuscripts, the Sahidic manuscripts, and some of the Bohairic. The Armenian and Georgian translations likewise do not contain it.
The words in Matthew 23: 14 are found in only a few relatively late Greek witnesses. These include Uncial 0233 (8th century), and some later mediaeval manuscripts and lectionaries. The verse is present here in a number of Old Latin manuscripts, including itb and itff2 (both 5th century), and others. It is also found in the late mediaeval Clementine revision of the Vulgate, the second oldest Syriac manuscript, the Curetonian Gospels (5th century), some of the later Palestinian Syriac manuscripts, and some later Bohairic Coptic manuscripts.
The words in Matthew 23: 14 in the KJV appear between verses 12 and 13 in Codex W (late 4th or early 5th century), Codex O, Σ, and Uncial 0104 (all 6th century), Uncial 0102 and 0107 (both 7th century), Codex E (8th century), Codex F, G, H, K, Y, Δ, Π, and Uncial 0133 (all 9th century), as well as the majority of mediaeval manuscripts.
It is present in this place in very few Latin manuscripts, but is the reading in most of the Syriac copies and a few Bohairic Coptic manuscripts. The verse is also found in this alternate location in the Slavonic and Ethiopic translations.
In other words, There is much older, much stronger, more diverse, and vastly more numerous evidence in favour of the words being between 12 and 13 than there is for them being between 13 and 15.
But the earliest sources lack the verse, and it was absent throughout the centuries. Where there is fairly early evidence in some of the ancient translations, in each case there is even earlier evidence without the verse. Modern scholars conclude that the earliest copies in virtually every stream of transmission lack the verse entirely. The strongest evidence indicates that the words of Matthew 23: 14 are not original to this gospel, but were added in by a later scribe.
In the second of the seven woes, Jesus condemns religious leaders for teaching their converts the same hypocrisy that they themselves practice. They ‘cross sea and land to make a single convert’, and then make ‘the new convert twice as much a child of hell as yourselves’ (Matthew 13: 15).
In the third woe, Jesus refers to the religious elite not as hypocrites but as ‘blind guides’ (verse 16) and ‘blind fools’ (verse 17). They regarded themselves as guides of the blind (see Romans 2: 19), but were blind themselves and unfit to guide others. Instead of teaching spiritual truth, they preferred to quibble over irrelevant matters and find loopholes in the rules (Matthew 23: 16-22).
We should remember that the Pharisees are very religious, pious and good people. Too often we forget that Saint Paul boasts he is a Pharisee, that among the different Jewish groups of the day the Pharisees are the closest in tradition and practice to Jesus, and that Pharisaic Judaism is the spiritual ancestor of all modern forms of Judaism today.
The Pharisees looked at the demands the religious law of the Book of Leviticus made on the priests in the Temple. This priestly class included some of Jesus’ own family, such as Zechariah, the father of Saint John the Baptist.
Purity and cleanliness were part of their role in the Temple. Before they ate or handled any sacred food, they had to wash their hands thoroughly. But these rules only applied when they were on the rota for priestly duties in the Temple. They took it in turn, and outside that turn, those rules did not apply. Nor did they apply to the people in general, the average, everyday Jew on the street or at home.
But after the people return from exile in Babylon to Jerusalem, the Pharisees see the whole people as a royal people, a holy priesthood. And to make the people conscious of how holy the whole nation is, they suggest people should take on those priestly practices, to show they are holy.
In time, this becomes so accepted that people who do not bother washing their hands ritually before they eat are seen as being hypocrites if, at the same time, they are supposed to be holy and religious people.
The word hypocrite comes from classical Greek drama. This word (ὑποκριτής, hypokrités) was used for an actor who on stage puts on a mask and speaks the words of someone else. The actor with the mask could have subtitles with a disclaimer: ‘These are not my words, I am only using the words of Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes … or one of the other great playwrights.’
In Athens in the 4th century BCE, the orator Demosthenes ridiculed his rival Aeschines, who had been a successful actor before taking up politics, as a ῠ̔ποκρῐτής (hypokrités) whose skill at impersonating characters on stage made him untrustworthy as a politician. This negative view of the hypokrités, combined with the Roman disdain for actors, shaded into the originally neutral ὑπόκρισις (hypokrisis) or hypocrisy.
It is this later sense of hypokrisis as ‘play-acting’ or assuming a counterfeit persona that gives us the modern word hypocrisy with all its negative connotations.
So, a hypocrite was an actor, a pretender, a dissembler, a hypocrite puts on a mask and says something that represents someone else’s ideas, but that he does not necessarily believe himself.
Jesus is saying that the Pharisees are using someone else’s words but do not necessarily understand why those rules and regulations came about.
We should beware when piety gets in the way of fulfilling the heart of the law: loving God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and loving your neighbour as yourself. Let us beware when our piety separates us from others, for then it also separates us from God.
Today’s Prayers (Monday 26 August 2024):
The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church,’ the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is the ‘Theological Education Executive Leadership Programme in Africa.’ The course is expected to start in August 2024 and run until December 2025, and this theme was introduced yesterday with a programme update from Fran Mate, Regional Manager Africa, USPG.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (Monday 26 August 2024) invites us to pray:
We give thanks for the TEIs (theological education institutes) that continue to build the leadership of the Anglican churches.
The Collect:
Almighty God,
who called your Church to bear witness
that you were in Christ reconciling the world to yourself:
help us to proclaim the good news of your love,
that all who hear it may be drawn to you;
through him who was lifted up on the cross,
and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
The Post Communion Prayer:
God our creator,
you feed your children with the true manna,
the living bread from heaven:
let this holy food sustain us through our earthly pilgrimage
until we come to that place
where hunger and thirst are no more;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Additional Collect:
Almighty God,
you search us and know us:
may we rely on you in strength
and rest on you in weakness,
now and in all our days;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Yesterday’s reflection
Continued tomorrow
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org
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