Patrick Comerford
We are continuing in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar and this week began the Tenth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity X) and then the Summer bank holiday on Monday. The calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today remembers Saint Augustine (430), Bishop of Hippo, Teacher of the Faith, whose mother, Saint Monica (387), was commemorated yesterday (27 August).
Later today, we are planning to visit London. But, 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: 8-12 (NRSVA):
[Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples:] 8 ‘But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all students. 9 And call no one your father on earth, for you have one Father – the one in heaven. 10 Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Messiah. 11 The greatest among you will be your servant. 12 All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.’
Today’s Reflection:
This morning’s Gospel reading (Matthew 23: 8-12) is part of the Gospel reading we looked at last Saturday (Matthew 23: 1-12, 23 August 2025). This morning, we hear a more general rebuke of those among the Scribes and the Pharisees who ‘do not practise what they teach’ (verse 4), who ‘do all their deeds to be seen by others’ (verse 5) and who ‘love to have the place of honour at banquets and the best seats in the synagogues, and to be greeted with respect in the market-places, and to have people call them rabbi’ (verses 6-7).
We are warned about the dangers built into loving honorific titles, such as ‘teacher,’ ‘father’ and instructor (see verses 8-10) – perhaps for me that may mean ‘Father’, ‘Canon’ and ‘Professor’ – because, of course, we are all students, we are all brothers and sisters, we are all disciples and children of God.
Yet I too am a father and have been a teacher and a tutor. Is Christ warning against the position; or is he warning against seeking honours that have not been earned?
It is a truism that parents must earn the respect of their children, not seek or demand it. Most parents have, at one time or another, said to their children: ‘Do what I tell you, not what I do.’ Needless to say, children never listen to parents when we say something so silly. All parents know, on the other hand, that actions speak louder than words.
This morning’s reading must not be understood as a general rebuke of all scribes and Pharisees, for Jesus prefaces all he says here by reminding those present that they ‘sit on Moses’ seat; therefore, do whatever they teach you and follow it’ (verses 2-3).
Perhaps this morning’s reading reflects later tensions between the Jewish synagogue and the new Christian community. But, in Christ’s own days, people expected a Pharisee to be a careful observer of the Law. Unlike the Temple priests and village elders, the Pharisees did not have a high social status.
Before the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in the year 70 CE, the Pharisees were a relatively modest group of people without political power and they tried to live out Jewish tradition and the Torah seriously and conscientiously in their daily lives. The Pharisees saw the Law as applying not only to every aspect of public life, but to every aspect of private, domestic, daily life too.
There is a well-worn saying that advises: ‘It’s not where you start out but where you end up.’ The Pharisees started out with good intentions, but some of them ended by seeking to be great, seeking to be exalted (verses 11-12). They started out being concerned for holiness, but some ended at exclusion. They started out seeking to recognise God in all aspects of life, but some of them ended by seeking recognition at banquets and in the synagogue (verses 6-7).
Christ calls us to live in such a way that we can say to the world: ‘Do as we say and do as we do.’
As I was suggesting in my reflections last Saturday, the problem here may not so much be a conflict between words and actions, but the need to make the connection between words and actions. Words must mean what they point to, and the actions must be capable of being described in words.
Most of us, as children, learned by watching how adults behave, we learn as members of the human community. As a child, when I needed to learn how to use a fork, I did not need a lecture on the hygienic and sanitary contributions that forks have made to the benefit European lifestyles since the introduction of the fork through Byzantium and Venice to mediaeval Europe.
I did not need an engineering lecture on the practicalities and difficulties of balancing the prongs and the handle.
I would have been too young to read a delightful discussion by Judith Herrin of how the fork-using Byzantines were much more sophisticated than their western allies or rivals who ate with their hands (Judith Herrin, Byzantium – the Surprising Life of a Mediaeval Empire, London: Allen Lane, 2007).
The same principle applies to everything else. I recalled on Saturday how Andrew Davison, Regius Professor of Divinity, Oxford, points out in his contribution to Imaginative Apologetics (London: SCM Press, 2011), that the same principle applies to how we learn about everything else in life – cups, books, bicycles and so on.
He might have added love – the love of God and the love of one another.
Thinking requires language, language is a communal experience, and, as Andrew Davison points out, we learn language as members of a human community and through induction into common human practices.
We can talk about prayer, forgiveness, and most of all about love itself, to others. But if it only remains talk and has no application, then the words have no meaning.
We may say we believe in the two great commandments, but we only show we believe in them with credibility when we live them out in our lives. There must be no gap that separates what we teach and how we live out what we teach in our lives.
Today’s Prayers (Thursday 28 August 2025):
The theme this week (24 to 30 August) in Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is been ‘From Strangers to Neighbours’ (pp 32-33) This theme was introduced on Sunday with a programme update from the Right Revd Antonio Ablon, Chaplain of Saint Catherine’s Anglican Church, Stuttgart, Germany.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (Thursday 28 August 2025) invites us to pray:
God of the journey, sustain those facing hardships in foreign lands. When they feel unseen or unheard, may they be reminded that you are near. May their faith be their refuge, and may they find kindness in those they meet.
The Collect:
Merciful Lord,
who turned Augustine from his sins
to be a faithful bishop and teacher:
grant that we may follow him in penitence and discipline
till our restless hearts find their rest in you;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
The Post Communion Prayer:
God of truth,
whose Wisdom set her table
and invited us to eat the bread and drink the wine
of the kingdom:
help us to lay aside all foolishness
and to live and walk in the way of insight,
that we may come with Augustine to the eternal feast of heaven;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Yesterday’s reflections
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
