‘For you are like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful’ (Matthew 23: 27) … the Tomb of Amyntas, carved into the rock face in the cliffs above Fethiye in south-west Turkey (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)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 Monica (387), the mother of Saint Augustine of Hippo, who is commemorated tomorrow (28 August).
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.
‘For you are like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful’ (Matthew 23: 27) … the ‘King’s Tomb’ has become a symbol of Kaş in southern Turkey (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)Matthew 23: 27-32 (NRSVA):
[Jesus said:] 27 ‘Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful, but inside they are full of the bones of the dead and of all kinds of filth. 28 So you also on the outside look righteous to others, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.
29 ‘Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you build the tombs of the prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous, 30 and 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.” 31 Thus you testify against yourselves that you are descendants of those who murdered the prophets. 32 Fill up, then, the measure of your ancestors.’
‘For you are like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful’ (Matthew 23: 27) … a damaged sarcophagus by the harbour in Kaş, without any sign or marking (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)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 have seven groups of people who are condemned as hypocrites and against whom Jesus pronounces seven woes.
In the Gospel reading on Monday (Matthew 23: 13-22), we heard 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 then heard two further woes yesterday (Matthew 23: 23-26): for those who tithe mint, dill, and cummin but neglect the weightier matters of justice, mercy and faith; and these who care about the details of domestic purity but neglect the cleanliness of their hearts and inner thoughts.
Now, we hear the final of the seven woes today (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’.
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).
In the third grouping of these woes, which we read today, we hear the final of the seven woes: a double woe on those who on the outside look righteous to others, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness (Matthew 23: 27-32).
In the sixth woe, Jesus compares the religious leader of the day to ‘whitewashed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful, but inside they are full of the bones of the dead and of all kinds of filth’ (verse 27).
The rotting corpse inside a tomb is like the hypocrisy and lawlessness in the hearts of these particular scribes and Pharisees. They appear righteous on the outside, but they are just beautified tombs, for inwardly they are spiritually dead.
The phrase ‘whited sepulchres’ (‘whitewashed tombs’ in the NRSV translations) is one of those phrases that have found their way into everyday English through the King James Version. The tombs in Jesus’ time were very different. The caves used for tombs were regularly painted or washed white with lime to look clean on the outside, but the inside was very plain, undecorated, just holding the body of the dead person. Behind the attractive exteriors were rotting corpses, as unclean as anything a faithful Jew could imagine.
The setting for this reading is Passover week. It was customary in the preceding month of Adar to renew the whitewashing on tombs in order to mark them clearly so that pious people who were on their way to Jerusalem for the Passover would not accidentally defile themselves by touching a place where dead bodies were buried. Someone who unwittingly stepped on a grave became ritually unclean. Whitewashing made the tombs more visible, especially in the dark.
In other words, whitewashing was not a mark of beauty; it was a warning of uncleanness – of being dead to humanity and dead before God.
This mention of tombs leads Jesus in the seventh woe to comment on the pride the religious leader of the day take in the tombs built in memory of the prophets and other holy people.
Jesus accuses them of hypocrisy in erecting these monuments and decorate the tombs of the prophets of old. He says the slain prophets had been killed by the ancestors of the religious leaders, Pharisees, who imagined themselves much better than their fathers. He puts words into their mouths, ‘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’ (verse 30). But in saying things like that, they acknowledge their own background. Jesus says they have inherited their ancestors’ wickedness and are following in their steps.
Is Jesus implying here is that while these religious leaders pretended to revere the prophets of old, they are persecuting the prophetic people of their own day?
We have whole groups of such people who are active in the Church today, offering ‘alternative’ leadership. They claim to know Anglicanism better than the Archbishop of Canterbury and deplore the ‘heresies’ of Anglicans who engaged with the Living in Love and Faith process, forming their own, self-selecting elitist groups and afraid of being contaminated not only by the world, but even by other Anglicans, demanding their own, parallel church structures and ministries.
The seven woes in Matthew 23 are dire warnings to the religious leaders of the day. But they also serve to warn us against religious hypocrisy today. We are called to true godliness, sincere love, and enduring faith. Pretension, affectation, and hypocrisy only lead to woe.
Today’s Prayers (Wednesday 27 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 (Wednesday 27 August 2025) invites us to pray:
God of justice, open our hearts and minds to welcome the stranger with love. Inspire leaders to create fair policies that respect the dignity and rights of migrants and refugees.
The Collect:
Faithful God,
who strengthened Monica, the mother of Augustine, with wisdom,
and through her patient endurance encouraged him
to seek after you:
give us the will to persist in prayer
that those who stray from you may be brought to faith
in your Son Jesus Christ 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:
Father,
from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name,
your servant Monica revealed your goodness
in a life of tranquillity and service:
grant that we who have gathered in faith around this table
may like her know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge
and be filled with all your fullness;
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
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