Unmasked

MATTHEW 23

Frauds under fire

Now Jesus goes for the jugular. He has put up with endless attacks on his authority to preach, to heal, to show compassion and to point people back to God. He is still in the temple precincts. Matthew tells us that the Pharisees and Sadducees and High Priests have ended their inquisition.

We are sometimes told by scholars that Jesus reserved his most blistering attack on the Pharisees because he had such an admiration for their dedication to the Torah, yet he was so deeply disappointed in them. It is it for those we love most that we reserve our most profound anger?

Over the next 39 verses Jesus speaks to the crowd with the passion of a modern-day poetry-slam competition entrant or a ranting rapper. It is as unrelenting and powerful as anything he is recorded as saying in the whole of the gospels. It carries huge importance. For it defines what it is NOT to be a follower of Jesus. It is often in defining what we are not that we discover who we truly are.

What are Jesus’ main accusations, and how might they hit home to us? Is there not a lot of truth in Jesus’ assault on those whose lips and lives are not in sync? We who claim to be followers of Jesus have much to attend to here. I have always found Matthew 23 a little close to the knuckle. So here goes:

Jesus accuses the Pharisees of:

·       Being very good at teaching the Torah but not living the Torah: ‘It’s all spit and polish veneer’

·       Loading obligations on people but not lifting a finger to help

·       Enjoying public flattery and being placed on a pedestal

·       Being frauds, talking the talk but not walking the walk – and what’s more, blocking the way to the kingdom

·       Putting huge effort into winning a convert, then making them into replicas, twice as fit for damnation

·       Failing to treat the promises of God and the law of God seriously – preferring to nit-pick over tiny details rather than seeing God’s big picture story of salvation

·       Being greedy and gluttonous

·       Presenting a purity and cleanliness, but in fact being a bundle of bones

·       Attacking the wise in each generation

Jesus ends his diatribe by revealing a motherly heart. This country preacher and healer cries out for Jerusalem; the city which is the locus of power in Israel as well as the seat of God the Holy One. Human leaders of that city had for centuries murdered the messengers of God, the Prophets and the broadcasters of God’s good news.

‘How often I’ve ached to embrace your children,’ says Jesus to the crowd with the smarting Pharisees and other leaders of the faith, ‘the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you wouldn’t let me. And now you are so desolate, nothing but a ghost town. What is there left to say? Only this: I’m out of here soon. The next time you see me you’ll say. “Oh, God has blessed him! He is come, to bring God’s rule!”’

He places himself as the defender and protector of the people of Jerusalem – but not as a Lion of Judah or a Messiah with winged angelic army, but as a mother hen, who will shield her chicks from harm with her wings.

The attack that normally hits home greatest to any Christian is the accusation that we are hypocrites. As you will probably remember, this word relates to the world of Greek tragedies. It is the word used to describe an actor who wears different kinds of masks to represent different kinds of lives or behaviours. It is acting, pure and simple. A Christian who is accused of being good at acting is assumed that they do not actually mean what they say or believe. They are people living a double life.

In our culture, the Press will often set themselves up as the guardians of morality, using the public interest justification for their inquiries as a shield with which to attack a politician or celebrity for double-standards, or hypocrisy. I used to be a member of the Fourth Estate (the Press). As a local reporter, there were a few occasions when I found myself in the uncomfortable position of writing such a story. On one occasion, it was a politician (an MP who got, it was alleged, preferential treatment in a local hospital) and another it was a public figure (a vicar accused of having an affair with a member of his congregation). On both occasions, I found my role in the story distasteful and messy. I questioned what right I had to ruin their reputations and yet found that the ‘public interest’ argument had some traction with my superiors.

On both occasions the energy which drove the story was the attempt by the parties concerned to cover up what was going on. There is nothing that energizes a reporter so much as the desire to uncover what authorities or people in power are trying to hide. In fact, as we know from many media scandals, it is the cover-up that is nearly always more criticised than the original sin of omission or commission. It is why, in these days of the uncovering of the extent of the sexual abuse scandal of our day, that institutions and organisations (the church prime among them) are doing all they can to prove that they have no longer got a culture of cover-up. Of course, there is also a real concern for the myriad victims of the predatory people who have ruined so many lives. But cover-up is the big sin of organisations and institutions.

Could it be that repentance is a public matter not just a private one? Could it be that the word that heralds the announcement of the kingdom – Repent, for the Kingdom of God is near – finds its absolute and unerring focus in Jesus’ attack on the Pharisees?

As the cradle and the cross approach, Jesus renews our call to a new birth and to stop our cover-ups. The journey to maturity is littered by the throwing away of many masks.