Two-Minute Homily: Religious Observance As Burden                    

FINDINGS II

Proper 26 - A - October 30, 2011

Matthew 23: 1-12       

Harry T. Cook

Matthew 23: 1-12

Jesus said to the crowds, including his own followers, "The pedants of the law and the Pharisees take their places on Moses' seat, by which action they are telling you to do whatever they say. Fine, but don't do as they do. There is no follow-up of deeds to match their speeches. They contrive all kinds of complicated rules and regulations and impose them on people, but they themselves observe none of them. All they do is for public consumption. They make their phylacteries obvious and their tassels long. They covet the best places at dinners and the most important seats in the synagogues. They want to be fawned over in public and be called "great one" by everybody. Phooey on that. Don't let yourself be called 'great one' or 'teacher,' for you are all students together and have but one teacher. And do not call anyone on earth 'father,' because you already have a father, and he is in heaven. And you are not instructors, either. The Anointed One is the only instructor you need. All of which is to say that all who act high and mighty will be brought down, and those who forego pride will find themselves in higher places than they could ever have imagined."

(Translated and paraphrased by Harry T. Cook.)

RUBRIC

The passage at hand is denunciatory from beginning to end. Matthew's version of the story is particularly bitter toward the scribes (or pedants) and Pharisees who, we must understand, represent the leaders of synagogue Judaism as they were near the end of the first century C.E. at the same time as the communities of Jesus Judaism were struggling into sustainable existence. We might say at the beginning that it is doubtful that Jesus ever said directly what is attributed to him in this passage.

HOMILETIC WORKSHOP

The principal complaint lodged against the established parties or sects of Judaism is that they have placed onerous burdens upon Yahweh worshippers that they themselves do not bear. This, too, is doubtful. Observant synagogue Jews probably did practice pretty much what they preached -- or as much as any clutch of religious people is wont to do. What they may have done, though, was to encourage by proselytizing those who were showing an inclination toward the more liberal Jesus Judaism to remain faithful to the former tradition. Jesus Jews would indeed have found it onerous to continue to live as synagogue Jews whilst they were trying to live as who they had become.

Paul understood that conflict and devoted much of his correspondence with his associates to it. He was all for removing the burdens of slavish obedience to the jot-and-tittle commandments, because, as he said, "The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life"(2d Corinthians 3:6) The Matthean communities were still at the end of the century assailed by the same conflict. The passage under consideration may well have begun its life as a polemic against the efforts of synagogue Jews to reclaim those who had converted to Jesus Judaism or even to proselytize Gentile converts to the new movement.

While observing that parts of Matthew and Mark seem to reflect antipathy to the synagogue and to that tradition in general, it is well to remember that Jesus was a child of the synagogue -- or at least that is how Luke perceived things (see Luke 4:16ff), though he is presented in all cases as a Galilean rather than a Judean. And, yes, the preponderance of textual evidence suggests that Jesus did most of his work outside of the synagogue and was more interested in how people behaved toward one another than in how they complied with the finer points of traditional law and custom.

The issue in the later part of the passage is who is entitled to the designation of "great one" or "rabbi' or "mentor." For Matthew, that one is the Anointed One. The admonitions to those acting high and mighty or pretending to know more than they do may reflect an all too common problem in human systems in which there are almost inevitably a few who seek power and privilege and try to gain it by posing as superior to others. This is Matthew saying that those deserving to be called teachers will be known by their humility, but if they are teachers, people ought to listen to their teaching because they know what they're talking about. It may also be a note of caution to those who are prepared to teach, that they should wear their authority lightly and not to make what they teach burdensome to those who listen to them.

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Two-Minute Homily                                 

Religious Observance As Burden 

By Harry T. Cook

It is one thing for church leaders to demand attention from their congregants to the customs and teachings of their particular traditions. It is quite another to impose them upon the unwilling or unready and to declare that the nonobservant or nonattentive are destined to perdition.

Perdition would sometimes seem preferable to what a lot of religious communities dish out. As a former teacher of homiletics and as one who was commended by the congregations I led for being an engaging speaker, brief and to the point, I have some things to say.

Beyond the desire people in general have in coming to church or synagogue to be in the company of friends who believe as they believe and care about the things they care about is the desire not to be bored to stupefaction by him or her who speaks. There may be no order of persons in our time that can compel an audience to be quiet and listen, sometimes for more than 30 minutes, than so-called religious leaders. All too frequently their sermons are hastily thought out, if at all, are as often as not denunciations of one thing or another, and are, moreover, liable to be littered with bromides and threadbare phraseology.

The logic, if any, ranges from wispy to loopy with much patronizing of the untutored, who, if the clergyperson had been doing the job, long since would have been gathered into serious study of the religion's history and literature. In sermons, the internal contradictions in the biblical text are seldom acknowledged. Agnosticism is an unknown quality. Proclamations of one undocumented ism after the other are put forth as if they were gems of divine wisdom that those in the pews should grasp at once and be thankful for being alerted to their existence.

No academician coveting tenure or collegial approbation, much less student popularity, will approach the lectern unprepared 1) to be engaging in both form and substance, 2) to know the exact location of the lecture's target and not be long about hitting it and 3) to be content to sit down when the target is struck, allowing students to ponder conclusions on their own.

Church and synagogue speakers should follow that order of things, and, besides, embrace the idea of contingency, i.e. that words and phrases, perhaps especially those put forth in theological language are, at best, approximations and blundering attempts to articulate the truth of things, as if such truth were ever to be accessible to human beings.

If we should call no one rabbi much less father, then let not the speaker make a pretense of being the know-all and a father of anything but a clean and well reasoned sermonic text that will encourage, provoke, challenge and -- above all -- make people glad they came to service, gladder even to leave unburdened and moved to come again.