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.)

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 CE at the same time as the communities of Jesus Judaism were struggling into sustainable existence. We might say at the beginning that it seems doubtful that any Jesus ever said directly what is attributed to him/them in this passage.

The principal complaint lodged against the established parties or sects of Judaism is that they have placed onerous burdens upon Yahweh worshippers, which 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 were becoming.

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 at the end of the century were still 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 as variously depicted did most of his work outside of the synagogue setting 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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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 non-observant or non-attentive 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 a largely unknown quality. Proclamations of one undocumented ism after the other are put forth as if they were gems of divine wisdom, which 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 save 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.

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Notes for those whose homilies on November 2 will be centered on the Feast of All Saints:

The Feast of All Saints when it occurs on a Sunday interrupts the flow of the lectionary. At least in the Anglican way of doing things, the readings appointed for the feast day take preference over that particular Sunday's propers. The Revised Common Lectionary provides three sets of All Saints' propers, one for each of the years A, B and C.
 
One stated purpose of All Saints' Day is the celebration of what the baptismal creed calls "the communion of saints," which we may take to mean the totality of what humanity has been and done, is being and doing and what it shall become and accomplish. "The communion of saints" appears in the baptismal creed as an extension of the Holy Spirit. Historians say the phrase was added in the late fourth century perhaps to give a clearer explanation of the nature of the church. Its meaning, though, is somewhat problematic.
 
One way of interpreting the phrase is how Protestants have done so since the Confession of Augsburg in 1530 in which the church was "congregatio sanctorum," or gathering of the saints in the assembly of believers. An earlier, if not the original intent of the expression is that the Church Militant has a connection or a "communion" with the Church Triumphant and particularly with the so-called "holy martyrs" whose blood was said to be the seed of the church.
 
A commonality among the living based on shared purpose and intention may be a decently contemporary way to interpret "the communion of saints" - ones who take to heart the admonition to treat others as they themselves wish to be treated and to intend to make that principle operative by turning the other cheek, walking the second mile, etc.
 
Such an ethical approach to communion or connection with all people transcends ideological, cultural, racial and sectarian boundaries along the lines of Paul's vision of "neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female."
 
The human genome is a telling feature of the "communion" that obtains, at least hypothetically, among human beings. The astonishing proposition that any individual is separated by only six degrees from knowing every other individual suggests that all people are related even as blood is interchangeable according to type.

If I were to be offering a homily for an All Saints liturgy, I would draw on personal experience in my own extended family and the various separations that have occurred in it caused by death or fissures in relationships. I would account for the confusion and sadness those separations brought. I would testify to the similarity in feelings between losing a friend or loved one to death or to irreconcilable differences. I would reprise family celebrations of the past when we were happy altogether and altogether happy, and confess that I did not then appreciate how dear those occasions would become in memory as one or more of those once gathered at the table are no longer counted as present.