A Reflection for Saturday of the Twentieth Week in Ordinary Time
Find today’s readings here.
Raised by German Jews who later converted to Anglicanism, the British stockbroker Nicholas Winton arrived in Prague near the end of 1938 and began saving lives. In the weeks prior to the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia, and Hitler’s subsequent march on Poland launching the Second World War, Winton and several others arranged for the transport of Jewish children out of Prague and helped settle nearly 700 youths in England. While he made passing reference to his rescue efforts when campaigning for a town council position in 1954, the “British Schindler’s” humanitarian work was largely unknown”—until the BBC reunited him with survivors in 1988. He was then hailed as a hero, a title he rejected until his death at age 106, and knighted by Queen Elizabeth II. Sir Anthony Hopkins will portray him in a forthcoming biopic.
In today’s Gospel reading from Matthew 23, Jesus instructs his disciples to do good works in private, out of the public eye and without the expectation of praise. Decrying people who perform good works only “to be seen,” Christ harkens back to the words of Matthew 6: “Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you” (v. 6). Our acts of faith are not to be done “on the street corners to be seen by others,” but in the shadows far away from recognition (6:5). Easier said than done, to be sure.
Matthew 23 finds Christ delivering a strong condemnation of the scribes and the Pharisees, an ancient Jewish group that, at least in Matthew’s Gospel, are positioned as major antagonists to Jesus’s ministry. While Christ tells the disciples to obey their temporal authority, he later describes the Pharisees as “a brood of vipers” and moral hypocrites—a term used seven times in 16 verses. “For they preach but they do not practice. They tie up heavy burdens hard to carry and lay them on people’s shoulders, but they will not lift a finger to move them,” says Jesus.
Levine writes that responsible preachers should demonstrate how Christ’s condemnations in Matthew 23 are directed towards “people in the pews,” and not simply religious officials who lived millennia ago.
So who are the Pharisees? This question has long presented a historical conundrum for biblical scholars. Etka Liebowitz, from Jerusalem’s Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies, notes that they can be described as “a small religious sect, an influential political party” or perhaps “a mass movement.” There is even uncertainty about the origin of their name, which may mean “specifiers” (pārôšîm) or “separatists” (perûšîm), likely used in a negative sense.
This begs another question: Why does Matthew Gospel’s present the Pharisees as enemies of Christianity, and their conduct as a stumbling block for us all? The New Testament scholar Donald E. Cook suggests that Matthew’s preoccupation with the Pharisees, whom he mentions 29 times, demonstrates his attempts to show Christianity as wholly separate from Judaism. Cook notes an air of “hurt, growing tension and hostility” between early Christians and Jews preceding and following the Roman destruction of the Second Jewish Temple in the year 70.
Matthew’s fixation on presenting the ancient Jews as enemies of the faith may read as anti-Semitic to modern audiences. Amy-Jill Levine, a Jewish New Testament scholar, points out that regardless of whether Matthew’s Gospel is anti-Semitic, various biblical interpretations have led to the propagation of “anti-Jewish messages.” To avoid this, Levine writes that responsible preachers should demonstrate how Christ’s condemnations in Matthew 23 are directed towards “people in the pews,” and not simply religious officials who lived millennia ago.
This brings us to an important point. Matthew 23 is not intended as an excuse for modern-day Catholics to sit in judgment of first-century Jewish authorities, but rather to determine how our own arrogance and self-aggrandizement (of which we are all guilty) diverges from the teachings of Christ. It challenges us to recognize times when we acted as hypocrites, promoting a message of Christian love and acceptance but perhaps sidelining or rejecting those we don’t like. Perhaps we have sought out privileged positions in society or “places of honor at banquets” while neglecting the poor and marginalized, who embody Christ on earth.
Akin to James 2, which tells us that faith without works is dead (v. 17), Matthew 23 reminds us that our works must also be done in a spirit of humility and obedience to God. “Whoever exalts himself will be humbled; but whoever humbles himself will be exalted,” says Jesus (Mt 23:12).
