A Reflection for the Monday of the Twenty-first Week in Ordinary Time
Find today’s readings here.
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites.
You lock the Kingdom of heaven before men.
You do not enter yourselves,
nor do you allow entrance to those trying to enter” (Mt 23:13).
Most of us enjoy calling out a hypocrite. The politician who preaches family values and gets caught in an affair. The environmental activist who flies to a summit on climate change in a private jet. The woman who goes to Mass every Sunday but fails to care for the poor in her midst. Calling hypocrites out is satisfying both because the charge is often true—plenty of people fail to live out their professed values—and because it makes no demands on the one doing the calling out to change. Plus, isn’t that what Jesus would do?
At first glance, today’s Gospel would suggest just that. In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus delivers a rather excorciating screed against the Pharisees. (Scholars note that the biting tone of this denunciation reflects the tensions between Matthew’s Christian community and Pharisaic Judaism when the Gospel was written.) Jesus says the scribes and Pharisees put up obstacles to the kingdom of heaven; they attend to the minutiae of the law while neglecting what matters most; they care more about outward appearances of righteousness than inner purity.
But the first line of today’s Gospel reading tells us this speech was not addressed to the Pharisees at all. It begins “Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples.” There was undoubtedly real conflict between Jesus and the Pharisees, but it seems unlikely that Jesus delivered this speech simply to denigrate a rival faction. Rather he must have witnessed the same hypocrisy in his disciples. What was true of the disciples then applies to us today. When Jesus calls out hypocrisy it is not about “them”; it is about us.
To be Christian can seem a surefire way to open yourself up to charges of hypocrisy. “Be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect,” Jesus tells us earlier in Matthew’s Gospel. How many of us who claim to follow Jesus fall short of that standard every single day? How often do we, like the scribes and Pharisees, put outward appearances above loving our neighbors, or act in ways that create stumbling blocks for those thirsting for God’s love?
Unlike many of us, Jesus does not call out hypocrisy to feel better about himself. And he does not intend our recognition of our shortcomings to lead to shame. He only asks that we humble ourselves and rely on him. “We always pray for you, that our God may make you worthy of his calling,” St. Paul says in today’s first reading. We will always fall short. But it is God’s effort that will make us worthy of the kingdom, if we only call out to him.
