"Woe to you Pharisees! For you tithe mint and rue and every herb, but you neglect justice and love of God; these eyou ought to have done, without neglecting the others. Woe to you Pharisees! for you love the best seats in the synagogue and salutations in the marketplaces. Woe to you! for you are like graves which are not seen, and men walk over them without knowing it."
Why is Jesus so hard on these guys? I mean, weren't there other bad guys to deal with--- swindlers, murderers, thieves, perpetrators of injustice.At least John the Baptist tried to reform the "bad guys"--- Roman soldiers, tax collectors, Herod. those guys were abusers of power that everyone could point fingers at. So why does Jesus strike out at the members of his own tribe? What was it about the religious elite, the scholars, the righteous exemplars of the faith that Jesus detested? he calls them unmarked graves that men unknowingly walk over. Essentially they are dishonorable dead men to Jesus. Are they, the most respected leaders in Jesus' community, so off the mark that Jesus is compelled to bite off their heads? What would Jesus say about me? I am an ordained Lutheran Pastor, part of the religious establishment. do I exude self-righteousness? I suspect that every religious person ought to repent in some way, because by nature of our being religious we have excluded people who are not. I have rejected people unawares. And I am sorry. I think the whole church needs to repent for the ways we have rejected people, because they do not conform to a religious standard. Strangely our religious standards have not likely been serious or spiritual enough. We've required an annual pledge, but not a commitment of the heart. We have sought a devotion to congregation but not to Christ. Our religious expectations have been too low to inspire anyone.
So, as I hear Jesus today in the gospel reading for Wednesday in pentecost 24, I repent. How can I become less like a Pharisee and more like Jesus?
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