Daily Devotions

Then if anyone says to you, ‘Look! Here is the Messiah!’ or ‘There he is!’ —do not believe it. For false messiahs and false prophets will appear and produce great signs and omens, to lead astray, if possible, even the elect. Take note, I have told you beforehand.

So, if they say to you, ‘Look! He is in the wilderness,’ do not go out. If they say, ‘Look! He is in the inner rooms,’ do not believe it. For as the lightning comes from the east and flashes as far as the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. Wherever the corpse is, there the vultures will gather. Matthew 24:23-28

In every age fraught with anxiety there will be voices of those who shout above the crowd, “Follow me!” And whoever said it first was right, “There’s a sucker born every minute.”

Every get rich quick scheme needs people to leave their values and common sense behind before buying into their sure-fire way to get rich, to beat the market. Any religious huckster can draw a few devoted followers. Every day on the Internet we see ads in the corner that don’t make sense but tempt us to click first and ask questions later.

Why do we fall for it?

Because we want an edge. We want a shortcut. We don’t want to be left behind or left out. And because that is our nature, we are always vulnerable to being cheated, deceived, and egged on despite our inner conscience screaming “NO!” There is a reason why “confidence men” are called con men. Because they grab us by our aspirations and hold us by our unwillingness to admit that we’ve been had.

This is nothing new. I didn’t realize the extent to which false messiahs captured peoples’ attention in the 1^st century until I read Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth by Reza Aslan. While there are passages in the New Testament that hearken back to some of those characters (see Acts 5:34-40), Aslan reaches more deeply into the history to demonstrate that it wasn’t at all unusual for people to claim magical powers or divine sanction to develop a cult of followers.

What is tragic is that today, as smart as we think we are, we are still just as susceptible to charlatans. I’ve had parishioners who were scammed out of great amounts of money that they couldn’t afford to lose. But once they were in the net it was very difficult to extricate themselves. Partly they didn’t want to admit their foolishness but, even more powerful, they kept hoping against hope that the scam might really pay off someday.

The most effective scams are those accomplished by the rich and famous. We swoon for celebrities and those who have “made it”. Bernie Madoff made off with over $17 billion. Bennie Hinn still packs arenas. Some of the largest and most influential Christian congregations in America are based on the promise that if you give a lot to God, God will give a lot to you.

Jesus’ advice to us is simple on all of this – don’t follow, don’t listen, don’t fall for their false promises and empty rhetoric.

Let us pray: Dear Lord, in every age there are voices all around that tempt us away from trusting in you, from following your ways of being in the world. Protect us from these temptations. Expose those who prey upon peoples’ hopes and dreams only to use and abuse them for their own selfish motives. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

“So when you see the desolating sacrilege standing in the holy place, as was spoken of by the prophet Daniel (let the reader understand), then those in Judea must flee to the mountains; the one on the housetop must not go down to take what is in the house; the one in the field must not turn back to get a coat. Woe to those who are pregnant and to those who are nursing infants in those days! Pray that your flight may not be in winter or on a sabbath. For at that time there will be great suffering, such as has not been from the beginning of the world until now, no, and never will be. And if those days had not been cut short, no one would be saved; but for the sake of the elect those days will be cut short.” Matthew 24:15-22

Some people will remember this past NFL season for Philadelphia’s upset victory in the Super Bowl. Far more will remember it for the controversy generated by players kneeling during the singing of the national anthem. The players said they did what they did as a way of drawing attention to the disproportionate treatment of people of color in our culture. Others said their behaviors heaped sacrilegious scorn on the flag and unpatriotic contempt for people serving in law enforcement and the military.

Wherever you came down on that issue, it gave you a taste of what it would have felt like for Jews to see the Romans abusing, and eventually crushing, the holy practices and cultural center of the Jewish temple. This – using the temple to promote political idolatry – happened several times in Jewish history and is the “desolating sacrilege” spoken of in Daniel.

By the time Matthew was written, those living in Judea and Jerusalem would have already experienced the great suffering of which he writes. It was deep suffering caused, not by religion as it is so often blamed, but by the political arrogance and military might of the Romans.

Recently I have been watching “World War II in Color” on Netflix. It is very difficult to listen to the analytical dispassionate voice of the narrator while watching indiscriminate fire-bombing of cities, ships blown up, planes crashing, the discovery of the death camps, and the various atrocities committed along the way. Why? Because an egomaniac conned an entire country by blaming and scapegoating Jews and ethnic minorities while appealing to the myth of their own cultural superiority.

This is what happened during the first century of the Christian movement and it is what has happened throughout history as people have rejected the Jesus way of being in the world while fiercely keeping a stranglehold on worldly power, wealth, and privilege. That inevitably gives way to suffering. Not redemptive suffering. Not suffering born of compassion. But suffering produced by being in the wrong place at the wrong time, with the wrong skin color, or the wrong family heritage.

We miss the point if we read Matthew’s words and project them to some point in the far off future. We can only hear them well when we see them reflected throughout history, including in our own day, and see them for what they say.

Let us pray: Gracious Lord, we know that the hardness of our hearts creates our blindness to the realities of life. When you soften our hearts, you heal our blindness. You attune our ears to hear, our eyes to see. Today we pray for all who suffer at the hands of the powerful and those grasping for power. We pray for peacemakers and activists who challenge conventional thinking and give voice to the powerless and oppressed. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Jesus answered them, “Beware that no one leads you astray. For many will come in my name, saying, ‘I am the Messiah!’ and they will lead many astray. And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars; see that you are not alarmed; for this must take place, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places: all this is but the beginning of the birthpangs.

“Then they will hand you over to be tortured and will put you to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of my name. Then many will fall away, and they will betray one another and hate one another. And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. And because of the increase of lawlessness, the love of many will grow cold. But the one who endures to the end will be saved. And this good news of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the world, as a testimony to all the nations; and then the end will come.  Matthew 24:4-14

When I was in middle school – perhaps the most impressionable period of my life – our family spent two years attending a very fundamentalistic, literalistic, church. I remember attending retreats and a week at a Bible camp where people would give their testimonies. The shape of the testimonies were similar. “My life was a mess. I accepted Jesus as my Savior. My life is now wonderful. But I still struggle sometimes.”

In that I was always a bit intrigued by the “my life was a mess” part but I was fascinated and attracted by the “now my life is wonderful” part. I came out of that period with the idea that giving my life to Jesus (as if that was something I owned and therefore could give) meant that my miserable life would magically get better.

When you throw in “if not now, certainly later in heaven” and you have just about wrapped up the power of tent revivals and emotional conversions. Very persuasive but not terribly biblical.

Matthew tells us in this chapter that following Jesus is far more likely to lead to pain and persecution. Because that is what it means to live in a world broken by sin. Bad things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people. Many voices will promise relief – false prophets run amok, all seeking people’s hearts, minds, and wallets. We recognize this world because we live in it.

It is the same world that people have always lived in.

There has never been an age without war. Never been a time without natural disasters. Floods, fires, hurricanes will happen because that is the price we pay to live in this world where we aren’t nearly in control of anything to do the degree we seek control.

Everything that Matthew tells us about in this chapter was already happening in the lives of Matthew’s readers. Just as it all happens in our lives today. And yes, in the midst of it, there is always the temptation to bail out, to give up, to let the currents take us floating away rather than swimming against them. “The love of many will go cold.”

But Jesus tells us to hang in there. To resist. To embrace the struggle. To keep the faith. To keep our heads up. “But the one who endures to the end will be saved.”

Let us pray: Gracious Lord, we are trusting you in all things. We are grateful that you have opened our eyes, that we might see you in the midst of a broken world of chance, of change, of tragedy, of turmoil. We will keep our eyes on you, lest we be tempted to stray, for you are the way, the truth, and the life. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

As Jesus came out of the temple and was going away, his disciples came to point out to him the buildings of the temple. Then he asked them, “You see all these, do you not? Truly I tell you, not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.” When he was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately, saying, “Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?” Matthew 24:1-3

The Apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.” We do well to keep those words in mind as our attention now turns to the “end times” chapters of Matthew. Many of us will find we have to let go of some of the things we might have picked up on the way, maybe the things we remember learning as children. We have to unlearn before we can learn and that is hard.

First, let’s do the math. Jesus died and rose again somewhere near 30 CE. The gospel of Matthew was written somewhere between the early 70’s and mid-80’s CE. That is a long time. When Jesus was alive the temple in Jerusalem was the spiritual center of Jesus’ world, the central marketplace of the city, and a living testament to the power of the powerful. It was, in a very real sense, Herod’s temple. By the time Matthew was written, the temple had been destroyed by the Roman army and the people were devastated.

That requires me to unlearn the idea that Jesus was predicting the future. It requires that I learn to appreciate how Matthew is seeking to help all of us grapple with the question of “Now what?” when our previous hopes and expectations have been crushed. What does it mean that the temple has been destroyed? Where is God in that? What does it mean that Jesus was killed and rose again? Where is God in that?

I heard a great line the other day. Someone said, “Life is like learning math. When someone is teaching us math they present us with a set of problems. They don’t give us the answers, they help us learn how to work through the problems.” Isn’t that what is happening now in this text as the disciples pose their question to Jesus, “Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?”

In the face of their questions, rather than providing answers, maybe what Jesus does is provide a framework through which we can find our way through the problems. What next? Where are we going? What is going to happen? What do we do in the meantime?

Let’s let those questions linger in our minds as we move through these next two chapters.

Let us pray: Gracious Lord, we all want to see around the corners of life. We want to read the end of the story first. We want that edge, that insider information, that will give us a shortcut. Like children, we constantly ask from the back seat, “Are we there yet?” Especially when life is hard and our path is full of obstructions. Give us the courage to be patient as we entrust the journey to you. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

“Therefore I send you prophets, sages, and scribes, some of whom you will kill and crucify, and some you will flog in your synagogues and pursue from town to town, so that upon you may come all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Barachiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar. Truly I tell you, all this will come upon this generation.”

“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! See, your house is left to you, desolate. For I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.’” Matthew 23:34-39

I have agonized for days over this passage. This chapter, this passage, along with verses like Matthew 27:25, “Then the people as a whole answered, ‘His blood be on us and on our children!’” led to centuries of discrimination, and even attempted elimination, of Jews. This is a classic example of exactly what Jesus has been railing against this entire chapter. He has caught us in the act of twisting the faith to our own purposes. The whole chapter is an indictment of the danger of religion as a system intended to control or influence the behaviors of its adherents. How can this be?

Matthew tells us that Jesus’ words are directed to the “scribes and Pharisees”, in full view of Jesus’ disciples and the gathered crowd. As I’ve written before, nothing would be easier (or more self-serving) than to concretize his words to that long ago moment in history and those larger than life bad guy targets. “Blame it all on the Jews!” starts right here. That gut wrenching song has been playing for centuries.

Once again, if we hear this chapter directed to us it can be for us a cleansing fire. But if we read it as directed to others, it becomes the fires of the Holocaust. I am a Lutheran pastor. I stand on the shoulders of Martin Luther and those that followed. But as much as I appreciate Luther’s courage and insights into the Christian faith, I am appalled at his blindness when he directed his vitriol toward Judaism. Thankfully, my denomination, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, finally offered an apology to the Jewish community for the damage done by Luther’s writings. That it took until 1994 to do it is shocking. But true. And we should never forget it.

I don’t know how many Lutheran congregations in the world sit right next to a Jewish synagogue but Faith Lutheran Church does. We share our parking lot with Congregation Brith Shalom. And I am struck, every weekend, with the stark reality that they need to have armed guards present every time they gather for worship because of the on-going threats and dangers of anti-Semitism. Such threats are birthed, and nurtured, by interpretations of verses from the Bible, like this chapter from Matthew, that blame, shame, and scapegoat.

But there is another way of hearing these words. We can let them point at us.

This way begins with noticing how Jesus describes God – God the mother hen who wants nothing more than to gather her chicks under the warmth of her wings. But the unwilling chicks prefer the cold. They want it their way. So they brazenly defy God and then twist clear godly principles to their own purposes. They co-opt religion to justify themselves.

We do well to remember that, whenever we say that “Jesus took our sins to the cross,” these are exactly the sort of sins we are talking about. Personal, systemic, institutional, cultural sins. And now we will follow Jesus to the cross, knowing full well that the wages of this sin is death.

Let us pray: Forgive us, Lord, for using and abusing religion to use and abuse the very people you love. Hold the mirror of your grace before us and help us more clearly see the log in our eyes. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful, but inside they are full of the bones of the dead and of all kinds of filth. So you also on the outside look righteous to others, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.”

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you build the tombs of the prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous, and you say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our ancestors, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’ Thus you testify against yourselves that you are descendants of those who murdered the prophets. Fill up, then, the measure of your ancestors. You snakes, you brood of vipers! How can you escape being sentenced to hell?” Matthew 23:27-33

Like I said earlier in the week, the scribes and Pharisees are getting a serious tongue lashing from Jesus. This isn’t “a side of Jesus we rarely see”, this is Jesus saying this stuff! Can’t you feel the passion, the energy, the soul in this rant? And are you able to let his words land on you rather than pointing fingers at someone else?

The scribes and Pharisees live in the same world as we do. They, like us, experience a world that loves us from the outside in. As long as we look good and act good and have the right stuff, and the right stuff, we think we’re loveable. And, by and large, the world responds to us in that way.

But God is the same God as God has always been, and God loves us from the inside out. Paul would later write that “nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Nothing that we can say, do, dress like, or act like, can separate us from the love of God.

This is doubly challenging.

First, it reminds us that God knows all there is to know about us and loves us anyway. God knows us better than we know ourselves, and loves us anyway. There are no dark corners or secrets or resentments directed from God to us. God loves us anyway. This is so hard for us to grasp. It is so otherworldly.

Second, knowing that we are so loved makes it even harder to be content in our brokenness. Why do we protect the “bones of the dead…the filthiness…the hypocrisy and lawlessness” inside of us that causes us so many problems?

A famous quote from Nelson Mandela comes to mind as I reflect on the pointlessness of living with our brokenness or focusing on how we look rather than how we are:

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

The key here is letting the light of God within us shine – not seeking the temporary fix of spotlights and pretending to be who we’re not.

Let us pray: Gracious Lord, let your light shine within us, exposing that which needs to be healed within and that which reflects your love out to the world. Love us from the inside out that we might see your glory reflected in everyone. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill, and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. It is these you ought to have practiced without neglecting the others. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel!

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and of the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup, so that the outside also may become clean.” Matthew 23:23-26

This past weekend I read an article that the city government in Jerusalem locked the doors of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in the center of the Old City over a dispute concerning municipal taxes. It seems that the Christian groups – Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, and Armenian – who own that church building also own a lot of land in and around Jerusalem. They have been leasing that land for commercial purposes and then refusing to pay municipal taxes on their profits. Ouch.

The article stressed that the church itself is not subject to property taxes. It also suggested that oppression of the Christian faith in view of the recent decision to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem might also be in play. I’m thinking it is all about money…on all sides.

We have three major ministries in our congregation. Two of them – our schools and our Faith House ministry which provides housing for those who come to Houston for medical treatment – do just fine financially. The third, our congregational ministry, seems perpetually just a little bit behind on everything. Why? Because we charge people for rent and for tuition. We have set prices and people pay them. That isn’t how it works with the main ministry of the congregation. No one is coerced to giving anything to the ministry of the congregation itself. They just give what they give. There, we live by faith.

I notice in today’s text that Jesus doesn’t say anything against the practice of tithing, of financially supporting ministry. What he criticizes is the over-focus on finances and the under-focus on justice. That is a problem. In the very baldest of terms, it makes me wonder how many times I, and everyone else who does what I do, have held back from speaking directly and lovingly on an issue of justice for fear that the people who pay my salary may quit coming and quit giving?

This temptation has always been there. The writer of James names it: My brothers and sisters, do you with your acts of favoritism really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ? For if a person with gold rings and in fine clothes comes into your assembly, and if a poor person in dirty clothes also comes in, and if you take notice of the one wearing the fine clothes and say, “Have a seat here, please,” while to the one who is poor you say, “Stand there,” or, “Sit at my feet,” have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts?

I don’t want to do that. I hate the very idea. It runs counter to everything I believe and all that I hope for in congregational life. It is good to be reminded of the temptation and to resist it with every fiber of my being.

Let us pray: Dear Lord, we’ve all heard it before, “Do as I say and not as I do” – even though we know that actions speak louder than words. Challenge us to honesty and integrity in all things, especially when we’re tempted to say the right things but do the wrong things, or when we’re tempted to treat people less than honestly and lovingly. Forgive us. Cleanse us and make us whole. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

“Woe to you, blind guides, who say, ‘Whoever swears by the sanctuary is bound by nothing, but whoever swears by the gold of the sanctuary is bound by the oath.’ You blind fools! For which is greater, the gold or the sanctuary that has made the gold sacred?

And you say, ‘Whoever swears by the altar is bound by nothing, but whoever swears by the gift that is on the altar is bound by the oath.’ How blind you are! For which is greater, the gift or the altar that makes the gift sacred? So whoever swears by the altar, swears by it and by everything on it; and whoever swears by the sanctuary, swears by it and by the one who dwells in it; and whoever swears by heaven, swears by the throne of God and by the one who is seated upon it.” Matthew 23:16-22

Yesterday morning we met with an architect at church. We’ll meet with another one on Thursday. We have long had problems with the stained glass wall that runs down one whole side of our sanctuary. It is chockful of holes and cracks. The caulking is full of the asbestos that no one used to worry about when our church building was constructed. So now we’re studying our options for restoring or replacing the stained glass wall. As you can imagine, it will be expensive. It will also evoke strong emotions as we decide what we are going to do.

I’m keeping all of that in mind as I hear Jesus speak this morning. He attacks us in our “edifice complexes.”

I get it. The church is not the building, the church is the people. I think we all understand that. As a matter of fact, I think we often get confused on this very point. Listen closely to those who defend their building at all costs and you could very well be hearing an entirely different message – often people aren’t so much defending the building as they are their memories and their aspirations for what happened and will happen to the people who gather there.

Few public structures evoke the kind of feelings that religious structures evoke. Maybe it has always been that way.

The problems come when we forget that we baptize people, but we don’t baptize buildings. The problem comes when we over-identify what we hope to see happen in the lives of people with the structures and the traditions and “the way we do things around here.” How else would the ancients come up with the idea that swearing by their altar has some sort of mystical magical power compared to their barbeque pits back home? Not to mention the idea that gold is somehow more godly than wood or stone?

What is the corrective here? Maybe it is as simple as looking a little deeper. Maybe it means looking through everything from the stained glass to the walls to the pews to the candles and all of the rest of it, to see the deeper reality going on. God is calling his people together like a mother calls her family to the dinner table. Why?

To spend time together. To share our lives together. To pray and praise God, in the best and the worst times of our lives. To be gathered…and then to be sent. To be sent back into the world where we live, the jobs we do, the friends and family and neighbors who count on us. To be salt and light. To live in faith, hope, and love.

That really is the real deal, isn’t it? And if stained glass helps us toward that, bring it on. As long as we keep the main thing, the main thing.

Let us pray: Dear Jesus, we know you don’t live in houses built with human hands…but we trust that you are present when we gather in such houses. And we know that all holiness comes only as a reflection of you. Help us see that. Help us always keep the main thing, the main thing. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

“But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you lock people out of the kingdom of heaven. For you do not go in yourselves, and when others are going in, you stop them. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you cross sea and land to make a single convert, and you make the new convert twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.” Matthew 23:13-15

As I said last week, the scribes and the Pharisees will get a tongue lashing from Jesus for the rest of this chapter. But instead of thinking that what Jesus says refers to “them back there”, or even “them” today, let’s listen all week as if his words are directed straight at us. I choose to read this chapter as if the words are directed straight at me.

Why? Because I want to grow. Looking down my nose at someone else doesn’t help anything. It just makes me not pay attention to where I’m walking and thus, far more likely to stumble. But, as difficult as it is to hear hard words, I am far more likely to benefit from them if they hit me where they need to. So here we go…

The word “hypocrite” has its roots in the Greek theater. Actors would hold up masks for the various characters they would play. This allowed a few actors in a company to portray many different characters. That is fine in a play, not too fine in real life. It is where we get the word “two-faced.” Jesus accuses us of hypocrisy.

I plead guilty as charged. If I act one way in public and another way at home, I am the definition of a hypocrite. If I act one way in front of the congregation and another way in a team meeting or a staff meeting, guilty again. Clearly, life itself draws us out in different ways but what Jesus points out runs deeper. It reaches our character – the way we are when no one is looking.

Here Jesus points out how our actions can actually block someone from experiencing the reign of God in their lives. Rather than seeing the freedom and the love that is at the heart of a relationship with God, we are far too quick to expect conformity to tradition, certain kinds of public decorum.

Unwittingly, rather than walking with someone into a new or renewed relationship with God, we subtly encourage them to mistake that relationship to one of belonging with us. OUR rules and regulations – most of them unspoken and unconscious – become the measure of that relationship. Rather than freedom, people bumble into a new kind of bondage because of our blind guidance.

What is the corrective lens that might help us?

To the first, I think the answer looks like honesty and vulnerability. Often our hypocrisy is driven by the idea that we need to be all things to all people, maybe even all things to just some people. Bad idea. We can’t do it. Best if we just be who God created us to be in all of our glory and all of our limitations and all of our bumps, bruises, and beauty.

As to the second, we do well to remember that new relationships bring newness to everyone in the relationship. Rather than expecting someone new to conform, we would do well to listen closely to the gifts, the longings, the heart, of the new person with the expectation that they will change us as much as we will impact them. We do well to expect traditions to change (because they always will anyway…even our most beloved traditions were brand new innovations at some point along the way.) You can’t expect spiritual renewal if you can’t recognize that “new” lies right in the middle of it.

Let us pray: Dear Lord, look at us, face to face. Invite us to take down our masks so that we might be truly seen. Look us in the eye and remind us again how much you love us. Remind us again and again that you will never let us go. Perhaps then we might have the courage to put our masks away for good and see the faces, the real faces, of those you will reach through us. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat; therefore, do whatever they teach you and follow it; but do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they teach. They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others; but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them. They do all their deeds to be seen by others; for they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long. They love to have the place of honor at banquets and the best seats in the synagogues, and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have people call them rabbi. But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all students. And call no one your father on earth, for you have one Father—the one in heaven. Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Messiah. The greatest among you will be your servant. All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted. Matthew 23:1-12

The scribes and Pharisees get a bit of a comeupance in this chapter. It is well deserved. But I take it personally. Therefore, when I read “the scribes and Pharisees” I will count myself among their number as a professional religious leader. And I’m going to include, in my imagination, everyone else who numbers themselves among the “us” whenever their conversation takes them to the place where they draw a distinction between “us and them”.

Notice that Jesus isn’t criticizing the laws of Moses. We need order in our lives. We need boundaries. We need to know, in practical terms, what being loving to our neighbors looks like. On our own we can’t figure that out. We’re too selfish and self-centered. We need something outside of ourselves to guide us. If we don’t have that, then it is every person for themselves and the strongest wins. That is chaos. That is licentiousness. God loves us too much to cast us so adrift.

The trouble that Jesus has is with those in positions of power and privilege who apply these laws to others, adding a little more of their own interpretation for their own selfish reasons, and then create loopholes that don’t apply to them. The pastors who set high moral standards in public while they privately do whatever they want. The parishioners who dismiss everyone else in the world who don’t sign on to their doctrinal standards. The farmers who decry “welfare queens” and lobby for higher government payments for price supports and set aside acres.

Jesus nails our desire to look good in public. Our human desire for honor, for prestige, for red carpets. All of our efforts to keep the “riffraff” out of our neighborhoods. The desires behind most “not in my backyard” revolts. We want that mirror on the wall that always assures us that we are the fairest of them all.

Why? Because deep down inside we are afraid that we aren’t good enough. The wounds of life run deeply within us. As long as we keep the outside of the house painted and nicely landscaped, in the right neighborhood, no one will notice the pain we hoard inside. So we set up systems – all the way up to the highest levels – that will preserve the Potemkin Village realities of our lives.

But God loves us too much for that. He alone is Lord. He alone is Mother and Father. This is truly a blessing to know because, if God isn’t our Lord, then our lives are cast adrift on an ocean of pretenders, every one of whom wants a piece of us. God alone seeks our wholeness.

Let us pray: Stay near us, Lord Jesus, we ask you today. Slow us down, help us breath, let us see, deep into the reality of your creation in us, that we are loved. Just as we are. Now and forever. Regardless of what the rest of the world might say. Give us peace in our own skins, and use us to serve the people who will float through our lives today. In Jesus’ name. Amen.