I
am eternally fascinated with the origins of words. Recently, I came across the word “woe” repeatedly
when Jesus proclaims his eight woes upon the Pharisees. Online Etymology Dictionary gives the origin
of the word “woe” as “late 12c., from the interjection, Old English wa!,
a common exclamation of lament in many languages (compare Latin væ,
Greek oa, German weh, Lettish wai, Old
Irish fe, Welsh gwae, Armenian vay).” Today, we don’t use the word “woe,” but
perhaps the best approximation we have might be “woah!” A “woe” is something that stops us in our
tracks and makes us drop our jaws—in a negative way. Recently when reading Matthew 23 it struck me
that just as many people have problems with the church, Jesus gave eight
complaints against the religious establishment of his own day. Yes, if you have problems with the church,
you’re in good company. Let me see if I
can sum up Jesus’ complaints, and then let me re-frame these “woes” into
“what-ifs.”
In
verse 13[i],
Jesus says, “But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For
you shut the kingdom of heaven in people's faces. For you neither enter
yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in.” What the Lord is saying is, What if the church were less exclusive and
judgmental, and more inclusively demonstrated God’s grace? If Jesus could say “Neither do I condemn
you,”[ii]
then why can’t we? We could turn the
church into a welcoming place rather than one that makes people feel like they
will be rejected by the holier than thou.
In
verse 14, Jesus says, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For
you devour widows' houses and for a pretense you make long prayers; therefore
you will receive the greater condemnation.”
What if the church were less
concerned with receiving endowments than sharing its wealth with the poor? I’ve known many churches with overflowing
accounts that did nobody any good because they refused to use the gifts God
gave them to help those in need.
Instead, of being righteous, they were content to look
righteous by their show of piety.
In
verse 15, Jesus says, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For
you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he
becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as
yourselves.” It’s important to share
our faith and lead people to a relationship with God through Christ. But What
if church members were more concerned with helping people to be like Jesus than
forcing them to be like us? Jesus
knew that the Pharisees’ goal of making converts was to reproduce little
Pharisees. It should be our goal to
produce more Christ-followers, not to produce people who look and act like we
do.
In
verses 16-22, Jesus pronounces a woe upon nitpicky people who are bound up in their
own customs and rules that they want to impose on other people. “If you’re going to make an oath, you have to
say the words my way,” they would say.
What Jesus was really saying is, “What
if the church were less interested in words and formulas, and more interested
in the heart?” Last night I watched
a comedian who made fun of his own awkwardness when attending a church where he
didn’t know the proper response to the liturgy.
While he made a funny routine of it, what’s not funny is the way we make
people feel when we make them feel like outsiders or tell them that they’re
doing it wrong.
In
verses 23-24, Jesus says, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!
For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the
weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and
faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the
others. You blind guides, straining out a gnat and
swallowing a camel!” The Old
Testament Law required tithing real produce, but the Pharisees were so
over-scrupulous that they tithed even their kitchen spices. Similarly, many in the church are so stuck on
legalism that they neglect the weightier matters of mercy and
faithfulness. So, what if the church was more interested in the spirit of the Law
than the letter?
In
verses 25-26, Jesus says, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!
For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they
are full of greed and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisee! First
clean the inside of the cup and the plate, that the outside also may be
clean.” Jesus might have asked, “What if the church cared more about getting its heart right than
appearing righteous?” What if it didn’t
even care about how it appeared on the outside, as long as the inside was
clean? God might do a lot with a
church like that.
Jesus’
next woe is much like the last. But in
verses 27-28, He says it even more offensively: “Woe to you, scribes and
Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly
appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people's bones and all
uncleanness. So you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but
within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.” I’ve been to cemeteries with whitewashed
tombs just like Jesus talked about—beautiful on the outside but rotten on the
inside. What if the church were more interested in being alive than in
looking alive? What if it cared more
about beautiful souls than it did about beautiful buildings?
In
verses 29-30, Jesus says, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!
For you build the tombs of the prophets and decorate the monuments of the
righteous, saying, ‘If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would
not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’” Jesus is telling the legalists of his day
that they wouldn’t have been any less legalistic had they lived in another
time. We tend to glorify another time,
to remember some golden era or to look forward to some glorious future when
things can be better. What if the church cared more about the
here and now than either the good old days or the sweet by and by?
Jesus
didn’t blast the Pharisees in order to condemn them, but to challenge them to
be something better. He wanted them to
change the woes to “what if’s.” If the
church can take a little helpful criticism, if we can ask some hard “what if’s”
then maybe we can go from “Woe” to “Wow!”
Instead of “Woe is me—our church is declining,” or “Woah—look at where our
society’s headed!” we can make some changes and say “Wow!” We can step into the
bright and glorious future that God intends for God’s people.
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