Counting woes

 Not enough woes to go around?

(92) Woes Continued

Remember Mark 12:38-40, Luke 20:45-47 from last time. Jesus was about to pronounce a list of “woes” against the church leaders. I still think woe might be as much a cry of mourning as of condemnation. But we’ll look at the list in a moment, traditionally 7 of them, in Matthew. But let’s read the Mark and Luke passages first. The woes are listed as:

1.       Teaching about God but not loving God

2.       Preaching a dead religion, so the converts are as dead as they are

3.       False teaching about oaths, nitpicking what was and was not binding

4.       False teaching about the law—neglecting justice, mercy and faithfulness

5.       Appearing clean while being full of sin

6.       Claiming a righteousness they didn’t deserve

7.       And professing they valued the prophets when they were about to murder a prophet.

Let’s see if this feels like a good summing up (though I have to confess, I counted 8, not 7):

1.       Read Matthew 23:13 How might someone shut up God’s kingdom against people?

2.       Read Matthew 23:14 (It might be in your footnotes rather than the passage - so now I know why I counted 8!) Widows, with no man to protect them, came under the protection of the law, but those administrating the law would often take advantage of them. The story of the widow’s mite follows this passage. Who might churches take advantage of today?

3.       Read Matthew 23:15 Yes, true proselytes were valued and welcome, though “land and sea” is probably hyperbole. How should we balance welcoming newcomers with caring for members? Or with welcoming their skills rather than their presence?

4.       Read Matthew 23:16-22. So much for no swearing. Since they couldn’t swear by God, they’d carefully calculated what other things they could swear by—nitpicking God’s law. Do modern churches ever nitpick God’s law?

5.       Read Matthew 23:23-24 There were endless debates over whether tithes included herbs, and which herbs should be included. Also about whether a dead gnat was big enough to make water impure. Meanwhile camels were the biggest animal around. Do churches today have similar debates? And what do they lose sight of?

6.       Read Matthew 23:25-26 This was a huge religious-legal debate. Which part should you cleanse first? Is Jesus applying his teaching to cups or to ourselves?

a.       Read Matthew 23:27-28 The whitewash protected people from accidentally becoming unclean, but it also made the tombs beautiful. Do we ever try to make bad things look good?

7.       Read Matthew 23:29-36 They were building ceremonial tombs by now, just as we do, which maybe makes this particularly poignant in a time of Black Lives Matter. What might appropriate monuments look like?

a.       Vipers were believed to chew their way out of the mother’s womb, so this was a pretty horrific analogy. How might it also have been very apt?

b.       What prophets and teachers were going to be sent out soon? How true was this prophecy?

c.       What would be a modern equivalent of flogging in the synagogue, perhaps, in some church traditions?

d.       Read 2 Chronicles 24:20-22, Zechariah 1:1Abel and Zechariah were viewed as the first and last martyrs. The Zechariah in question was not the prophet Zechariah, but Jewish tradition often linked people who shared names or attributes, to make a point. What point is being made? What are they about to do?