Deuteronomy 4:32-49 - “Search the past. . . all the way back to the time when God created human being on the earth. Search the entire earth. Has anything like this ever happened before?” (4:32). God has spoken to them from a fire; He has freed them from captivity and defeated powerful kings to give them a place to settle. They did not win from strength but only with the help of God. You must obey the laws given to you through Moses.
Then Moses sets up three cities of refuge, one for each of the three tribes given land (Bezer for the Reubenites; Ramoth in Gilead for the Gadites; and Golan in Bashan for the tribes of Manasseh). Interesting that he should do this. It was a way of getting around the requirement for vengeance if a person was killed. Acknowledging that some killings were not intentional or malicious was probably a step forward.
Matthew 23:23-39 - Jesus goes on and on reprimanding the Pharisees and teachers of the Law for all the ways they are blind, self-righteous and superficial. The are “full of greed and self-indulgence” (23:25); “like white-washed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful, but inside they are full of the bones of the dead and of all kinds of filth” (23:27); they build tombs for the prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous and tell everyone if you had been alive you would not have taken part in shedding their blood, but “you testify against yourselves” (23:31) by killing and crucifying the prophets, sages and scribes “I send”. It does seem that Jesus is explicitly stepping into the voice of God here.
Then his anger turns to pain: “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’” (23:37-39).
This also seems as in Luke 19:41 to be a specific reference to the kind of rejection of the Christians in the synagogues in Jerusalem that made Peter cry out against them and made them see in the destruction of the Temple a rebuke and punishment from God. I asked my theology teacher, Fr. Luttenberger, what common source Luke and Matthew had for these angry anti-Pharisee diatribes. He agreed that they sounded too angry to have been a part of “Q” if “Q” is a collection of “saying.”. They also seem to be most like in an environment in which there is struggle between the synagogue and the Jesus believer.
Reflection: The overall theme of this teaching is that pride, and particularly pride in being righteous, is death to those who really seek to please God. The key is not to know everything God wants but to do it – obedience is the key and obedience not only in a superficial way, but obedience that runs up from a rooted sense of God’s voice being part of one’s experience inwardly. As Isaac Penington says, “Keep to the sense, keep to the feeling; beware of the understanding [part], beware of the imagining, conceiving mind.” In the gospel, Jesus also extends his teaching to condemn those very ordinary human practices, which build up pride in people – the way we relish in status, titles, positions, honors. These are things Quakers took very much to heart, refusing even titles such as Mr. And Mrs. Certainly titles such as are common in the Catholic Church were considered anathema. I do not think the hierarchical organization of the church is per se inconsistent with this teaching of Jesus, but the outward etiquette seems to me problematic. What a witness it would be for the Pope to lay it down! I can dream can’t I?
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