Deuteronomy. 4 – Moses reminds the people of the commands he was given by God.”. . .that you may have life and may enter and take possession of the land.”  They are told not to add anything to these laws, interestingly—especially in light of the fact that Deuteronomy does add onto and change things given earlier in the Torah, but Schocken editors think these things are worked in here under a bringing together of the tradition, just at the moment when there is an intention to bring an end to the official canon.  

Interesting here is that now the people are entering not as Abraham entered—as strangers, but as conquerors.  Abraham and his whole clan were not numerically able to conquer the land.  Their claim in it even at the time of Joseph - three generations in - was only the burial site at Hebron, which Abraham INSISTED on paying for; but now things are different.  The Lord gives them leave to go in and take the lands he wants them to have, not buy them, take them. The laws and precepts he gives are witness to God’s closeness and his justice.  In part they are to be a light to other nations because of the wisdom and justice of the statues and way of life they cling to in obedience to the Lord. He reminds his people “not to forget the things which your own eyes have seen, nor let them slip from your memory as long as you live. . .”(4:9) 

Recalling Horeb where the people had gathered to hear God’s words before the fiery mountain: “Then Yahweh spoke to you from the midst of the fire; you heard the sound of words but saw no shape, there was only a voice.” (4:12), giving them the commandments and the covenant that bound them.  No image of God appeared to them at that time; so, he remarks, “do not act perversely, making yourself a carved image in the shape of anything . . .” Yahweh “is a consuming fire, a jealous God” (4:24). The interesting thing is that the Lord tells them idolatry of the kind he warns them against “degrades” the people—not Him (4:16, 25). If they are not faithful, God will scatter them and he even predicts this.  But then they will repent. “But you will seek Yahweh. . .from there [exile], and if you seek him with all your heart and with all your soul, you shall find him. . .” (4:29) “at the end of the day you will return to Yahweh your God and listen to His voice.” (4:30)

“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 – Jesus tells the crowds that the teachers of the Law and the Pharisees occupy “Moses’ seat” so they have a right to interpret the Law of Moses; the problem is not with what they teach – it is that they do not DO what they preach. They are hypocrites. They are great “sayers” of the truth, as early Friends might have said, but abysmal “doers”. And when they DO pious things, they do it for the praise, position and power it gives them in the community. Jesus warns his followers not to seek titles of respect, even the titles of “Teacher” or “Father” or “Leader “(23:8-10). Have the goal of “serving” others – this is what the Lord really wants.

These hypocritical leaders stop people from entering the “kingdom of heaven”; they cross land and sea to convert people but make them worse than they are; they don’t even use common sense in interpreting the tradition—telling people that if the swear by the sanctuary they are not bound, but if they swear by the gold of the sanctuary they are. Which is more precious? They act as if they were blind. 

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?