If you’ve been to the welcome page of SignoftheRose you’ve seen that I have a book coming out in 2021. This is the cover artwork for that book and for me this was a chance to collaborate with my daughter Jey White. I am thrilled with how it evolved and with the finished product. I’ll be sharing more about the work in the coming weeks and I am excited to put some of my work out in a new format.

Matthew 23: 37-39

Parallel Luke 13: 34-35

 ³⁷ “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! ³⁸ See, your house is left to you, desolate. ³⁹ 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.’”

The focus shifts from the religious leaders to the city of Jerusalem in this brief lament for the city. This passage has received renewed attention from feminist readers who have pointed out that here the traditional image of being sheltered under God’s wings is now set within a female metaphor for Jesus doing a traditionally feminine task of mourning. This brief, poignant image which mourns for a people and city which have been led astray and have rejected the messengers of God and have resisted God’s continual desire to gather the people together only to find themselves lost in the wilderness and homeless. The loss of Jerusalem, the loss of the temple and the loss of the land have occurred before in Israel’s story (under the Babylonian empire for Judah, under the Assyrians for the northern kingdom of Israel) and these focal portions of their identity were shattered. If Matthew’s community is hearing this in the aftermath of the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple by Rome, they (and other Jewish communities) are probably trying to make sense of the destruction while they seek the peace of the city they find themselves within.

The image of God’s wings as a refuge is used frequently in the Hebrew Scripture[1] but the image of God is frequently described using masculine metaphors. That Jesus uses a feminine metaphor to describe his desire to gather together the people of Jerusalem is not unique, but it is noteworthy. Instead of an eagle or hawk, a bird often associated with strength, now Jesus casts himself as the anxious mother hen trying to gather her young birds together and shelter them. The Apocryphal work 4 Esdras 1:30 also uses an identical image when referencing the Lord Almighty, and although 4 Esdras may be later than Matthew’s gospel they both capture the desire of God or Jesus to shelter God’s people. From the beginning of Matthew’s gospel part of Jesus’ vocation has been to save his people from their sins (1:20) but here the very people he desires to rescue resist that saving.

The house becomes a wilderness[2] and in the aftermath of the Jewish War many people who considered Jerusalem either their physical or spiritual home find themselves homeless and having to make their peace in whatever city they now make their life. The previous exile was a time where the people of Israel had to rediscover what it meant to be the people of God without the promised land, a Davidic king, the city of Jerusalem and the temple. In the previous exile the written scriptures became central to their new identity. For these followers of Jesus, they have now centered their identity on Jesus as the writing of the gospel accounts of Jesus’ ministry become attempts to reorient their identity around a new center in a new land. Jesus is the awaited Davidic king, but he is a crucified messiah, Jesus is greater than the temple and will be with these disciples where two or three are gathered, and this people who may be homeless now await for the day when they can proclaim with all creation “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord” at the arrival of their new home when the kingdom of heaven comes. They live oriented towards a hope that can move them beyond their lament because even in their desolation their Lord desires to gather them together like a mother gathers her children or a hen gathers her brood.

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[1] Exodus 19:4, Ruth 2:12, Psalm 17:8, 36:7, 57:1, 61:4, 63:7, 91:4

[2] The Greek eremos means wilderness, desert and can have the connotation of being abandoned/desolate as most translations render.

Matthew 23: 1-36

Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, ² “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat; ³ therefore, do whatever they teach you and follow it; but do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they teach. ⁴ 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. ⁵ They do all their deeds to be seen by others; for they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long. ⁶ They love to have the place of honor at banquets and the best seats in the synagogues, ⁷ and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have people call them rabbi. ⁸ But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all students. ⁹ And call no one your father on earth, for you have one Father — the one in heaven. ¹⁰ Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Messiah. ¹¹ The greatest among you will be your servant. ¹² All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.

¹³ “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. ¹⁵ 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 hellas yourselves.

¹⁶ “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.’ ¹⁷ You blind fools! For which is greater, the gold or the sanctuary that has made the gold sacred? ¹⁸ 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.’ ¹⁹ How blind you are! For which is greater, the gift or the altar that makes the gift sacred? ²⁰ So whoever swears by the altar, swears by it and by everything on it; ²¹ and whoever swears by the sanctuary, swears by it and by the one who dwells in it; ²² and whoever swears by heaven, swears by the throne of God and by the one who is seated upon it.

²³ “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill, and cumin, 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. ²⁴ You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel!

²⁵ “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. ²⁶ You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup,so that the outside also may become clean.

²⁷ “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. ²⁸ So you also on the outside look righteous to others, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.

²⁹ “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you build the tombs of the prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous, ³⁰ 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.’ ³¹ Thus you testify against yourselves that you are descendants of those who murdered the prophets. ³² Fill up, then, the measure of your ancestors. ³³ You snakes, you brood of vipers! How can you escape being sentenced to hell? ³⁴ 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, ³⁵ 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. ³⁶ Truly I tell you, all this will come upon this generation.

I am taking the majority of this chapter as a long unit both because this is a section of Matthew that many modern Christians are uncomfortable with, especially looking back at the way Christians, when they became the dominant religion in many areas, treated their Jewish neighbors. The paradox of the way Matthew has been read is that while it is the most Jewish of the gospels, it also has passages that have been read to paint Judaism as a whole in a judgmental and harsh light. The language of Matthew 23 would be very familiar to those who have spent any time studying the prophets in particular and the Hebrew Scriptures in general, but since most Christians have little familiarity with how to read the scriptures we share with our Jewish brothers and sisters we misunderstand Matthew, the scriptures, Christianity and Judaism.

If you’ve read through these reflections on Matthew, you will not be surprised that judgment is a part of the coming kingdom of heaven for those who resist it and prevent others from hearing about or accepting its approach. Matthew is an extremely gifted scribe who is able to pull from a wide range of the scriptures (the Hebrew Scriptures or Old Testament) as he is attempting to narrate the story and teachings of Jesus, but in a world where copies of the scriptures were both rare and controlled by those in religious authority the Pharisees and scribes would be the ones with both access to these scriptures and the ability to proclaim them to the people. The Hebrew scriptures in the law, narrative and prophets is very hard on rulers and those with religious authority because they are the ones who will shape the actions of the people because they have access to these sacred writings that reveal God’s will for the society they are to construct.

One way to read this section is to allow it to be a mirror to compare one’s own practices to. Jesus is speaking to his disciples and the crowds, not primarily the Pharisees (as they are represented in Matthew) here. As Anna Case-Winters can state:

As we read these sharp edged texts today we are tempted to let them rest in the past as a condemnation of a particular subset of the Pharisees. We locate ourselves among the righteous and know that Jesus is talking not about “us” but about “them.” What if, instead, we took the texts as an occasion to examine our own religious life and practice to see if the things Jesus speaks so heatedly against are to be found there? Those who are religious leaders might look particularly closely at what is condemned here. These texts are surely a cautionary tale instructive for religious leaders and all “would-be” followers of Jesus. (Case-Winters 2015, 263)

The Pharisees and scribes become an example of those who do not practice what they preach, who focus on the wrong things, who are judged here because they in positions of power have judged or misled others. Throughout Matthew the followers of Christ have been pointed towards a completeness, a wholeness, in how they embody the law mercifully in both inside and outside. The reinterpretation of the commandments in the sermon on the mount is designed to create a community which can be the salt of the earth, a city on a hill and a light to the nations. In our modern, individualistic readings of Matthew we may find it hard to reconcile the rigorous obedience of Matthew with mercy and forgiveness but that point to the ways our readings have become more like the Pharisees and less like Jesus as Matthew presents him. For Matthew, mercy informs what this obedience looks like and transforms this from a project of individualistic perfection to a community where the needs of one’s neighbor are central and righteousness is not practice for the approval of others in the community or society but before one’s heavenly Father.

It is also important to realize that these texts, as difficult as they can be to hear, are also spoken with the desire that the hearers will change their course. While Matthew may believe it is unlikely that the Pharisees and the scribes will repent and change their ways, at the right time the seed of this difficult word may take root even among these who are resisting this proclamation of the kingdom of heaven. It is also important to realize that these Pharisees represented to many hearers a compelling alternative to the practices of these early Christians. They did occupy positions of influence and authority and their practices, while easily discernable to the observer, provided a piety which could be observed and practiced. Jesus has always called for practicing something deeper than piety, practicing righteousness. The wearing of phylacteries or fringes on one’s clothing are not lifted up as wrong, it is the practice of enlarging the phylacteries (which carry a copy of Deuteronomy 6:4-9) or lengthening one’s tassels[1] to be noticed by others. It is the desire to be noticed and acclaimed by others based on places of honor, honorific greetings, or specific titles which form the basis for the actions of these Pharisees Matthew portrays which form a contrast to the relations as ‘brothers and sisters.’[2] All the disciples of Jesus stand in the same relationship as siblings of the one heavenly Father, and are all those who are taught by Christ. They are the opposite of the characterization of these Pharisees who seek positions of honor and power and, as throughout the gospel, the greatest are servants, and the humble ones are lifted up.

As we look at the seven woes, we encounter themes that have been present before in the gospel. The first woe sets the stage for why Jesus is so hard on the Pharisees and scribes, they are actively doing harm to others by denying them entrance to the kingdom of heaven. They are so opposed to what Jesus is doing in proclaiming and enacting the kingdom’s presence that they impede and actively work to convert others to their way of reading scripture. Their work to create converts who share their certainty and makes these new Pharisees children of Gehenna[3] who continue to work against the children of heaven. While followers of Christ are not to swear on anything (5:33-37), Jesus criticizes these Pharisees who are willing to delineate between which oaths are binding and which oaths are not based on what is sworn upon. This practice of delineating which oaths are binding may go back to Number 30 which deals with oaths made by women, which can be overruled by men in Numbers, but if this is based on actual practices it would be an innovation which would make the taking of certain oaths meaningless. For Jesus’ disciple their words and their faithfulness to those words, whether under oath or not, are central to being a community of truth.

Ultimately the practices, while not wrong, place the focus on the wrong place. Slavish obedience to weighing out a tithe of spices that detracts from the weightier demands of justice, mercy and faith misses the mark, as does washing the outside of cups or making beautiful tombs without changing what is inside the individuals.

Jesus’ accusation of the Pharisees and scribes is that they are both blind and hypocrites. As in 15:14 their blindness is dangerous because they are the blind leading others who are blind to fall into a pit. Hypocrite is a word used more by Matthew than any other gospel, and it is a word which originates talking about stage actors who pretend to be something they are not. To Jesus, the Pharisees are those who act like they are righteous and yet it is a role they play rather than a reality they inhabit. They continue the resistance to the servants of God who have been sent again and again to God’s people, and yet they are in a position where others watch their actions to understand what righteousness looks like. To Jesus their actions and their resistance are not only dangers to themselves but to the others looking for leaders that point them to God. As those who may control access to the scriptures and who occupy positions of power they are judged more harshly.

There is a long tradition of warnings in the scriptures about the cost of being unfaithful. They may be toward the people in general like the blessings and curses of Deuteronomy 28, or they may be directed specifically at leaders like Ezekiel 34 and many other places. The language may be harsh and polemical, but it is also to try to open the possibility of repentance. Sometimes it is the language of a people who have been broken by the movement of foreign empires crying out in pain to God, like Jeremiah 46-51, and asking for God’s judgment on the nations. Here, Jesus stands in the prophetic tradition, like those sent before, to Jerusalem and Israel crying out to the people about leaders who have failed to embody the coming kingdom of heaven and have resisted its messenger. It is a plea for the people to hear even when their leaders have been deaf. Still today it is a call to reexamine our own practices of righteousness and to examine if we have been blind guides and hypocrites who are a danger not only to ourselves but those who rely on us to understand God’s will.

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[1] In Matthew Jesus wears tassels on his clothing which is noted in the story of healing the woman with a flow of blood in 9:20 (NRSV translates this same word as fringe)

[2] What the NRSV and others translate as ‘students’ is the Greek adelphos which is brothers, which can be expanded to ‘brothers and sisters’ since women would be assumed to be a part of the community.

[3] The translation of Gehenna as ‘hell’ places a lot of baggage around this term that would not have been there at the time of Jesus’ ministry. See my discussion on Gehenna, Tartaros, Sheol, Hades and Hell

1 Corinthians 12: 4-13

⁴ Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; ⁵ and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; ⁶ and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. ⁷ To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. ⁸ To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, ⁹ to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, ¹⁰ to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the discernment of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. ¹¹ All these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses. ¹² For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. ¹³ For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body — Jews or Greeks, slaves or free — and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.

As I was thinking about what we needed in a time like this I started reflecting about the role I’ve tried to play as a leader of this community and what attributes I try to model as a leader, and although I’m not one who normally goes for catch phrases what I ended up with were my 5 c’s: Calm, Centered, Connected, Creativity and its cousin Curiousity. Apologies for the alliteration but I do try to remain calm in times of crisis, and I’ve walked through some in my times as a leader as an adult. I try to remain centered in the things that ground me, my faith, my love of scripture, the people I love. I try to remain connected with the people I am gifted to serve however I can to the best of my ability, while still taking times to rest and care for myself. But I want to focus on these last two today: Creativity and its cousin Curiosity.

I’ve had a fascination with creativity and curiosity for years and I’m thankful for some of the places it has led me in my life. I can talk about this for a long time, but some quick reflections today:

• Some of us may be at the point where we are growing bored (or maybe we’ve been bored for days now). The good news is that this can be a place where curiosity and creativity can play. When we are constantly busy it is hard for us to get curious about something, to invest the time and resources it takes to be creative. Also crises can be a place where necessity forces us to consider new and creative ways of doing things.
• Creativity is scary, vulnerable and full of terrifying firsts. It was terrifying when I started writing, when I started recording video (especially since I’m self-conscious about how I look in pictures and video), Elizabeth Gilbert gives a lot of reasons not to be creative, which I’ll read (if you want all the reasons see the video) but ultimately it is scary, scary, scary
• Creativity looks different in different people. My medium is words, Adam has a great eye for photography. Maybe you organize things or paint or skate or dance, or who knows what the gift God’s spirit has placed within you. Jack Gilbert, the poet reportedly once told a student in one of his classes, “Do you have the courage? Do you have the courage to bring forth this work? The treasures that are hidden within you are hoping you will say yes.”Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic, 7
• “I believe this is one of the oldest and most generous tricks the universe plays on us human beings, both for its own amusement and ours: The universe buried strange jewels deep within us all, and then stands back to see if we can find them.” Big Magic, 8

I’m going to close today with a poem that I wrote years ago, but that still is one of my favorites of these gifts I never knew was buried inside me, it’s a poem called Creative Words (click on the title to link to the poem)