I have been thinking about this for a long time, and I am trying to put my thoughts together into something coherent. I ask for your patience to see where this takes us. Please understand that this is a work in progress, and is pointed first at myself.
Matthew 23:27 (ESV) - 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.
Why did Jesus speak so harshly to the pharisees? I often think of Jesus' tenderness with vulnerable, sick individuals, and his mercy toward the "sinners" who are brought before him. Then I contrast that to when he is furious, and who he is furious with. He really can't say anything more harsh than what he says to the pharisees, but why?
We need some context. Here we are seeing the introduction of the New Covenant from Christ, and the pharisees didn't know about it yet. They were living in a society that was trying to live the Old Covenant successfully. The Old Covenant was the Law, laid down in the ten commandments but then greatly expounded upon, mostly in the book of Leviticus. The Law has many requirements and is often harsh, demanding death for many infractions. In order to live under The Law, the pharisees wanted to protect their followers from going anywhere near breaking any commandments, so they created a "hedge" around the Law. For instance, to prevent people from breaking the Sabbath, the pharisees spelled out in excruciating detail what you could not do, laying out even more restrictions than the Law required in order to keep their followers from getting close to breaking the Law. Good idea, right?
The problem here, is that they missed the entire point of the Law. The Law was not written to express how to successfully live righteously. Following it to the most minute detail means you are focusing on the wrong thing.
Matthew 23:23 (ESV) - 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. 24 You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel!
And no matter how hard you strive to follow the Law outwardly, you will miss the mark somewhere. In some part of your thoughts, in some corner of your mind, you will fail.
Matthew 5:21 (ESV) - You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire.
Here we see that, in reality, "thou shalt not murder" really means that you can't hate; you really can't even call someone a fool. Later in the paragraph, we see that "thou shalt not commit adultery" means you can't have a single lustful thought, ever. The point is that no matter how hard you try to follow the Law, you are already fallen and you aren't going to become righteous through your own effort.
So what was the point of the Law if you were destined to break it? What was it the Pharisees missed by trying so very hard to fulfill the Law with all their rules? The point of the Law was to prove that everyone misses the mark. The point of the Law was that everyone needed atonement through a blood sacrifice of an innocent. With all the rules of the Pharisees, they told everyone that the way to a healthy relationship with God was to try hard and try harder and never fail (and be really good at hiding your failures). They missed the very first commandment:
Matthew 22:36-37 (ESV) - Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law? And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind."
Even so, is it really so bad to try to follow the rules of the Law, of trying to avoid breaking the Law? If the Law spells out unrighteousness, wouldn't the righteous want to follow the Law? Perhaps. I posit that the real problem with the Pharisees' approach is their focus on the Law, not their love for God. They preached the rules to the point where their rules were the law of the land, imposed on the community. Eventually, the rules became their focus, completely outside the context of a love for God and God's love for us. The fear of breaking the Law was the underlying message, not looking in eager hope for the coming Savior who would become the Lamb of God who would fulfill the atonement that the poor sacrificial sheep stood in for. The laws of the Pharisees became a great weight that was even harder to fulfill than the impossible Law, and led to a community that felt separated from God by their own failures. In all their teaching of rules, there was no focus on mercy or grace of the Father, provided in infinite love through his promised atonement.
OK, well, why have I been so concerned about this? In what way does it affect my life today? There are no Pharisees putting a hedge around the Law today, are there? No, but let's look to the heart of what the Pharisees did, the real problem that Jesus so harshly rebuked: Religious people, focused on the right and wrong laid out by the Law, trying to apply rules to a community without the context of a loving Father, without the concept of forgiveness, with only the Law's view of right and wrong as the ultimate message. When we, as Christians, "vote our conscious", applying the morality of the Law (that we cannot even follow perfectly with the Holy Spirit's help) to the laws that govern our land, are we not being Pharisees? We are focusing on the rules and demanding that a non-believing society abide by them, completely outside the context of a loving God or the Holy Spirit's help.
Today, in our society, Christians have for so long stood opposed to gay rights that we have forced the LGBTQ+ individuals in our society to band together into a cohesive and accepting community whose banner is to have "pride" in who they are. The church is so busy applying the morality of the Law to our country's laws that we failed to communicate the love of our Father to individuals. Now, given a choice between a strong community who tells them to be proud of who they are, or a judgmental community that tells them that they are immoral, which do you think is more inviting? Also, notice all the use of "they" and "them", we have turned it into "us against them".
Now, inside your church, you may have loving members who accept any who walk through the doors of the church. Wonderful! My worry is, how would a LGBTQ+ person know that your church is a loving, accepting community? Right now, the message being blasted from the rooftops from the political right is anti-gay, anti-trans, anti-lesbian; and who voted for those "right wing" politicians? Who supports them? Many are voted for by conservative Christians. So, connecting the dots, conservative Christians are anti-LGBTQ+. How will you ever get to show the Father's love to a member of the LGBTQ+ community if the only message they are hearing about Christians is that we are anti-YOU?
We, as a church, must change the way we are communicating to the world. Should we disengage from politics all together? I'm not sure. I do feel that at this point, we have done much damage to the "Good News" of the Gospel. We have alienated a community, pitted ourselves against them, and drowned out the love of our Father with a message of judgment. I think that we must first stop trying to assume the USA is a "Christian" country in which we must apply laws that enforce the Judaeo-Christian ethic. Trying to enforce Law-based morality without help from the Holy Spirit on a people who do not know the Lord is just going to be off-putting to the very people we are trying to share the love of the Father with. We must stop looking at issues and instead always focus on the individual.
How far can we take this? I do want to be honest here. Not every bit of scripture is filled with love and acceptance for all.
1 Cor 5:9-13 (ESV) - I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people— 10 not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. 11 But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler—not even to eat with such a one. 12 For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church[b] whom you are to judge? 13 God judges[c] those outside. “Purge the evil person from among you.”
What??? So, we can't be Pharisees, trying to enforce morality in society with rules that leave out all the love of the Father, but then inside the church we need to judge each other? Well, yes and no. The church does need to use some amount of judgment inside its community. This is not to say that we expect newcomers to be immediately sanctified. We must allow time for the Holy Spirit to move in a person's life, to identify areas that need to be addressed. This passage is more about whether the church is content to applaud itself on acceptance without expecting growth. The church must reach out into the world, but the mature church should not be a reflection of the world.
A final word. The church is full of sinners, that's the point. We all need grace and we all need to be continually sanctified by the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. As a community of sinners, there is a plethora of immorality occurring in the church today. If we were to take all brothers and sisters who are "guilty of sexual immorality or greed, ... idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler", and remove them from the church, I'm not sure how many would be left. We are all in the process of sanctification, living in a fallen world. We, as a church, should encourage each other to live with integrity. Each member needs some safe brothers/sisters who can hold them accountable, and each member must be open to gentle, loving correction given by someone they trust when prompted by the Holy Spirit. The often misquoted verse "For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them." (Matthew 18:20) is actually about members of the church restoring each other out of sin in love, and God's promise to be with us as we do this.
Matthew 7:1-5 - Judge not, that you be not judged. 2 For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. 3 Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? 4 Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? 5 You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye.
As we, in the church, have plenty of plank-eye, let's focus on growing in our walk with the Lord, following the Holy Spirit, and allow our hearts and minds to be purified by Him. Let's not let our communication to the world be of judgment, of an expected Law-based morality without the context of the love of our Father. Let's not let our loving actions, community outreach, our generosity with the less fortunate, all be over-shouted by a demand for non-believers to follow the Law that we in the church struggle with.
