David Orendorff, Matthew 23:1-12

It was early one morning when the Pastor heard a noise outside his door. When he opened it, he found a donkey standing outside, which immediately fell over dead. Not exactly knowing what to do about the situation, he called the local sheriff and told him about what was laying before him.

The sheriff couldn’t resist jabbing at the Minister and said, “Pastor, I thought the first duty of the Minister was to bury the dead.”

Without hesitation, the Pastor said, “No the first duty of the Minister is to notify the next of kin.”

Sometimes we need more information before we understand what God would have us be about. Or do we?

Today’s scripture opens with shorthand remarks that would make sense to Jews but almost no sense Christians in the twenty-first century. In the first verse Jesus refers to the Pharisees who sit on “Moses seat.” Who are these Pharisees? And what is Moses seat?

The Pharisees are a sub-division of Judaism, just as Methodism is a sub-division of Christianity. No faith community is exempt from the human tendency to fragment; not Buddhism, Islam, Taoism or even new comers like the Ba Há’í or Mormonism. And the older a religion gets the more diverse it becomes until Hinduism and Judaism, certainly the oldest religions of all, are so diffuse that it is often hard to tell various adherents come from the same root. United Methodists, Al Qaeda, Hamas, the Church of God and Hasidic Judaism all have the same root in Abraham but emphasize different parts of the tradition.

The Pharisees emphasized keeping the law of Yahweh. They reasoned God would be pleased and bless the people if they kept the rules. They found the basis for the law in the first five books of the Bible, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy and Numbers. Tradition says they were written by Moses and hence are the “seat of Moses.”

So Moses’ seat is not a chair Moses owned. It is inherited responsibility of teaching the people of God the law of God as it first was given to Moses in the ten commandments and then to the family of Levi and all the generations of priests following.

There is nothing wrong with learning and teaching God’s law. It would do all of us and the world well to heed what Moses taught. What has gone wrong is that many of the Pharisees taught the law but did not keep the law. They talked the talk but did not walk the walk.

And further, some of the Pharisees evidently put on religious garb for its appearance, for looking good. They made their phylacteries big so they could be seen by everyone. Phylacteries are boxes holding scripture which are worn above the forehead and on the upper left arm.¹ They are worn to remind the wearer to bind the law of God to both the mind (forehead) and the body (arm). But the Pharisees wore them not to be reminded of God’s law, but for show.

Jesus also mentions the wearing of fringes. Fringes worn on the four corners of a garment were to remind the wearer to obey the commandments of God.² But like the phylacteries, many of the Pharisees turned what was to be a matter of personal holiness into a public show. They wore long fringes not to remind themselves of God, but to display themselves as very religious.

Jesus points out their hypocrisy. For though they pretend to desire above all to be faithful to God they are in fact most concerned with having seats of honor at banquets, with being greeted with respect and deference in the marketplaces, and with having people call them the reverent titles of “rabbi,” “father” or instructor/guide.

In truth, none of us escape Jesus’ clear vision of hypocrisy in our attempts to look good and claim respectability. Since we are ending our annual financial stewardship campaign today I found a couple of examples of how strong this hypocrisy can be in our faith lives.

In seventh grade I attended a Methodist church in which every family’s name and pledge was listed on a poster board in the entry way to the sanctuary. Everyone who entered could see who had pledged and how much. And if this wasn’t pressure enough to look good, every three months the list was again posted in the entry indicating how well each families was (or wasn’t) doing in meeting their pledges. Giving, as you might imagine, went up dramatically that year.

In looking at ways to promote stewardship a friend told me of a study indicating that when the offering was taken directly by an usher, even if it is a plate on the end of a pole, the offering went up 10%. It seems that looking good to the usher is a great motivation for giving.

It seems it is all too easy to motivate us by shaming us into being good. Sometimes we are no better than a bunch of Pharisees with their big phylacteries and long fringes.

But Jesus asks more of us than for us to look good, he wants us to be good. Specifically he says, “The greatest among you will be your servant.” This is so contrary to the honor code of his time which placed the servant someplace around the donkey at the front door. And it is contrary to the ways we culturally seek honor and respectability. And to simply underline this inversion of value he says, “All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.” Jesus calls us to listen and to practice, to the best of God’s grace given to us, the teachings of Moses.

And should if it all seem too confusing with too many rules, then remember the one great commandment which Jesus, our true Rabbi, taught us, “‘Love God with all your heart, soul and mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”³

Jesus reminds us of the prophet Micah who spoke for God saying:

And what does the Lord require of you
But to do justice, and to love kindness,
And to walk humbly with your God?”⁴

If, for some foolish reason, should we again put on our oversized phylacteries and long fringe, should we forget to walk humbly with our God, then our God will remind us. Sometime back mom gave me this article from the Powell, Wyoming Tribune in which my father (who also tells this story on himself) was reminded to be humble:

The crusty guy in workman’s clothes came into the rear of the Northwest College cafeteria snack bar area one morning last week. He was looking for directions.

It was the first day of the health fair for participants in the Wyoming Retirement System. He paused to ask the snack bar attendant if she knew where on campus the blood draw was being conducted. She replied politely that she didn’t know.

A young man, newly hired as recruiter for the college, was waiting in line and overheard. He volunteered the needed information.

“It’s in the Orendorff Building,” he said. “Do you know where that is?”

Without a word, the gentleman shuffled off, musing to no one in particular: “How soon they forget.”

It was SinClair Orendorff, for whom the NWC administration building was named when he retired three presidents and 13 years ago, after 22 distinguished years at the helm.”⁵

When I forget to be humble, and I do because there is a part of me that is insecure and wants to look good and be praised, God has a way, as with my father, of reminding me.

We are never too old or too far gone to relearn that it is the humble serving of God and each other that God desires. Our Christ like way of life is to never be about what others think of us but always about our relationship with God. Whatever particular package of talents and wealth is our, God asks that we use them for justice and compassion. It is in humble service, that we find the life we want and were meant to have.

Kent Keith gives the rules in such a way that Mother Teresa hung them on her wall:

• People are often unreasonable, illogical,
  and self-centered:
  forgive them anyway.
• If you are kind, people may accuse you
  of selfish, ulterior motives;
  be kind anyway.
• If you are successful, you will win some
  false friends and some true enemies;
  succeed anyway.
• If you are honest and frank,
  people may cheat you;
  be honest anyway.
• What you spend years building,
  someone could destroy overnight;
  build anyway.
• If you find serenity and happiness,
  they may be jealous;
  be happy anyway.
• The good you do today,
  people will often forget tomorrow;
  do good anyway.
• Give the world the best you have,
  and it may never be enough;
  give the world the best you’ve got anyway.
• You see, in the final analysis,
  it is between you and God;
  it was never between you and them anyway.⁶

Shalom and Amen.

1. Exodus 13:9, 17; Deuteronomy 6:8; 11:18 [↩]
2. Deuteronomy 22:12; Numbers 15:38-40 [↩]
3. Matthew 22:37-40; Mark 12:28-34; Luke 10:25-28 [↩]
4. Micah 6:6-8 [↩]
5. Editor Dave Bonner, Powell Tribune, October 30, 2001 [↩]
6. Kent Keith, fromDo It Anyway: The Handbook for Finding Personal Meaning and Deep Happiness in a Crazy World. [↩]