January 22

January 22, Annual Church Meeting and Potluck Dinner, Ecumenical Sunday

Lesson: Matthew 23.13-36

Sermon Title: Avoiding the “Woes.”

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INTRODUCTION:

Knitting Chinese[1]

Many years ago my wife was to knitting what Tiger Woods is to golf. She designed exotic patterns with ease.

(This is not about my wife. I do not know whose spouse this wife is married to.)

There was an occasion when we had lunch in a real Chinese restaurant (only one person spoke partial English, all menus were in Chinese). When she saw the hand-written menu she was so impressed with the calligraphy she tucked the menu in her purse.

Some months later I saw the result, a stunning white sweater with the Chinese symbols hand-stitched down the front.

She received compliments galore until one cocktail party when we met a distinguished Chinese physician who asked my wife where she got the symbols. He then wanted to know if she knew what they meant.

“I’m afraid to ask,” she said, “but tell me anyway.”

Even she had to laugh when he told her they read, “This is a cheap dish—but good.”

I. This is a cheap dish and it is of little good.

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MAIN BODY:

I. Today we are having our annual meeting.

A. We will listen to or read reports.

B. We will examine our financial picture.

1. We did pretty well.

2. We finished the year with -$365.62

C. Annual meetings are also time for evaluation.

1. It is a little like getting your report card for a quarter or a semester.

2. The report card is the evaluation of the teacher of your work.

3. You are also graded against all the other members of the class.

4. You may approach the day with joy or foreboding.

5. It depends the amount of time and study that you invested in your work.

D. I realize evaluation goes on all the time, but more specifically, it occurs when we gather together to comprehend issues, vote on motions, and pass budgets.

1. How did we do in 2005?

2. What does God think about what we did?

3. If Jesus were to conduct an evaluation, how would we fare?

E. This is what happened to the scribes and Pharisees.

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II. In this case the teacher is Jesus.

A. We remember what we read and talked about last week.

B. Jesus said about the scribes and Pharisees in Matthew 23:6-10 (NRSV):

⁶They love to have the place of honor at banquets and the best seats in the synagogues, ⁷and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have people call them rabbi. ⁸But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all students. ⁹And call no one your father on earth, for you have one Father—the one in heaven. ¹⁰Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Messiah.

C. Jesus is the teacher, the instructor.

D. He is handing out grades.

E. How do the scribes and Pharisees fare?

1. Well, listen to his evaluation of the scribes and Pharisees

2. There are eight categories that he evaluates and upon which he gives a grade.

F. We simply paraphrase each of the woes or as the New English Bible puts it, Alas, Alas.

1. These seven statements, or eight if you include verse 14 which is not in Matthew but which is in Mark

2. Jesus thoughts about the religious leaders must have been spoken with a mixed tone of judgment and sorrow.

3. They were strong and unforgettable.

G. The eight are:

1. Matthew 23:13: Not letting others enter the kingdom of heaven and not entering themselves

A man wanted to become a member of a particular congregation.

He approached the minister and asked about membership.

He was a humble person and not well-dressed, well-educated, nor economically well-endowed.

The congregation did not want him.

The pastor told the man that he ought to go home and seriously consider his desire.

Perhaps he ought to pray about it.

The man prayed about it and went to see the pastor.

The man said, I told God want I wanted to and asked him for advice.

God laughed and wished me well. He said “I have been trying for years to get into that congregation.”

a. Here they are charged with shutting heaven against men.

b. In Luke 11:52 they are charged with what was worse, taking away the key—"the key of knowledge"—which means, not the key to open knowledge, but knowledge as the only key to open heaven.

c. A right knowledge of God's revealed word is eternal life, as our Lord says (John 17:3; John 5:39); but this they took away from the people, substituting for it their wretched traditions.

2. Matthew 23:14: Persuading wealthy widows to donate their property to the temple so that it could be used for themselves leaving the widows unprotected from poverty and shame.

3. Matthew 23:15: Converting people away from God to be like themselves.

a. They traveled far and wide to make new converts.

b. The converts were twice as much a child of hell as they were.

A drunk stopped D. L. Moody on a street one night.

He told the famous evangelist, "I am one of your converts."

Moody is said to have replied, "You must be one of mine. You are certainly not one of God's."

c. The new converts were worse hypocrites than their masters.

4. Matthew 23:16-22: Blindly leading God’s people to follow humanly-made traditions instead of God’s Word

a. They made distinctions in which object of the temple one could use to swear an oath.

An email from a person who was upset because the court did not require the “so help you God” at the end of the witnesses oath.

I attempted to suggest that this was alright. Jesus admonished not to swear at all.

³³“Again, you have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but carry out the vows you have made to the Lord.’ ³⁴But I say to you, Do not swear at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, ³⁵or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. ³⁶And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. ³⁷Let your word be ‘Yes, Yes’ or ‘No, No’; anything more than this comes from the evil one, (Matthew 5:33-37, NRSV).

The individual took exception to this attempt.

It appears that this was taking God out of the courtroom.

b. But what does Jesus say in the woe that he announces concerning the scribes and Pharisees?

(1) He desires honesty.

(2) He teaches the need for candor.

5. Matthew 23:23-24: Involving themselves in every last detail and ignoring what is really important: justice, mercy, and faith

a. They meticulously tithed the smallest of seeds.

b. They did not uphold the principles of justice, mercy, and faith.

6. Matthew 23:25-26: Keeping up appearances while their private world was corrupt.

a. The outside was ceremonial clean.

b. The inside was full of greed and self-indulgence.

7. Matthew 23:27-28: Acting spiritual to cover up sin.

a. They are like whitewashed tombs.

b. Pretty on the outside, nothing on the inside.

Whitewashed Tombs[2]

The Queen Mary was the largest ship to cross the oceans when it was launched in 1936. Through four decades and a World War she served until she was retired, anchored as a floating hotel and museum in Long Beach, California.

During the conversion, her three massive smoke-stacks were taken off to be scraped down and repainted. But on the dock they crumbled. Nothing was left of the ¾-inch steel plate from which the stacks had been formed. All that remained were more than thirty coats of paint that had been applied over the years. The steel had rusted away.

When Jesus called the Pharisees "whitewashed tombs," he meant they had no substance, only an exterior appearance.

8. Matthew 23:29-36: Pretending to have learned from past history, but present behavior shows they have learned nothing.

a. ²⁹“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you build the tombs of the prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous, ³⁰and 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.’ ³¹Thus you testify against yourselves that you are descendants of those who murdered the prophets.

b. I read a fascinating book some years ago by G. Lloyd Rediger, titles “Clergy Killers.”

c. He was writing about people in congregations who are “clergy killers.”

d. Congregations do not kill pastors, but congregations may contain clergy-killers none-the-less.

e. They do not physically kill.

(1) They kill through the destruction of influence or reputation.

(2) They kill by refusing to budge from their positions and criticizing anyone who does.

f. It would be better to engage in conflict resolution than to seek to destroy a person to get him or her removed from positions of leadership.

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III. This section concludes with the words of Jesus that all that could be done, has been done.

³²Fill up, then, the measure of your ancestors. ³³You snakes, you brood of vipers! How can you escape being sentenced to hell (Gehenna)?

³⁴Therefore 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, ³⁵so 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. ³⁶Truly I tell you, all this will come upon this generation.

³²Fill up, then, the measure of your ancestors. ³³You snakes, you brood of vipers! How can you escape being sentenced to hell (Gehenna)?

A. Jesus provides a way of escape.

B. They have ignored it.

C. They are already plotting his death.

D. They will maintain control t the bitter end.

E. But it will end.

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CONCLUSION

B. Do we have some hints that will help us to avoid the woes in our congregation?

A. Roger Merrill, in the best-selling book First Things First, tells the story of a business consultant friend who was moving into his new home.[3]

This friend had a doctorate in horticulture and she was extremely bright and knowledgeable.

"Fred had a great vision for the grounds, but because he was very busy and traveled a lot, he kept emphasizing to [his friend] the need to create his garden in a way that would require little or no maintenance on his part."

He said automatic sprinklers were an absolute necessity; he was always on the lookout for labor-saving devices and any other ways of cutting time.

Finally, his friend said, "Fred, I can see what you're saying. But there's one thing you need to deal with before we go any further. If there's no gardener, there's no garden!"

[1]Retrieved from: You Make Me Laugh [You_Make_Me_Laugh@crosswalkmail.com]

[2]Robert Wenz, Clifton Park, New York. Leadership, Vol. 4, no. 4.

[3]Steven R. Covey, A. Roger Merrill, and Rebecca R. Merrill, First Things First: To Live. To Learn, to Leave a Legacy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994), 77.