Matthew 23.1–12
A sermon from St Margaret’s Nedlands 1 November 2026
Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, 2 “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat, 3 so do and observe whatever they tell you, but not the works they do. For they preach, but do not practice. 4 They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger. 5 They do all their deeds to be seen by others. For they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long, 6 and they love the place of honor at feasts and the best seats in the synagogues 7 and greetings in the marketplaces and being called rabbi by others. 8 But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all brothers. 9 And call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven. 10 Neither be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Christ. 11 The greatest among you shall be your servant. 12 Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.
Today’s reading is problematic. Following the attempt to annihilate the Jewish people by a nominally Christian country, Christian scholars did some soul-searching, and asked whether some church preaching hadn’t played into Hitler’s hands. Preachers often contrasted the message of Jesus with the Pharisees in a way that depicted the Pharisees as villains. This was used in Nazi propaganda. Some modern scholars accuse the Gospels themselves of anti-Semitism. This was especially so of Matthew, the most Jewish of the Gospels., and within Matthew it is chapter 23, the passage before us today which is the main culprit. Matthew gathers a number of Jesus’ sayings where he is critical of the lawyers and Pharisees of his day. Some of them are harsh. One way out is to deny Jesus ever said these things, and attribute them to Matthew. According to this view, they don’t relate to Jesus and his opponents in their time, but to Matthew and the Jews in his day. This is a familiar scholars’ trick: attribute what you like to Jesus; what you don’t like give to the Gospel writer. I am just surprised that this chapter got past the lectionary censor. It did, and it is good that it did. We should be prepared to look at the troublesome bits of Scripture as well as what we like.
Anyway, to accuse Matthew of anti-Semitism is stupid, because he is a Jew himself, as are all the New Testament writers except Luke. So were the Hebrew prophets. Internal self-criticism is not racism. Actually, the Jews were remarkable for their severity towards themselves. Also, we can’t escape the fact that Jesus really did conflict with the Pharisees. Let’s think about who they were.
Pharisees were not priests, nor were they church leaders; they were a guild of laymen who committed themselves to studying the law of Moses and keeping it. They practised the laws of cleanliness as though they were priests in the temple, and this strictness meant they would not eat with ordinary folk who were not as scrupulous as they were. Think of them as a kind of dining club, but more serious. They were a brotherhood, who regarded their common meals as sacred. In the century before Jesus they were highly political, advocating resistance to paying taxes to the occupying Romans, but Herod cut them down to size, and in Jesus’ time they kept the peace and policed the people’s obedience to the law: if only every Israelite would keep every law for just one day, the kingdom would come. They were accepted as the true interpreters of the law, and for all his criticisms, Jesus was closest to them in his understanding of the Bible. I think the best thing with this passage is to work through it saying by saying.
The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat, so do and observe whatever they tell you, but not the works they do. For they preach, but do not practice.
This is surprising because Jesus disagreed with many of the Pharisees’ rules, but told his people to obey them anyway. The principle here is that it is not for the common person to disregard the law of the land, because he or she doesn’t agree with it. Jesus and his disciples were for the most part law-abiding citizens. Only where there was some important matter of principle involved did they conscientiously object. Jesus healed on the Sabbath—though the Pharisees held this to be illegal—because restoring God’s creation is what the Sabbath is all about. After the resurrection, when the disciples disobeyed the authorities and continued their proclamation of Jesus, they were willing to suffer the consequences. They were not subversive. If you break the law as a matter of conscience you must be willing to pay the penalty. This has always been the rule for Christians in whatever state they belong to. It is one reason they have survived. In most jurisdictions they are known as hard-working, honest, taxpaying citizens.
… do and observe whatever they tell you, but not the works they do. For they preach, but do not practice. 4 They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger.
The application here is more to law-makers than to the ordinary Christian. Modern governments have become law-making machines and the public service take their laws and multiplies regulations such as would put the Pharisees to shame. It is easy when you are part of an elite with comfortable salaries and allowances to make regulations and laws which are burdensome for those who are struggling to make a living. Some of our taxation laws are like this. We could question whether the parish assessment system is not also a clumsy instrument in the case of barely surviving churches. The principle behind Jesus’ words is that those who make laws and regulations should think first of the battlers who are not like them.
They do all their deeds to be seen by others. For they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long, 6 and they love the place of honour at feasts and the best seats in the synagogues 7 and greetings in the marketplaces and being called rabbi by others.
Here Jesus puts the finger on something that affects us all, the hunger for recognition. After our need for air, water, and food is fulfilled, there are various less physical things we crave, like affection and approval, and honour.
What we are dealing with here is a distortion of something good, and basic to human life. The child who is never shown any affection and never praised for anything it does will grow up stunted. To be acknowledged in some way, be it for our prowess in sport, our competence at work, our intellectual abilities, our charitable work, or a hundred other things, is right. Where then does the problem lie? Perhaps it is seeking honour, seeking glory, which is not quite the same thing as being recognized and honoured. The sportsman who loves to play cricket, say, and who becomes famous–there is nothing wrong there. But if he is more concerned with fame that he is in the game, you would say something is amiss. The preacher who loves the Bible and love to expound it is different to the person who wants to be a star, and finds he can become so by preaching. Some of the Pharisees courted honour and were controlled by their desire for it. This was not true of them all; many were no doubt zealous for the law first and foremost—not for the honour it brought them. I think we are all aware of the difference and recognize it instinctively. When it comes to ourselves we need to be very careful of our motives.
But to build a system which institutionalizes honour and prestige is a problem, and the church is prone to it. Dress, titles, places to sit, precedence: I’m not sure we can avoid them, especially in an ancient institution like ours with its archbishops, bishops, archdeacons, priests, prebendaries, canons and the rest, but they are definitely a trap.
Talking about honour and places to sit, I must tell a little story against myself. I was once greatly honoured by being the preacher at the funeral of Peter Kalangula. Peter was a wonderful man, a Namibian leader, at one time the President of the Turnhalle Alliance, which governed South-West Africa during the South African mandate. After Namibia’s independence he returned to his church in Ondangwa, and became the Bishop of the Church of England of Namibia. The church for his funeral was packed and there were people at all the windows. They took me to my seat on the stage, which was also crowded. Sometime during the service someone came and whispered to me to move. I didn’t think anything of it, and never thought of it again until we were flying back to Cape Town; “Brian,” I said, “why did they move me in the middle of the service?” He looked at me, surprised. “Didn’t you see?” he said. “The king arrived and they had to give him your seat.” “Always take the lower seat, lest someone more important than you arrives,” Jesus said.[1]
But why was Jesus so down on something as natural as our love of recognition? Perhaps because it easily blinds us to the reality of who and what we are. The truth is, before God we are nothings until he makes us something, guilty and condemned, needing his mercy above all things. How easily we forget this and imagine we are something great. Titles too are a great temptation.
But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all brothers. 9And call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven. 10Neither be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Christ.
The proper way to deal with this is not to use it as a stick to beat modern Jews, but to recognize how easily religion can become a cloak to disguise hatred, greed, and self-glorification. The New-Atheists seize hold of the many failings of “the Church,” and declare all religion evil; the world would be better off without it, they say. This is as silly as saying politics should be done away with because of evil done by politicians, or the internet because of its use in child-exploitation, or sport because of the failures of some sportsmen. The problem is not in any one area of society but in mankind itself; the only way to eradicate it would be to do away with the human race.
The Royal Commission into child abuse drew everyone’s attention to some of the real evils that have taken place under the cloak of the Christian religion. The Reformation of the sixteenth century in England and Europe was brought about in part by the need to clean up moral abuses in the Church. It wasn’t many years before they reappeared even in the Church of England. Clergy with a secure position and salary sometimes had little time for their spiritual duties. Drinking, gaming, hunting, and womanizing were common complaints. Jesus’ words had obvious relevance. The revivals of Wesley and Whitefield brought about a big clean-up. Today, with much better salaries to be had elsewhere, and not the social prestige the church once had, ministry is not an attractive prospect for someone seeking personal glory. But the temptation is always there, and once you belong to the sub-culture, the desire for precedence for its own sake is great.
Perhaps we can say honour must be given not sought. This seems obvious when you say it. But the truth is we are all hungry for recognition, and the temptation to seek a kind of false honour is great. “For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever and ever,” is the way we end the Lord’s prayer. Ultimately God will decide who is honoured and who not.
The church of the first two hundred years was hardly troubled by these thjings. They were more like today’s underground churches: functional and without ostentation. This changed in AD 380 when the Roman Emperor Theodosius I made Nicaean Christianity the official faith of the empire. Suddenly Christian ministers became state authorities and all the pageantry of the empire passed to the Church. This meant that for those seeking personal advancement, the Church was the place to be, and what dogged the Judaism of Jesus’ time now plagued the Church. A lot of it was stripped away at the time of the Reformation, but has crept back. We need to listen carefully to Jesus and be on guard.
Neither be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Christ.
I have a title, so what Jesus says is very relevant to me! “Instructor”: the word is kathegetes–catechist—it means a teacher, magister (or master) in Latin, and was a title of honour. I think the closest equivalent today would be “Doctor,” the title they award you when you complete a PhD. I have one, so am entitled to call myself Dr. What should I do with Jesus’ words?
It would be a waste of time to try to do away with titles that are firmly embedded in the culture, but if the title means more than the opportunity I had to study when I did, and the opportunities it affords me now, I would be in trouble. If I flaunted it, or saw myself above others because of it, Jesus’ words would condemn me.
Why? Because the truth is that we are all the lowest of the low, who are saved only by God’s grace, and given the incredible status of children of the creator God.
Jesus is explicit: “Call no man Father.” The title “Pope” means “Father,” and again, it is hard to see how a long-standing name can be dislodged. “The Holy Father,” though seems to go way too far. Jesus says we have one Father in heaven. The Pope should disavow such a title. I will call him the Pope, but I will not call him “Father,” and as for “the Holy Father,” I regard it as a blasphemy. I struggle to call any person “Father,” and I fear to seek such a title would be to fall into the trap Jesus warns us against.
Considering all this as a whole, the lesson I think, is that we should not regard any Christian minister as a guru. That is a term from Hinduism for the person you choose as your guide in the spiritual life. No one can be your exclusive guide in the Christian life, first because we are all brothers, second because we all have the Holy Spirit, and third because we are all sinners. One person’s teaching may be very helpful to you in one area of your life, another’s example may inspire you, but there is no one who always gets it right, and if you hitch yourself to any one person as your guide, you set yourself up for a fall. If they seek a position in order to be above others, they too are riding for a fall. We need to learn Jesus’ words by heart.
Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.
[1] Luke 14.7–11.