Clear Words ...

Monday, April 4, 2011. I looked through the Gospel of Matthew this morning and got into Matthew 23. Here, Jesus is talking to the religious leaders of his time. Wow, these words are quite heavy. He is confronting these people with severe statements about their behaviour! Shall we have a look into the original verses?

Be careful …

Jesus says: “13 A terrible future awaits you, you experts in Jewish writings and Pharisees, you hypocrites, because you make it hard for people to come into God’s kingdom. You do not enter it yourselves and you prevent other people from entering.

14 A terrible future awaits you, you experts in Jewish writings and Pharisees, you hypocrites, because you steal the homes of poor widows and then pretend to be holy by praying for a long time. You will receive a severe punishment.

15 A terrible future awaits you, you experts in Jewish writings and Pharisees, you hypocrites, because you make long journeys over land and sea to convert one person to follow your ways, and he then becomes twice as deserving of going to hell as you are.”

Jesus strongly speaks agains hypocracy. He speaks against a wrong understanding of religion. He speaks agains a system where some experts in religion keep others away from God by practicing their own rules and teaching their own doctrines.

A way to go …

Instead of hypocracy Jesus wants people to be full of truth, love, care. He wants people to be linked to God, to know his goodness. He wants them to be humble, because God is humble. God is wonderful.

It is true: we, who believe, are not what God is. We are just not as truthful, as loving, as careful, as he is. We are not. Even if we try, we stay far behind. We might pretend to be loving - and a moment later we show our true interior, we are furious or lack patience. We fail - that is the truth about us.

So as a first step of a way to go, a first step of repentence from these ways of the Pharesees, we have to see that we need truth about us, about our shortcomings and failures with respect to the wonderful ways of God. How could we invite someone, if we pretend that our little love is God's love. It is not, his love is so much deeper and greater! It is as if we would compare a little grain of sand with the Cathedral in Cologne. We need the truth, and in truth we need faith … ... more texts