A Chilling Reading

I didn’t get a chance to get this week’s weekly email to you this morning because I was traveling, but I figure it’s better late than never…so here’s a quick thought – a very quick thought – on today’s bible reading.

If you consider yourself a religious person,

today’s bible reading is truly chilling.

Chilling.

If you haven’t read Matthew 23 yet, go ahead and take a few minutes to read it. I’ll wait.  

In it, Jesus really lays into the religious leaders of the day – for their gross and destructive hypocrisy. At the core of Jesus’ harsh words is the idea of the outside being beautiful, but the inside being full of filth. They don’t practice what they preach, and their good-looking intentions are in fact twisted towards self-interest. When you read it for yourself, even if you don’t quite grasp all of the nuance of the historical context into which Jesus’ words make more sense, the point is clear:

Jesus hates religious hypocrisy because it keeps people from God….because it ruins God’s reputation.

For any of us who consider ourselves religious, and I know I do, his words ought to resonate deeply and frighteningly in us. They ought to cause us to look in the mirror, and look inside of ourselves, and ask some pretty hard questions of ourselves. Or rather,
 

let Jesus ask us some pretty hard questions. 

One of the most difficult things about a passage like this is that we often want to make it about someone else, right? About that one guy I knew once, but certainly not me. About those people in that kind of church, but certainly not about us. About those people who do x, y and z and have the bumper stickers and the signs and the t-shirts – but not about me.

And all of that might be true about them. But this passage is not about them.
 

It’s about you and I.

Jesus means to – and does – address you and I in this passage first, or else we haven’t heard it as God’s Word to us. And it is.

So – let Jesus address you in it.
 

Where is your – our – religious hypocrisy, and how can we follow Jesus by ridding ourselves of it?

See you on Sunday for another – hopefully beautiful – gazebo service! I’m excited…keep inviting and bringing along new folks, it’s been great to welcome them!