45 One of the experts in the law answered him, “Teacher, when you say these things, you insult us also.”
46 Jesus replied, “And you experts in the law, woe to you, because you load people down with burdens they can hardly carry, and you yourselves will not lift one finger to help them.
47 “Woe to you, because you build tombs for the prophets, and it was your ancestors who killed them. 48 So you testify that you approve of what your ancestors did; they killed the prophets, and you build their tombs. 49 Because of this, God in his wisdom said, ‘I will send them prophets and apostles, some of whom they will kill and others they will persecute.’ 50 Therefore this generation will be held responsible for the blood of all the prophets that has been shed since the beginning of the world, 51 from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah, who was killed between the altar and the sanctuary. Yes, I tell you, this generation will be held responsible for it all.
52 “Woe to you experts in the law, because you have taken away the key to knowledge. You yourselves have not entered, and you have hindered those who were entering.”
53 When Jesus went outside, the Pharisees and the teachers of the law began to oppose him fiercely and to besiege him with questions, 54waiting to catch him in something he might say.
*Deep breath* Sooo... what I'm about to say is what I categorize as the "tough stuff". I've been thinking about it for a while now, and when I saw that this particular passage was the thought for the day, I knew I had to bite the bullet and talk about it. I'll categorize myself in this, so please don't think I'm being accusatory. I'm just trying to be up front with myself and others.
I shall now stop procrastinating and go forward.
The question we must answer is: are we these "teachers of the law"? I'm sad to say that when I stop and consider it, the similarities are... horrifying. It actually makes my stomach turn to think about it. Here's why.
"You load people down with burdens they can hardly carry, and you yourselves will not lift one finger to help them." I'm afraid we've become a people of much talk and little action. Someone will mention someone without work, or who needs "benevolent help", and we'll say that they could find a job if they tried harder. We assume that they're lazy. Guilty until proven innocent. The unspoken rule is if they were more like us, they wouldn't have problem X.
These "teachers" had forgotten - or maybe never knew - what it was like to be on the other side of the line. To be the adulteress caught in her own shame or the lame man who just wanted to be healed. Maybe we forget, too. I've walked a few hard paths - days when it was all I could do to get up in the morning and stumble through. Forget being super-righteous, or even somewhat-sort-of righteous, for that matter. The goal of the day was survival. We've all had those days. For some of us, they've stretched on into months or weeks or years. And we mustn't forget how that feels when we see someone who isn't where we feel they need to be. We don't know their pain story, and we must be awfully careful not to put a load on them that they can barely carry. They might just give up the fight.
"You have taken away the key to knowledge." Possibly the scariest passage of all to me. We have the key to knowledge, and we have the capability to hold it over people's heads to the extent that both they and we lose our salvation. Read it again. Isn't that the image? Dangling those precious keys of the kingdom, and judging whether someone is "worthy" to hear it, based on their clothes/attitude/language/what have you. God forbid.
God help us all never to become "teachers of the law".
These "teachers" had forgotten - or maybe never knew - what it was like to be on the other side of the line. To be the adulteress caught in her own shame or the lame man who just wanted to be healed. Maybe we forget, too. I've walked a few hard paths - days when it was all I could do to get up in the morning and stumble through. Forget being super-righteous, or even somewhat-sort-of righteous, for that matter. The goal of the day was survival. We've all had those days. For some of us, they've stretched on into months or weeks or years. And we mustn't forget how that feels when we see someone who isn't where we feel they need to be. We don't know their pain story, and we must be awfully careful not to put a load on them that they can barely carry. They might just give up the fight.
"You have taken away the key to knowledge." Possibly the scariest passage of all to me. We have the key to knowledge, and we have the capability to hold it over people's heads to the extent that both they and we lose our salvation. Read it again. Isn't that the image? Dangling those precious keys of the kingdom, and judging whether someone is "worthy" to hear it, based on their clothes/attitude/language/what have you. God forbid.
God help us all never to become "teachers of the law".
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