READING: Gospel of Matthew 23:1-7 : Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, "The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses' seat; therefore, do whatever they teach you and follow it; but do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they teach. They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others; but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them. They do all their deeds to be seen by others; for they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long. They love to have the place of honor at banquets and the best seats in the synagogues, and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have people call them rabbi.
The Fox and the Wolf vehemently hated each other. They were not able to sit together around a table and have a coffee and a chat. The fox could not stand the wolf, and he cheated in all transactions with him. The wolf could not stand the fox, he did not receive even his hi greetings. Nonetheless they had something in common. The fox and the wolf they both loved popcorn. The fox had it always for breakfast, because it was a light meal. After breakfast he wanted to sleep with a not completely stuffed stomach. The wolf habitually went to hunt in the night, and before that he had a light meal, having usually the beloved popcorn. Seasoning on it went as wide as from salty, cheesy, barbecue type sauces to the cinnamon chocolate combinations of creams applying some vanilla, occasionally.
However they began to have a problem, and that was a predator. Some would assume that the predator was a stubborn swarm of giant mosquitoes or tarantula hordes, or Ka, the great anaconda, described by Kipling, but no. It was a grizzly bear. If somebody thinks that lion is the king of the animal world, they are almost wrong. Lions can be kings in the African savanna maybe, just because the grizzly is not there. Wherever the grizzly is present, there are no lions there, because they can not bear their shame to be subjugated to the giant bears. However the fox and the wolf were unhappy subjects of the bear king, because the grizzly came and declared that the all the corn belongs to him, moreover the popcorn is a royal food, nobody else is allowed to make it or eat it.
When the fox went to the cornfield to take some corn, the grizzly hit him with his left paw. The fox flew like a bird without wings and landed flat on his face right into a cow pocket. That is not the the breakfast what I wanted he thought. He went to wash himself to the brook and cried whole day, when nobody saw him. Then the wolf went to the cornfield to have some corn for the snack before sunset. The grizzly hit him too with his right paw. The wolf flew like a bird and landed flat on his face right into a cow pocket. That is not the evening snack I wanted, he thought. He went to wash himself to the brook and cried whole night, when nobody saw him.
Next day the fox and the wolf saw each other in the western snack bar, sitting separated and both having big black eye.
‘ What happened brother? ’ they asked each other and sat together ordering coffee and they chatted.
A miracle in its kind, but otherwise, it is also natural, like an instinct. The enemy of my enemy is assumed to be a friend, though not always, but still frequently enough.
The fox and the wolf in an other story, agreed that they will send third party envoys to the grizzly to achieve a compromise. They sent first the hare, then the mouse, then the frog. They all came back seriously wounded by the wrath of the bear. So the fox and the wolf agreed to give up the peace efforts, it was the time to go to war or the time for full subjugation or exile.
When Jesus walked in Jerusalem, there were four groups among the Jews who hated each other quite vehemently. According to the sages that multilateral hate was the direct cause of the ultimate fall of Jerusalem as a fortified city and the demolition of the Jewish temple as a fortified castle.
These identifiable major groups were the priesthood of the temple, the well-to-do class of the Pharisees, the guerilla fighters, called Zealots, who also constituted a political movement against the Roman occupation and the last group were the supporters of the Herodian dynasty. Technically, this latter group also favored the Roman rule, as the members of the Herodian family were Roman client-rulers. Normally it was impossible to reconcile these groups with each other, and reality showed that it never actually happened.
However it happened for a moment when they found a common enemy.
The Qumran Essenes, settled on the shore of the Dead Sea and were famous for their Dead Sea scrolls, were in fight with all these power-houses. Josephus Flavius, the historian, stated, that the group of the Qumran Essenes was one of the major religious-philosophy stream among the Jews, having wide support among the general population, and having organized cells from town to town. The followers of John the Baptist, who was actually the cousin of Jesus, the actual movement around them was called the Nazarenes or the Poor, was a Galilean offshoot of the Qumran, and they have serious spiritual clashes with all the powerful against them.
Qumran and the Nazarenes both stated that over Judea, any legal right to rule must come from the dynasty of King David. It means that they opposed the rule of the occupying Romans and their Herodian clients or the rule of the latter Jewish royals the Hasmoneans. They also opposed the recent Hight Priests, appointed by the Herodians and the Romans, stating that only the hereditary priesthood, the descendants of Zadoc, must be selected as High Priest. As an extra, at least the Qumranites were not really pacifists, but were preparing for a religiously principled holy war against the Roman occupation. Still they opposed the guerilla fighters because the Zealots were practically a secular movement based on military methods and brutal enforcement only, without respect of the tradition.
Finally the famous Pharisees. They were not that bad actually. They opposed the Roman occupation, they opposed the Herodian rule, they opposed the fake and greedy Hight Priests, however they were accused by the Qumranites and by the Nazarenes of Jesus, that they do practically only lip service, meanwhile, as a well-to-do and self-righteous class they were a significant part of the establishment and the Jewish self-governance under the Roman legal system, thus also they were a part of the problem. Ultimately they were considered as an opportunist class, who just spoke about the moral obligations of the tradition but they do not act upon it. The underlying tradition was inherited from Moses, and it was maintained as a cultural-religious binding and connecting mortar within the society, but they did not really take it that seriously as Moses intended his laws to be taken seriously. The society fell apart into warring factions, and actually this led to the downfall of Jerusalem.
The major principles by which the tradition of Moses fought slavery, poverty, family degradation, usury, the sale of the land, stratification by wealth, the fraction fights, and ultimately idolatry, were not anymore respected by the major players, though the Pharisees respected them only by their lips.
That is why Jesus had to tell the disciples that “For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.”
However just exactly before that in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 5, Jesus told them that “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. ” As the disciples today also we have to respect the major and ancient principles presented by Moses, like the Ten Commandments and other liberating rules against slavery, usury and idolatry, however we have to do it not like the lip-serving Pharisees, because our words and actions must be the same before GOD, by the grace of Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
