Matthew 23:23-24 Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill, and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. It is these you ought to have practiced without neglecting the others. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel!
It is almost tempting to feel sorry for the scribes and Pharisees. We hear Jesus reminding us to focus on what matters, not on the small things that distract us. It’s as if when giving a dinner, we worry about place cards and lemon forks, not on the fact that we might not have enough food.
The scribes and Pharisees are so obsessed with the minutiae of the law that they fail to consider the weightier matters. Jesus is not telling them to ignore the law but, rather, to use their positions of authority to encourage that which can’t be quantified—justice and mercy and faith. Without a new understanding of faithfulness—of the mandate in Micah to “do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God”—they can’t focus on what matters, and neither can we.
MOVING FORWARD: How can those of us who are used to keeping score accept and respond to today’s challenge from Jesus?
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