13 ‘But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you lock people out of the kingdom of heaven. For you do not go in yourselves, and when others are going in, you stop them.^*15Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you cross sea and land to make a single convert, and you make the new convert twice as much a child of hell^* as yourselves.

16 ‘Woe to you, blind guides, who say, “Whoever swears by the sanctuary is bound by nothing, but whoever swears by the gold of the sanctuary is bound by the oath.”¹⁷You blind fools! For which is greater, the gold or the sanctuary that has made the gold sacred?¹⁸And you say, “Whoever swears by the altar is bound by nothing, but whoever swears by the gift that is on the altar is bound by the oath.”¹⁹How blind you are! For which is greater, the gift or the altar that makes the gift sacred?²⁰So whoever swears by the altar, swears by it and by everything on it;²¹and whoever swears by the sanctuary, swears by it and by the one who dwells in it;²²and whoever swears by heaven, swears by the throne of God and by the one who is seated upon it.

23 ‘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 practised without neglecting the others.²⁴You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel!

This is unusual for me-a Sunday blog! I’m preaching later this morning but I’ve an hour to spare, on a cold, clear, late autumn day in Dundee. The passages in the Gospels in which Jesus denounces the pharisees at length are not out tune with the narrative which identifies this group as opponents of Jesus and agents of his arrest. The historical problem is that the Pharisees were a reform group within Judaism, at least some of whom might have been sympathetic to Jesus. It was largely their wisdom and determination which guided Judaism in the terrible years after the destruction of the Temple in AD 70 and especially in the diaspora which followed the defeat of the rebellion of AD 135. They were the inventors of the synagogue which served Judaism so well throughout the world for more than 2000 years. The key to understanding the gospel witness is the fact that by the time they were written, the Jews who believed Jesus to be the Messiah were being expelled from synagogues as unorthodox, at the instigation of Pharisees. This almost certainly meant that the historical controversies between Jesus and the Pharisees were amplified, or at least made more prominent, reflecting the contemporary antagonism.

Nevertheless the reader has to take seriously the evidence that the main opposition to Jesus came from the most committed of religious groups in his society. The words in which Jesus criticises them paint an unforgettable portrait of a certain kind of religious culture which by attempting a superior all-inclusive righteousness based on a literal obedience to scripture, has created a practice in which all biblical injunctions are of equal importance. That may seem very strict and honourable, but it easily leads, as Jesus hints, to a fussy obedience to minor commands and a neglect of the most basic ones of justice, mercy and faith.

 I heard a Sudanese Bishop this morning on the Radio saying that African Anglicans could never make fellowship with UK Anglicans who accepted same-sex partnerships as valid. His basis for this was the Bible. But even if one takes a strict view of biblical authority, surely the scattered references to homosexuality (if that’s what they are) should not be considered as important as the commands regarding justice, mercy and faith? The radicalism of Jesus’ distinction amongst commands is evident: he expected human beings to judge between the less and the more important and to act accordingly.

Jesus was not pleading for greater permissiveness, however, but for a true strictness, in which the will of God to rescue his children from evil and death, and to guide them into goodness and life, would be faithfully represented.