Sermon on Matthew 23:27–32
“You are like whitewashed tombs.
Dear brothers and sisters,
The words of Jesus in today’s Gospel are among the strongest words we hear from his lips
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which appear beautiful on the outside, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and every kind of filth.”
At first hearing, these words may seem unusually harsh. We are accustomed to seeing Jesus as gentle and merciful. He welcomes sinners, touches lepers, forgives the adulterous woman, eats with tax collectors, and searches for those who are lost. Why, then, does he speak so severely here?
Precisely because he loves.
There are moments when love must comfort, but there are also moments when love must tell the truth. A doctor who discovers a serious illness does not help the patient by pretending that everything is fine. Jesus sees a spiritual sickness in the religious leaders of his time, and he names it: hypocrisy.
1. The whitewashed tomb
The image Jesus uses was immediately understandable to his listeners. Tombs could be whitewashed so that people would recognize and avoid them. From a distance they could look clean, bright, even beautiful. But their appearance did not change what was inside.
Jesus uses this image to describe a dangerous contradiction: a beautiful exterior and a corrupted interior
And here we should be careful. It would be easy to listen to this Gospel and think: “Yes, Jesus is talking about the Pharisees. They were hypocrites.”
But the Gospel was not preserved merely so that we could judge people who lived two thousand years ago. Jesus’ words are addressed to us as well.
There can be a little Pharisee hidden in every human heart.
We can appear patient while being full of anger. We can speak about forgiveness while secretly nourishing resentment. We can appear generous while wanting admiration. We can pray publicly while neglecting our personal relationship with God. We can know the commandments very well and nevertheless fail to love the person standing beside us.
There is always the danger of becoming more concerned about appearing good than actually becoming good.
2. God sees what others cannot see
People usually see the exterior. They see our face, clothing, behavior, achievements, words and reputation.
God sees deeper.
He sees what happens when nobody is watching. He sees our motives. He sees the thoughts we would never say aloud. He sees our secret struggles, but also our hidden acts of goodness. He knows whether our prayer comes from the heart or merely from our lips.
This can sound frightening, but it is actually good news.
We do not need to pretend before God.
When we come before him, we can say:
“Lord, this is who I am. Here is my faith, but also my doubt. Here is my love, but also my selfishness. Here are my good intentions, but also my failures. Here are the wounds I show to others, and here are those that nobody knows about.”
God does not ask us to come to him already perfect. He asks us to come truthfully.
The greatest obstacle to God’s grace is not necessarily weakness. Often it is the refusal to admit our weakness.
Peter denied Jesus three times, yet became the rock of the Church. Paul persecuted Christians, yet became an apostle. Augustine lived far from God, yet became a great saint.
Their past did not prevent holiness because they allowed God to change them.
3. “We would not have joined them”
Jesus then points to another form of hypocrisy. The scribes and Pharisees built tombs for the prophets and said:
If we had lived in the days of our ancestors, we would not have joined them in shedding the prophets’ blood.”
How easy it is to condemn the sins of previous generations!
We say: “If I had been there, I would never have done that.”
