These people honor me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. The worship they offer me is worthless, for what they teach are only human rules. You even put aside the commandment of God to hold fast to human tradition.” And Jesus commented, “You have a fine way of disregarding the commandments of God in order to enforce your own traditions! For example, Moses said: Do your duty to your father and your mother, and: Whoever curses his father or his mother is to be put to death. But according to you, someone could say to his father or mother, ‘I already declared Corban (which means “offered to God”) what you could have expected from me.’ In this case, you no longer require him to do anything for his father or mother; and so you nullify the word of God through the tradition you have handed on. And
you do many other things like that.”

Reflections
THEY HONOR ME WITH THEIR LIPS BUT THEIR HEART IS FAR FROM ME
Jesus had many occasions to indict the Scribes and Pharisees for their hypocrisy. As we would say it in our time, they do not walk their talk. We are all prone to this character defect differing only in degrees. It is very easy for us to preach beautiful words and ideal conduct but when it comes to doing what we preach we often fail. Students are very sensitive and very observant about how their teachers practice or do not practice what they preach. They would say something like: He or she is so plastic. And as we know we teach more by example than by words. Lessons are caught not taught. When I was then a College Dean, I had professors in Political Science who taught about participatory democracy, freedom of expression, etc, but in their classrooms, they were “terrorists” where the students do not dare to question or to express their opinions differing from their own. In our relationship with God, it is better to refrain from words of praise, honor and glory but make best effort to really do God’s will especially in showing compassion to the poor, the weak and the needy.

© Copyright Bible Diary 2018