Oct. 13, 2022 – Luke 11:47-54
Jesus’ strongest words against Pharisaic mentality. Today the charge is hypocrisy. Now they build monuments to remember the ancient prophets, but those same prophets were killed by the ancestors of those who later built them. On the one hand, they are building the monuments as an act of atonement while they themselves have exactly the same attitudes as their ancestors. They are not listening to their own teaching.
Jesus speaks words that he identifies as “the wisdom of God”: “I will send them prophets and apostles, and some of them; they will persecute and kill.” This is not a quote from the Old Testament or any other book known to us. It could refer to God speaking through Jesus (the Word, the Wisdom of God) or present in quote form God’s decision to send prophets and apostles, even though they would be rejected.
Luke 11:47-48: Woe to you because you build tombs for the prophets. Jesus’ reasoning is clear. If the ancestors killed the prophets and the sons built the tombs, it is because the sons approved of their fathers’ crime; after all, everyone knows that the dead prophet disturbs no one.
Luke 11:49-51: To call to account the blood that has been shed since the foundation of the world. “Therefore the wisdom of God said, I will send them prophets and apostles; some will slaughter them and persecute them, so that this generation will have to answer for the blood of every prophet that has been shed since the foundation of the world, from the blood of Able to the blood of Zechariah, who perished between the altar and the Temple. Yes, I tell you, this generation lurking to catch him in something he might say.” Compared to Matthew’s Gospel, Luke usually offers a short version of Matthew’s text. But here he augments the remarks, “poured out from the creation of the world, of the blood of Abel.” Luke universalizes and includes pagans, then writes his Gospel for converted pagans.
Luke 11:52: Woe to you doctors of the law. How do they close the Kingdom? They believe they have a monopoly of knowledge about God and God’s Law and impose on others in their own way, leaving no room for a different idea. They present God as a strict judge and in the name of God impose laws and regulations that have nothing to do with God’s commandments, falsifying the image of the Kingdom and killing in others the desire to serve God and the Kingdom. A community that organizes itself around this false god “does not enter the Kingdom,” nor is it an expression of the Kingdom, and prevents its members from entering the Kingdom.
Lk 11:53-54: The reaction of the religious authority against Jesus was immediate. Since they considered themselves the only true interpreters of God’s Law, they tried to provoke Jesus on matters of Bible interpretation so that they could surprise him in something he would say. Thus the opposition against Jesus and the desire to eliminate him continues to grow in Lk 6:11; 11:53-54; 19:48; 20:19-20; 22:2.
Life messages
Before God we all need to acknowledge our status as “children,” as people at the beginning of a journey.
We stand before God acknowledging how little we know, for it always happens that his ways are not ways and his thoughts are not our thoughts, and his wisdom is never the wisdom of this age.
How easily I maintain my hypocrisy: pretending to KNOW EVERYTHING and continually perpetuating gossip, and worse, imagining I am NORMAL!