“Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better…”
a sermon by Rev. Rebecca Segers 

Psalm 107:1-9
Matthew 23:1-12 

This is such an exciting week in our calendar – in our secular calendar for people who enjoy Halloween and all the parties and costumes and fun that implies, in our Christian calendar as we remember the day after Halloween, All Saints’ Day, which reminds us of all those who have gone before us, personally known and unknown, and in our Presbyterian Church calendar as we recognize Reformation Sunday and the history of our own denomination.  Combine all of that with the scripture lessons that we’ve read for the day and there is just so much for us to cover in the time that we have together, I hardly know where to begin.

When in doubt, though, I like to start with the Bible.  After all, our Psalm for the day reminds us that the Lord is always there for us – when we are in trouble, when we are hungry or thirsty literally or metaphorically – the Lord is with us to guide us, to satisfy our longings and to redeem us.  So let’s take a deep breath and remember this, first and foremost, we are here to worship and praise the Lord and to rest in God’s goodness, knowing that our needs are satisfied and our longings fulfilled when we are truly abiding in the One who made us.

Now that we have taken that breath and feel that space within us filled with the Holy Spirit, let’s take a look at the other scripture lesson we’ve been given today – that of Jesus and his concerns about the leadership in his Jewish community.  If you remember, last week we talked about the fact that we are at the end of Jesus’ ministry.  This is his last time inside the temple preaching.  He talking to his disciples and the crowds, warning them about how they are to behave.

He begins this speech seemingly by attacking the scribes and the Pharisees.  Let’s take a minute and identify the “scribes” and “Pharisees”.  These are distinct and sometimes overlapping categories.  “Scribes” were a professional class of men who had formal training in religious law, somewhat like contemporary American society’s lawyers, only trained in Judaic law.  There were essentially two forms of government in Israel at the time, co-existing side by side.  There was the Roman government, the government of the occupying, conquering nation to which all the citizens of the country were subjected by virtue of the Roman rule.  Then there was the indigenous government of the Hebrew people, set forth in the law of Moses and overseen by the Sanhedrin.  The scribes of the day were essentially the lawyers for this particular element of society although they had no standing in the Roman courts.  They were schooled in the Mosaic law and its tradition, and ruled on its application to current local political, social and religious issues.

Pharisees, on the other hand, were a group of devotees within Judaism, comprised mostly of laypersons without formal theological education but with great commitment to following the law as they understood it.  Their behavior was delineated by strict religious rules and they could be quite particular about how they defined appropriate behavior.  They would be somewhat similar to elders in the Presbyterian Church today – valued leaders of the community attempting to follow God’s call to the best of their respective abilities – but who were especially meticulous about the rules.  As far as how these two groups intersected: well, some scribes were Pharisees, but few Pharisees were scribes.

Jesus opens this section of scripture by telling the crowd that the scribes and the Pharisees occupy “Moses’ seat”.  This is a colloquial expression that gives credence to their teaching and administrative authority.  Basically, Jesus is saying that these leaders, the scribes and the Pharisees, have the authority of Moses, they sit in his seat, in his spot, his place of authority and influence, and that he agrees with their teachings.  What he finds fault with is their actions.

Jesus’ critique of the scribes and Pharisees is three-pronged.  First of all, he tells the crowd to do what these leaders tell them to do, because their teaching is sound.  But he adds to that guidance that they are not to do as they do, however, because they do not practice what they preach.  Instead, he tells them, they burden others but are unwilling to bear the burdens themselves.  This is his second point.  They will give you rule after rule after rule to follow, but are unwilling to follow the rules themselves – with one exception and this is the third prong of Jesus’ appraisal: any actions they do undertake, they do for show and not for the love of God.

Jesus tells the people that the scribes and Pharisees make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long.  These were outward garments worn to show their piety.  Phylacteries are known today as tefillin; you may have seen them worn by rabbis in films or if you’ve visited a local synagogue.  Our children saw leader Janet Frohlich wear them this summer during Vacation Bible School as she played a rabbi as part of their education of what it was like during Jesus’ time.  Phylacteries or tefillin are the small leather boxes containing portions of the Torah that are strapped to the forehead and the upper arm during the recitation of prayers.  Also, the men of the times wore prayer shawls, which were really more like the stole that I am wearing right now and were fringed with tassels at the bottom.  How many of you have seen Fiddler on the Roof?  Do you remember the scarf that Tevye and all the men of the village wore under their vests?  They hung down and had fringe along the edges.  Now Jewish women may wear them, too, especially those women in rabbinical leadership positions in the conservative, reformed or reconstruction traditions.  These are the garments that Jesus is speaking of in our scripture lesson.  He’s saying that the scribes and the Pharisees that he observes wear large tefillin and make the fringes on their prayer shawls long so that everyone will know who they are and give them deference owed their station.

He goes on to say “(t)hey love to have the place of honor at banquets and the best seats in the synagogues” – that is, the seats that were at the front and facing out toward the congregation so that all might know their importance.  They love “to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces and to have people call them rabbi,” Jesus adds.

These hypocritical examples seem pretty straightforward to us.  We can easily see these charlatans in our minds’ eyes, parading about as though they are “all that” and treating others as less than.  But before we get too high and mighty on our own thrones of righteousness, let’s take a deeper look at our own hearts.  For how many of us don’t like to be acknowledged when we get it right?  How many of us don’t want to be recognized for our positive acts and seen for the good people that we try so hard to be?  After all, perhaps Jesus is not accusing the scribes and the Pharisees of hypocrisy as much as he is accusing them of humanity – or of letting their competitive human nature get the best of them.

The whole aspect of this story reminds me of a song from the musical Annie Get Your Gun:

Wasn’t that awesome?  And a little bit silly?  The story of Annie Get Your Gun is about Annie Oakley’s rise to fame in the late 1800s and that song in particular is about the competition between she and her soon-to-be husband, Frank Butler, who was also a sharp-shooter of the times.  The musical plays up their competitive rivalry and indeed, the two did meet through a sharp-shooting contest held in 1876 or 77.

Another example: Julia Cameron speaks in her book, The Artist’s Way, about a film-department chair in a respected university, who was a gifted filmmaker himself, but who also, after some initial productions, was unable or unwilling to expose himself to the rigors and disappointments of creating.  As a result, he channeled his ferocious creative urges into the lives of his students, sometimes over-controlling and sometimes undercutting their best work, trying desperately to vicariously fulfill his own creative urges through a position on the sidelines.

It is our cultural and perhaps natural biological instinct to assert ourselves, our own superiority, in any place where it is true and in some places where perhaps it is not.  When someone comes along to threaten that authority, it’s also in our nature to get into all types of set-tos or rhubarbs in order to prove that we are the ones who are dominant, who are in control.  It was no different in Jesus’ time than it is in our own, and as much as we would like to sit in judgment about the scribes and Pharisees, the fact of the matter is, we are the scribes and Pharisees of today.  We are the ones sitting in church on Sunday looking out at judgment in the world in which we live.  Not that the world doesn’t need a great deal of help.  But help is what it needs, not judgment.  Rather than sitting in self-righteous importance, we need to be out on the “battle lines” creating a better, safer, more blessed world to live in.

But it feels good to be important!  Everything in our being wants to be important because we believe that in being important we will loved, admired, valuable.  What we fail to remember is the final message that Jesus leads us to today:  leadership in the Christian community is to be servant leadership. It is not about titles or authority, but instead about true service to God.  Jesus also helps us along with this by telling us that we are not to be called rabbi, which was and is the formal title for teacher in Judaism, but instead we are all students – or the more accurate translation of the Greek adelphoi is “brothers and sisters”.  We are not to call anyone on earth “father”, for we only have one Father and that is the Father in heaven.  Jesus is not telling us here that we don’t have birth fathers, but instead is referring to a practice that was beginning in Judaism to give rabbis or instructors the honorific “father” just as the Roman Catholic Church and some in the Episcopal or Anglican church do.  Jesus was telling the people that no one is to be given that authority, but God.  He finishes up by telling the people that they are not to be instructors, because they already have an instructor, the instructor, Christ, the Messiah, himself.  He ends telling them that the greatest among them will be their servants.  That all who exalt themselves will be humbled and those who humble themselves will be exalted.

Now I may be working my way out of a job here, but the point is that we are all equal participants in God’s kingdom.  God’s kingdom after our death and the in-breaking of God’s kingdom on earth today when we are truly doing what we’re supposed to be doing here.  This is why this is such a great scripture lesson for today – for the day that we remember the saints who have gone before us.  As I think about the short time that I have been here at the Presbyterian Church of Sweet Hollow, I have already been blessed to know a few of those saints who’ve gone before.  In this past year, both Isabelle Vetter and Doris Opitz have departed to be part of the great cloud of Christian witnesses who watch over and whose example helps to guide us on our way.  I think about Isabelle and the years of service that she gave quietly teaching adults to read in our very own Parlor.  And Doris and her crazy hats – you know she’d be wearing something wacky in honor of Halloween were she here with us in earthly form today.  Her humility and willingness to enjoy the holidays – any holiday – will be a memory I will always treasure.  These two women and many, many, many other men and women who’ve gone on before here at Sweet Hollow and in Christian churches around the world live in our memories as examples of the type of servant leadership that Jesus is talking about.

The final piece of our week that I haven’t spoken about is that this is also Reformation Sunday – the day that we remember our heritage as Presbyterians, as Protestants, protest-ants who looked at what was going on in the church of their times and said, “no!”  Starting in 1517 when Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg and continuing through the centuries up until today, the Presbyterian Church (USA) tries to be a church who regards itself as “reformed and always re-forming.”  We want to be a church that speaks in the language of the people, so all might understand.  We want to be a church that allows its priests to marry.  We want to be the church who allows people of all colors and ethnicities into full membership.  We want to be the church that allows women to be ordained as leaders – first as deacons 100 years ago, elders 75 years ago, and ministers of Word and Sacrament 50 years ago.  In coincidental synchronicity, this past week, the Rev. Pat Mitchell, the first woman to be ordained in the Presbytery of Long Island in 1974, passed on to be a part of that great cloud of witnesses in the church.  We can celebrate her life and death in the grand tradition of both All Saints’ Day and Reformation Sunday this week.  Our church has struggled to reform with the times and with issues of justice and equality from Luther’s time up until today.  As most of you know, the issue of gay and lesbian ordination is currently the hot-button issue of social justice for the PC(USA).  This past month saw the end of four years of study by the Peace, Unity and Purity Task Force.  I have a copy of their report and would be happy to share that with any and all of you who are interested.  As a church that is reformed and always reforming, it is important that we don’t steep ourselves in the past to the degree that we miss the present.

Going back to Jesus and his teaching for today, we must remember that we are not to exalt ourselves over others, but instead to remember to be servants to all.  That we are not to look at anyone as above us, as “Rabbi” or “Master” or “Father”, but look to Jesus and his teachings and his example in our lives.  As we conflate the fun of Halloween, the memories of All Saints’ Day and the forward motion of Reformation Sunday into our weeks, let us infuse it all with Jesus’ call to be humble.

I close today with a story from ancient monastic literature:  Once upon a time, a teacher traveled a very long way to a faraway monastery.  The trip was fraught with difficulty and danger, but the teacher ran the gamut of them all, willing to undergo all sorts of threat and peril in order to meet the old monastic there who had a reputation for asking very piercing spiritual questions.

Upon arriving, the teacher went directly to the monk and said, “Holy One, give me a question that will renew my soul.”

“Ah, yes, then,” the monastic answered, “your question is: What do they need?”

The teacher went away and wrestled with the question for days.  Finally, depressed and disgusted, the teacher gave up and went back to the old monastic.

Upon being received into the old monk’s company again, the teacher began: “Holy One, I came here because I’m tired and depressed and dry.  I didn’t come here to talk about my ministry. I came here to talk about my spiritual life.  Please give me another question.”

“Ah, well, of course.  Now I see,” the monastic replied, “in that case, the right question for you is, ‘What do they really need?’”

This story calls us to true discipleship.  This story’s foundation is the scripture lesson we heard read today.  Do you see?  Do you understand?  The ultimate objective in our lives is not to look at others and think, “Anything you can do, I can do better,” but instead, to look at ourselves and think, “What is it that I can do for others?  What gifts has God given me and how am I to use them in God’s service?  What talents have I been blessed with and how am I to multiply them through use?”

This week we look at our history, our past.  Next week we move into our Stewardship season and we look at our future.  I remind you that you are our future.  You are the followers of Jesus today.  You are the ones who are called to listen to his words and act upon them.  You are the ones who claim the name and are the body of Christ today.  You are the ones that Jesus is reminding: “Whoever exalts himself will be humbled and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.”

So I send you out this week with the question: “What do they really need?”  Amen.