3rd Thursday of Lent (March 27). WOE TO YOU

Prepare to Listen.  O God, you are my God, I seek you, my soul thirsts for you.
 
Prayerfully Read Luke 11:45-52
45One of the lawyers answered him, ‘Teacher, when you say these things, you insult us too.’  46And he said, ‘Woe also to you lawyers!  For you load people with burdens hard to bear, and you yourselves do not lift a finger to ease them.  47Woe to you!  For you build the tombs of the prophets whom your ancestors killed.  48So you are witnesses and approve of the deeds of your ancestors; for they killed them, and you build their tombs.  49Therefore also the Wisdom of God said, “I will send them prophets and apostles, some of whom they will kill and persecute”, 50so that this generation may be charged with the blood of all the prophets shed since the foundation of the world, 51from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah, who perished between the altar and the sanctuary.  Yes, I tell you, it will be charged against this generation.  52Woe to you lawyers!  For you have taken away the key of knowledge; you did not enter yourselves, and you hindered those who were entering.’
 
Prayerfully Wonder and Reflect
Jesus was an invited guest in the home of a Pharisee who silently criticized him for not practicing Jewish customs.  Jesus responded with a rebuke that included the Pharisee’s guests.  How might you feel and think if Jesus’ rebuked your dinner guests?
 
A lawyer (scribe) was insulted when Jesus’ rebuked the Pharisees (vv. 37ff.).  He hoped Jesus would see that lawyers were better than Pharisees.  Instead, 3 times Jesus warned, “Woe also to you lawyers!”  The middle woe (vv. 47-51) is twice as long as the other two together, suggesting its importance.  It’s ominous, focused on death, killing prophets and apostles.  The lawyers weren’t involved in their murders, but they did cover up the crime, dispose of the bodies and let the prophet’s message be forgotten.  Jesus concluded with a quote from “the Wisdom of God,” perhaps a warning to both lawyers and Pharisees not to participate in his death and silence his message.[1]
 
The 1st and 3rd ‘woe to you,’ seem closer to home.  It’s easy to become rigid and expect everyone to submit to our moral principles.  Without realizing it, we “load people with burdens hard to bear,” and then fail to see they need our help to ease those burdens.  It has become popular in the U.S. today to censor books, taking “away the key of knowledge,” hindering others from gaining the knowledge we haven’t even bothered to learn.  Woe to you, says Jesus.  His rebuke is harsh because, as Wright suggest, he saw where such rigidity would lead, “to a terrible conflagration in which the present generation would pull down on its own head the pent-up devastation of the centuries.”[2]
 
Where do you see the gospel confronting today’s popular agendas and beliefs, either yours or your nation’s?
 
Prayerfully Respond
Lord, help me to hear your rebuke today, discern where I need to change so that I follow you more nearly.  Amen.
 
Live obediently.  Avoid rigidity and hindering another’s learning.
[1] The quote is a summary of Jesus’ parable of the wicked tenants in Luke 20:9-19.
[2] Wright, N. T.  Luke for Everyone.  Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press.  2001, p. 146.