Jesus spoke to the crowds and to his disciples saying, “As for you, do not be called ‘Rabbi.’ You have but one teacher, and you are all brothers. Call no one on earth your father; you have but one Father in heaven. Do not be called ‘Master.’ You have but one master, the Christ. The greatest among you must be your servant. Whoever exalts himself will be humbled; but whoever humbles himself will be exalted.” (Matthew 23.7-12)
To understand the section of the scripture that we study today, it is important to remember that it is part of a larger whole, a discourse that takes to task the hypocrisy of the Pharisees and other leaders of the Jewish people. As we have seen in our reflections from the previous weeks, the religious leadership of Jerusalem have put a target on the back of the Galilean Teacher called Jesus, their outrage steadily growing, surfacing and boiling over until his end is certain, a death on the cross plotted and orchestrated by the religious leaders of Jerusalem.
Skillfully, Rabbi Jesus has evaded their traps and prevailed over them in their contestations. By this point, however, his patience is wearing thin. So, he turns his attention now to his disciples, telling them that he expects them to behave in a much different fashion than the scribes and the Pharisees who, as he points out, have three principal faults: first, they preach and do not practice; second, they bind heavy burdens and put them on peoples shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them by their own finger; and third, all their deeds they do to be seen by people.
He then points out how the Pharisees “widen out their phylacteries and enlarge their fringes; love the first place at banquets and the first seats in the synagogues; and enjoy greetings in the marketplaces and being called Rabbi by people.” In other words, they enjoy all the privileges of their elevated station in life, including pompous clothing, special treatment in public places, and honorific titles that suggest they are better than everyone else.
This, then, becomes the backdrop for a different type of behavior that Rabbi Jesus expects from his followers, the Pharisees serving as a foil or a contrast to the ways that his followers should espouse. And, as we hear, he wants them to break out of the hierarchical structure that they see around them in which people are placed in a sliding scale of importance, choosing instead a more egalitarian mode of living that allows everyone the same respect and dignity.
Put simply, they are to do the opposite of what the Pharisees are doing as they prance about in their fancy duds, position themselves in the top places at public events, and present themselves with important titles. He reminds his followers that “the greatest among you must be your servant” and “whoever exalts himself will be humbled,” both statements central tenets in his teaching from the start.
His followers will be distinguished in large part by their different behavior from the Pharisees who like outward shows of position and privilege, but who do not practice what they preach, resulting in their being, as he will soon enough describe them, no more than whitened sepulchers, pretty on the outside, but containing dead men’s bones on the inside.
There is no way to escape the strong condemnation of the behavior of the Pharisees by Rabbi Jesus. His words are clear and concise, meant to correct and choke off any similar instinct in his followers. While he expects them to abide by the words of the law and prophets, he also demands that they never fall into the hypocrisy that is the calling card of the Pharisees.
Of course, it does not take but a split second for us to realize that we have a problem spelled out in Rabbi Jesus’ call for practicing egalitarianism, summed up precisely in his words, “You are all brothers and sisters,” contrasting sharply with a practice of elitism, where some people are seen as better than other people. The problem is simple. We aren’t doing what Rabbi Jesus told us to do.
The fact of the matter is that we don’t see everyone as our equals. We regularly pigeon hole people, placing them in positions of greater or lesser importance, setting up hierarchies as strong as anything the Pharisees hid behind. While we may preach everyone is our brother and our sister, our practice falls far short of that equalitarian equation, putting us more in line with the Pharisees than with Rabbi Jesus.
Obviously, a glaring example is our use of titles across all spectrums of society, including church, state, legal, and professional. As one expositor of this particular text is quick to point out, “Matthew’s model of egalitarian communal leadership has been largely ignored by Church communities.” His criticism is on point, our ecclesial systems far and wide built on the hierarchical structure.
But we would be remiss to stop there, believing it to be the only place where we fail to live up to the challenge put before us by Rabbi Jesus. While it may be one of the most obvious, it simply reflects a larger practice of replacing egalitarianism with elitism. And so we may want to look at more than the three particular examples that Jesus used, that is, the titles rabbi, father, or master.
The fact of the matter is that Rabbi Jesus probably used these three titles as examples because they were the most familiar to the people in the crowd before him, their daily lives regularly intersecting with each of these three persons. We lose the greater point if we restrict our practice to these three areas, all the while ignoring the underlying principle at work in Rabbi Jesus’ call, namely, “You are all brothers and sisters.”
The point is clear enough. As followers of the Galilean Teacher, we are called to live in a community where one and all are treated equally, seen as siblings, not as rungs on a ladder, those closer to the bottom held in lower esteem than those near the top. Likewise, we are not to cling to titles that would elevate us above others, not wear high-dollar clothes that mark us as superior to others, and not seek out the best seats in the house because we believe ourselves of higher significance than the porter at the door.
Of course, that is just the beginning, not the end all. Creative and competitive as we are, we find multiple means of projecting ourselves as better than, more important than, higher up than others, not limiting ourselves to clothes, titles, or stadium box seats. The sneer on our face or the snark in our voice says as much about our attitude towards others as the name brand stitched on the front of our clothes.
Similarly, a dismissive or destructive attitude makes perfectly clear that we do not see others as our equals, but as lesser than ourselves. Something as simple as our impatience in the grocery check line tells the same story on us, our chagrin at having to wait behind others arguing for our belief that our time is more important than other people’s time, the delay in our day’s plans more damaging to us than the delay is to those in the same line.
As you can see, the challenge that Jesus puts before us is more encompassing and more inclusive than we might think, popping up in a multiplicity of ways throughout our days with the same rapidity as poison ivy blisters on our skin. In a sense, we can never let our guard down, a constant vigilance required to ensure that what we do or what we say is not an effort to promote ourselves over and above others.
The antidote, as Rabbi Jesus tells us, is humility. As we heard, he concludes this section with the words, “Whoever exalts himself will be humbled; but whoever humbles himself will be exalted,” in this way reinforcing the call to humbleness. However, as we surely know from experience, humility is an acquired virtue, gained through continuous practice, not a trait bestowed upon us at birth like the color of our hair.
Joseph Bernardin was called to serve as the leader of the Catholic church in Chicago in 1982, a post that he held until his death in 1996. Born to immigrant parents from Italy and raised by his widowed mother from six-years on, Bernardin never forgot his roots nor the rules that his mother had taught him in his childhood. Several vignettes from his life prove his overall humility and his sameness with others, regardless of the high positions he held.
At 38 years of age, he was named an auxiliary bishop of Atlanta in 1966, the assignment making him the youngest bishop of the United States. When he informed his mother of his new appointment and his approaching installation, she instructed him, “Well, make sure you don’t look too pleased with yourself when you walk down the aisle.” He was known for his keen ecumenical sense while he served in Atlanta, open to and welcoming of other religious leaders in the Bible Belt of the South.
Six years later, he was named the archbishop of Cincinnati, where he hired the first woman to be editor of a Catholic newspaper, and, after six years there, was named the archbishop of Chicago. A few months later, he was promoted to membership in the College of Cardinals. Coming to Chicago, he found a church both in disarray and disheartened after years of poor administration by his predecessors.
However, at his first meeting with the priests of Chicago, he introduced himself to the group with these few words, “I am your brother Joseph.” Not only was it a reference to the story of Joseph in the Old Testament who welcomed and embraced his brothers after they had sold him into slavery into Egypt with the same words, but he intended his words to denote his belief that he was no more important than any of his priests, but was simply one of them.
It was that attitude and his willingness to listen humbly to others, whatever their stance or station, that earned him the love of hundreds of thousands of Chicagoans, a city in mourning at its loss when he died in 1996 from pancreatic cancer. When he learned of his diagnosis, Bernardin turned over the administration of the diocese to another priest and he committed himself to the care of the sick, becoming, in effect, the unofficial chaplain to the cancer patients of Chicago. To the end, he showed his oneness with all others.
And for that he was remembered and honored, not because of his title or his position, but because of his innate humility and his strong belief that he was first and foremost Joseph, a brother to one and all. One of the last visitors to his bedside as he lay dying was Ann Landers, the syndicated advice column writer for the Chicago Sun Times, a woman of Jewish faith who had formed a close friendship with the Catholic archbishop of Chicago, their friendship just one more example of Bernardin’s open embrace of all others.
So, the message that Rabbi Jesus offers his followers in that section of Matthew’s gospel that we hear today is important, not so much for its criticism of the Pharisees, although it is a warning worth taking to heart, but because of the call he makes to us to treat all others with a sense of equality, equanimity, and equableness. He again reminds us today that we are all brothers and sisters, something we are inexplicably and inexcusably quick to forget.
–Jeremy Myers
Sunday Brunch 