Jesus battled back and forth with religious teachers, including a group referred to as the scribes. They skillfully used religion for personal gain:

Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes and like greetings in the marketplaces and have the best seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at feasts, who devour widow’s houses and for a pretense make long prayers.

Lurking in the middle of this warning is the phrase devour widow’s houses. Endless prayers and envious glances only formed the veneer. From these men’s hearts bubbled deep reservoirs of vile. Devour speaks of rapacious greed. Stealing widow’s houses points to calloused hearts. Where did those widows go without a home?

Here flourished a religion of personal gain, the top shepherds fleecing the faithful. A weaponized religion of exploitation.

No wonder Jesus attacked these scribes over and over. He understood their heinous, unrepentant hearts.

Pride entices down broad, destructive paths. From a power trip of holding a crowd silent during a long-winded prayer to foreclosing on widows seems a stretch, but for the arrogant the leap is not so long.

Lord, check my pride. Point out where my greed gets the better of me—where I’m tempted to devour rather than to care.

Mark 12 in reading the Bible in 2023

Photo by fikry anshor