He replied, “Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites; as it is written:
“‘These people honor me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me.
They worship me in vain;
their teachings are merely human rules.’
You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to human traditions.”
Mark 7:6-8, NIV
If you are like me, you have heard preaching on why Jesus referred to the Pharisees and others as hypocrites, and how this referenced their behaviour as ‘actors’, pretending to be one thing when they were actually another. I am not sure we have this right.
The reason I say this is because even when ὑποκριτής references an actor, it isn’t about pretence; it is about interpretation. And I think we will find that it is the act of ‘interpretation’ or ‘expounding’ with which Jesus is taking issue.
The ὑποκριτής as actor is not the equivalent of Ryan Gosling or Sir John Gielgud. He is actually a mime who acts out the speech delivered by a speaking actor, presumably because doing both speech and movement together was considered too hard (perhaps like ‘walking and chewing gum at the same time’!); and the reason he is called ὑποκριτής is that he is interpreting what the speaking actor is saying. In a more general sense, the word is literally under (ὑπο) judge or umpire (κριτής), that is, someone who explains what a judge means; and it is this sense of explaining or interpreting that is key to what Jesus is saying here.
Look at the passage above, from Mark. Jesus isn’t accusing the Pharisees of pretence, but rather of thinking they are able to say what God really meant – and in the process, ditching God’s intention in favour of purely human tradition.
And suddenly, this is uncomfortably relevant. The word of God is not for us to interpret however we like, improvising on a familiar tune to serve our own ends, like a narcissistic jazz musician. I have often observed how Jesus absolutely refuses to find “layers of meaning” in scripture; however popular that practice was with the Rabbis and continues to be with modern pastors and theologians.
God’s Word only ever means what God meant it to mean, and we (and the Pharisees) monkey around with this at our peril. Which is also, I suspect, why James says that “we teachers will be judged the more strictly.” A little humility – and a lot of asking Holy Spirit for wisdom and insight – goes a long way.
Seeing the Kingdom 