St. Patrick Presbyterian Church, Epc

It is one thing to hear Jesus talk about life in the Kingdom of God as being poor in spirit, being meek, mourning, and hungering and thirsting after righteousness. It is quite another for Jesus to tell his disciples that unless their righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, they will never enter the kingdom of God. On the surface of hearing this, the disciples must have thought, “Who of us can be saved?” I mean, nobody was more religious than the scribes and Pharisees, who were famous for their fastidious keeping of the 248 commandments and 365 prohibitions (by their calculations) found in the law. Plus, there were over 600 additional laws they had added to keeping the Sabbath.So, when Jesus says that they had to be more righteous than these guys, the disciples must have wilted. I would have! However, as we contemplate this Sunday, what Jesus is talking about is actually the death of religion! Jesus hated religion! In the hands of religious people, the law always gets misused and abused. As Br