Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time (2026) - Fr Joseph Vnuk, OP

We can all recall passages where Jesus calls the Pharisees “hypocrites,” and he uses even stronger names such as “brood of vipers” and “whitened sepulchres.” In today’s Gospel, however, Jesus warns us against name-calling,

You have heard how it was said, “Thou shalt not kill,” and anyone who does kill shall answer for it before the court. But I say this to you. Anyone who is angry with his brother shall answer for it before the court. Anyone who calls his brother fool will answer for it before the Sanhedrin, and anyone who calls his brother renegade will answer for it before hell-fire.

Is Jesus himself a hypocrite? If we have difficulty in answering that question, then we may need to re-think what Jesus is doing in those passages, and indeed his whole attitude towards his opponents.

We can start simply by reading through one of the Gospels to find all those places where Jesus engages in name-calling against his opponents, because we have to get a good way into the Gospel to find those passages. At the start of his ministry, Jesus’ dealings with his opponents are quite straightforward; Jesus remains calm, and there are no insulting words used. The dynamic begins to change when there is a man with a withered hand in the synagogue on the Sabbath: Jesus asks whether it is lawful to do good or harm on the Sabbath, but they remain silent. Jesus reacts emotionally: he is grieved. Not angry, not hateful, but grieved. Grieved at the hardness of their hearts. And in fact the word used means “grieving with.” This is an emotion that is not directed against them, but with them, trying to tap into any faint murmurs of disquiet in their hearts and to encourage them to grow, rather than expressing an anger that will evoke an angry reaction in return. The Pharisees, we may note, end up angry anyway, and plot to kill him, but it was not for lack of trying on Jesus’ part.

As far as I can tell, this grief is the only word used in the Gospels to describe Jesus’ emotion towards the Pharisees. It is this grief and sorrow that tries to foster grief and sorrow in his opponents that we must use to interpret his later interactions.

When, for instance, Jesus repeatedly says “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees,” is he angry at them, or is he pitying them? Pitying seems more likely, which would be consistent with its other usage in the Bible. And, after all, when someone cries “Woe is me!” they are not intending to punish themselves, but they are pitying themselves in their misfortune, from which they see no escape.

Again, you can call someone a hypocrite as an insult, but also as an invitation to change, an appeal to their better principles. What also is important here is that Jesus uses the title “hypocrite” with regard to specific behaviours that his opponents can change. And when he uses it to describe the scribes and Pharisees to others, he does it in such a way as to not undermine the authority of their teaching: their teaching is still good, they are just not strong enough to live up to it: they “occupy the chair of Moses, so do as they say, but do not imitate what they do.”

We find examples in other places were Jesus uses words that might be taken as insulting in order to begin a conversion. He calls the disciples on the way to Emmaus “mindless and slow of heart,” as a way of indicating that they have not even begun the journey of understanding the scriptures, and then explains those scriptures as he journeys with them.

Jesus warning about the names we call other people is the completion of the commandment, “Thou shalt not kill.” To kill someone is the ultimate act of separation and unwillingness to share, and Jesus is aware that we can do this with emotions and words as well as with weapons. Thus Jesus brings the commandment to completion by establishing connection (the one we are tempted to be angry with is our “brother”) and removing the weaponised words that try to separate.

It is very easy, for instance, to label all our opponents as “loony lefties” or “rabid right-wingers,” with the mere fact that in each case both words begin with the same letter replacing the need to argue that the particular position they hold is utterly beyond redemption. This way we can avoid the need to sit down at the table with them and talk things through.

But Jesus was one for sitting down at the table with people of all stripes. If we remember his dinner with Zacchaeus or his party with Levi the tax collector, we should also remember his meal with Simon the Pharisee and the night-time visits of Nicodemus. Not only did Jesus do this, but he asked his followers to keep on doing it in his memory.

It is not simply that here we call each other brother and sister, and offer one another the sign of peace. For the power of the Eucharist can transform us, so that all our encounters become Christ-like, and even our disagreements become expressions of love, to the glory of God the Father, through Jesus his Son in the power of the Spirit, now and forever.

Fr Joseph Vnuk, OP is the Regent of Studies and the Chaplain to Monash University, assigned to St Dominic's Priory, Melbourne.