Luke 11:44 (NIV) “Woe to you, because you are like unmarked graves, which men walk over without knowing it.”
Of all the woes that Jesus pronounced over the Pharisees, this one struck the deepest. So far all of His condemnations focused on their deficiencies of character. But now He goes a step further.
Unmarked graves were a serious thing in Judaism. One of the stipulations of the law was that if a person touched a dead body, they would be ceremonially unclean for seven days. They had to take a bath on the third and seventh day, and then on the seventh day they would be clean again. (Number 19:11-13) If they didn’t bathe, the arrival of the seventh day would not make them clean again. Both obedience to God’s commandment and time were required for them to become clean again.
Over the course of time, the Jewish people extended the prohibition from simply touching a dead body to touching a tomb or grave in which a body was buried. So they conspicuously marked graves and tombs, sometimes gong so far as to apply bright whitewash to the site of a tomb, so that they could be easily seen and avoided, or to at least alert someone who accidently touched them that they were unclean so that they could start the process of becoming clean again. The worst case scenario in their minds would be for a person to unknowingly touch or walk across a grave, become unwittingly unclean, and then, at best, have their prayers rejected, or at worst, enter God’s temple and be destroyed on the spot for their entering His holy presence in an unclean state.
By declaring that the Pharisees were like unmarked graves, Jesus was doubling down on His condemnation of their looking holy on the outside while being corrupt on the inside. But with the terrible added concept that their inner corruption, hidden from those who admired them, was actually a corrupting influence on those very admirers, causing them to become unclean by following the Pharisees’ corrupted version of holiness, and making them worthy of God’s condemnation instead of His blessing.
Of course, any Pharisee would be aghast at the very notion that they could be a corrupting influence on anyone. But their harsh, unloving, legalistic, even exclusionary version of holiness, without God’s love, mercy, or justice, really was taken up and emulated by many people, who ended up fostering a holiness in themselves without God’s love, mercy, and justices, and making them just as worthy of God’s condemnation as their models.
Father, most of us probably don’t consider the fact that, when we put ourselves forward as Your people, followers of Jesus, that many who are wanting to find eternal life will imitate, not our theology, but our actions and attitudes, believing that by that imitation they too will have the eternal life that we claim to possess. And if our actions and attitudes are worthy of condemnation in Your sight, those imitators will unwittingly end up being condemned as well, corrupted by the foulness hidden in the unmarked grave of our souls. Help us all, Lord, to be clean in the inside, purified by Your Spirit and made holy by Your grace, so that our lives bring righteousness, holiness, and wholeness to all who come near. Amen.