BIBLES AND CROSSES AND PRAYERS, OH MY!

Matthew 23: 1-12

“A man was being tailgated by a stressed out woman on a busy boulevard, when suddenly, the light turned yellow, just in front of him. He did the right thing and stopped, afraid that photo enforced intersection would cost him a ticket.

The tailgating woman hit the roof, and the horn, screaming in frustration as she missed her chance to get through the intersection.

As she was still in mid-rant, she heard a tap on her window and looked up into the face of a very serious police officer. The officer ordered her to exit her car with her hands up. He took her to the police station where she was processed and placed in a holding cell.

After several hours, she was released. She was escorted back to the booking desk where the arresting officer was waiting with her personal effects.

He said ‘I'm sorry for this mistake. I pulled up behind your car while you were blowing your horn, gesturing inappropriately to the man in front of you, and cursing. I had already noticed your 'Choose Life' license plate, your 'What Would Jesus Do?' bumper sticker, your 'Follow Me to Sunday-School' bumper sticker, and your chrome-plated Christian fish emblem on the trunk. Naturally, I assumed you had stolen the car.”

Jesus’ disdain for hypocrites is well-documented: hypocrites are those who act one way, but in their hearts act or believe another way. Jews could be hypocrites, we learned last week; today we are reminded that Christians can to: and to be a Christian hypocrite is one of the worst disservices to God a person can do. The issue is not just a Biblical one; despite the warnings of Jesus, it has remained one of the most talked about issues for Christians through the ages. In 1564, Christian mystic St. John of the Cross survived excruciating torture through his love for God and his belief that God loved him. His writing about his experience is called “The Dark Night of the Soul,” the linchpin book for my planned doctoral project. In that work he writes this: “Many a beginner falls at times into great spiritual avarice. Scarcely anyone is contented with that measure of the spirit which God gives; they are very disconsolate and querulous because they do not find the comfort they desire in spiritual things….They load themselves up with images, rosaries, and crucifixes, curious and costly; taking up one, and then and then another, changing them, and then resuming them again….I condemn here that attachment and clinging of the heart to form, number, and variety of these things, because in direct opposition to poverty of spirit, [it] looks only to the substance of devotion….[But] real devotion must spring out of the heart.” [Fount Paperbacks, 1995, p. 16.] The reformer John Calvin once wrote: “The scribes live very differently from what they teach; if they have anything which is apparently good, it is hypocritical and worthless, because they have no other designs than to please men, and to vaunt themselves … [and] shield themselves by their pretended holiness.” [CALVIN’S COMMENTARIES, VOL XVII, P.77.]

Calvin’s contemporary Swiss Reformer Huldrych Zwingli once wrote: “I venture to command you to fight against those who prefer to keep the heavy yoke of the hypocrites rather than to take the sweet yoke of Christ upon themselves.” [20 CENTURIES OF GREAT PREACHING, VOL II, P. 110.] The popular early 20th century preacher of the Westminster Congregational Chapel in England, G. Campbell Morgan, once wrote that “the one type of mind against which God Almighty has set himself …whether in the old or in the new covenant, and supremely in the person of Jesus, is the hypocritical mind. We have but to remember the burning, scorching, blasting words of Jesus to recognize that they were all spoken against hypocrites, people who act, who play a part, who disassemble, who try to keep up an appearance which is false to the inward fact of the personality; people who profess to believe something that they do not believe.” [20 CENTURIES OF GREAT PREACHING, VOL VIII, P. 38.] Of all the age groups that are best at noting hypocrites, teenagers are as good at it as any. The poplar teenage movie “Saved” includes a hypocritical super Christian star, Hilary Faye, played by Mandy Moore. In it she judges everyone who is not Christian including a girl, Tia, who had gotten herself into trouble. In the end, the tables are turned in a way that showed the non-Christian Tia being the most Christ-like. And finally, it was just a few short years ago that Christian singer and songwriter Steven Curtis Chapman wrote his song called “The Change.” Here are his lyrics: “Well I got myself a tee-shirt that says what I believe, I got letters on my bracelet to serve as my ID; I got the necklace and the key chain, and almost everything a good Christian needs. I got the little Bible magnets on my refrigerator door, and a welcome mat to bless you before you walk across my floor; I got a Jesus bumper sticker, and the outline of a fish stuck on my car, and even though this stuff’s all well and good, I cannot help but ask myself: What about the change? What about the difference? What about the grace? What about forgiveness? What about a life that’s showing I’m undergoing the change?”

John the Baptist proclaimed the need for such change: for repentance, and for living life authentically and differently. Christian baptism calls for such an authentic new life as well. And still, the examples of Pharisaic-like persons abound. Some prosperity gospel preachers adorn themselves, their homes, their automobiles, and their bodies with gold and opulence. Do people see that as hypocritical? Some preachers who were making millions of dollars on the air a number of years ago were caught having very public marital affairs. Such hypocrisy makes many view clergy with suspicious eyes. The hypocrisy of others makes it difficult for those who try not to be that. But perhaps like sin, this is one of the hardest conditions to shake. Are there not times when we also appear as hypocrites to others? Even appearances can make people think where there is smoke, there is fire.

Here’s how Jesus addressed the problem of hypocrites. In Matthew 21 Jesus came to Jerusalem for the first time in his ministry on the day we celebrate as Palm Sunday. That was a major city where Jesus was an outsider, and even an interloper in the business of scribes. How bold, how dangerous, how threatening it was for him to say this to crowds who were used to honoring Scribes and Pharisees, at least publicly. Jesus said: “The scribes and Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat; therefore do what ever they teach you to do and follow it; but do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they teach.” In Jesus day the Moses’ seat was a stone bench at the front of a synagogue where the reader for the day would open the scroll and read from a portion of Scripture. Reading the inspired writings was to be respected then as today, and the person reading them could not change the message by living rigid or unethical lives. But when such religious leaders were apart from reading the word, their actions were confusing at best or undermining at worst. Their actions, unfortunately, spoke louder than their words. As one commentator put it, “Jesus’ hostile caricature of the ‘scribes and Pharisees’ is meant to help crowds (and the disciples) see clearly the differences between leadership that bears witness to God’s power, and leadership that seeks power for its own end.” [PREACHING THE GOSPEL OF MATTHEW, Stanley Saunders, 2010, p. 237.] Going on, in verse 4 Jesus says: “They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others; but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them.” In other words, they heaped guilt and law on others, but they were unwilling to show justice by helping or counseling those who had fallen short due to economic or moral shortcomings. Jesus was always listening to the poor and the handicapped, people who society, and even the Jewish customs of the day, scorned. People would point to those people and say: “They or their parents must have done some great sin to make that person so poor, or so blind, or so crippled;” and then they would do nothing. There was no Social Security, or disability check, or compassion, even though the Covenant Code was filled with compassionate laws! The Scribes and Pharisees failed to live as their own Law told them to live. And that was their biggest sin. Jesus had come to save sinners, but people who are blind to their own sin never turn to him. Like in our day, people of faith often got caught up in the trappings of merchandise, even so called sacred items, to convince others, and perhaps themselves, that they were faithful people of God. Long phylacteries and fringes were the tassels that hung off of their robes as symbols of prayerful piety. And when they went to special engagements, they always expected to be seated at the head table.

Certainly there are still people in our world today, politicians, movie and music stars, and divas who want the first class treatment without being invited to partake of it. Perhaps you know some people like that. But Christians? Do people who profess Christianity do that? To the detriment of God’s Kingdom: yes. I know some; and I’m sure in my lifetime I’ll see others. There are people even in our community who ask for power and influence to rest in themselves instead of in God. That’s the most damaging state of peripheral Christianity in our world today, or what some people call “Presentational Christians” or “Carnal Christians.” They may have a big Bible, a beautiful cross around their neck, and they may offer prayers that turn into public performances. Certainly not everyone with a Bible, a cross, or a prayer is that way, of course. But if you recognize ostentatious or hypocritical tendencies in yourself: clean them up! You are damaging the Christ and the Kingdom you pretend to honor. If there are those in your family or circle of friends who are like that, perhaps you’ll choose not to be around them. Or you might find opportunity to say something about it to them, but such confrontation can get dicey. Still, we are supposed to be the ones to change the world, not have the world change us! Therefore you’ll offer your best witness if you live the authentic life of humility, and have your actions match your words. Practice what Jesus preached! Jesus didn’t have time for the other kind of counterproductive living: he still has a world to transform and souls to save, and that happens best when real Christians show real care toward others and live the Law with love. Witness to others with your life and your lips; then you will be following your Savior not down the low road of hypocrisy, but on the upward way of eternal life.

Jeffrey A. Sumner October 30, 2011