Sermons

“The Horrors of Hypocrisy”

Psalm 94:1-15; Matthew 23:23-31 – Rev. Rebecca Littlejohn

Vista La Mesa Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), La Mesa, California – October 27, 2019

 Holy God, bless the speaking and the hearing of these words, that we might search our hearts for truth and find freedom in your mercy.  In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.

I have a lot to blame on Deborah today.  Some of you know I’m not a fan of having secular holidays creep into worship.  But when she wanted us to sing a song about bones the day of Trunk-or-Treat because that is, in fact, hilarious, and the song in question just happens to come directly from scripture, how could I argue with that?  Indeed, what Jesus says there in verse 27 is almost more Halloween-y than the song: “For you are like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful, but inside they are full of the bones of the dead and of all kinds of filth.”

But as it turns out, the passages in question are less about Halloween themes and pretty much entirely about hypocrisy.  So I guess we’re talking about hypocrisy today.  I invite you to take a moment and consider where you think this sermon is going.  And then remember, whether it really goes there, or whether it goes somewhere else, it’s definitely Deborah’s fault![1]

A preacher has to be really careful when talking about hypocrisy, so perhaps it’s a good idea to make this an interactive sermon.  Let’s have a little audience participation.  Don’t get too excited; I’m not going to ask for examples.  But here’s a question: Raise your hand if your favorite thing about hypocrisy is pointing it out in someone else’s behavior!  Some of you really got into participating in the scripture reading, didn’t you?  “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!”  Jesus was really on a roll there.  But before we get too caught up in reading Jesus’ lines, we should probably slow down and make sure we’re accurately locating ourselves within this scripture passage.

If this were a game of Family Feud, and you had to guess where people thought you’d be most likely to find a bunch of hypocrites, what would you say?  It’s possible someone would suggest “Washington DC”, but I think we all know that there’s something closer to home that would also be near the top of the list, and that’s “church”.  The top two most generic complaints about churches are that we’re always asking for money (more on that later!) and that we’re a bunch of hypocrites.

In all my years in church, the best defense I’ve seen against this accusation is not to argue with it.  Because it’s true.  Churches are full of hypocrites.  We repeatedly proclaim that there is a certain way to live that is good and righteous and holy, and we continually fail to live up to those standards.  Here’s the thing, though: the only way in which this makes us different than other people is that we’re at least trying to name how to live a good life and getting together regularly to encourage one another to do so.  The fact that we fail isn’t what sets churches apart; it’s just that our failure seems more pronounced because we publicly declared we were trying.  So if we’re going to gather here at church like this and read Matthew 23, we have to be clear that, at some level, when we hear Jesus scolding hypocrites, we must assume he is talking to us.  We are certainly adept at majoring in the minors or straining out a gnat while swallowing a camel as Jesus put it.  One of the central callings of the church is to offer hospitality.  We all know that quality hospitality requires attention to detail.  And there are a lot of details involved with the various ways we open our doors to our neighbors, whether it’s Trunk-or-Treat or Welcome Saturday.

It’s easy to get so caught up in the details – in making sure the supplies are ready and there are enough people for each job and we’ve put up signs in all the right places – that we almost forget the most important part of true and holy hospitality, which is cultivating a spirit of welcoming love that exudes from our every word and gesture when our guests actually arrive.  In striving to put our best foot forward, we can easily get overly concerned with cleaning the outside of the cup, without stopping to check if the water inside it is truly the Water of Life.

Is this the kind of hypocrisy that creates the sorts of horrors found in Chapter 23, Matthew’s Halloween Episode?  Does being short with a guest because we were busy locating the extra water bottles qualify us as being “full of bones and all kinds of filth on the inside”?  Only God can judge.  But this is why we name these dangers and snares when we get together for worship: because we know how easy it is to fall into habits of judgment and stinginess and hypocrisy.  None of us can afford to think of hypocrisy as something that other people do.

But the other side of this story is that Jesus offers some specifics to make clear the kind of hypocrisy he’s angry about.  Yes, angry.  For some of us, it may be distressing to think of Jesus being angry, but there’s no way of denying where the strong words and denunciations in this chapter are coming from.  It’s not so much about what the scribes and Pharisees have done, but what they have left undone: they “have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith.”  Or as Psalm 94 puts it, “they kill the widow and the stranger, they murder the orphan.”  There’s hypocrisy, and then there’s Hypocrisy.  Most of what we do badly or don’t do right in our everyday lives only qualifies as small-h hypocrisy.  When we correctly identify the target of Jesus’ rant, big-h Hypocrisy is better defined.  The “scribes and Pharisees” he was denouncing were the religious leaders of the day who were working hand in hand with the occupying power of Rome.  They were the ones who were specially charged with looking out for God’s most vulnerable people, who were instead supporting policies that took bread from children and land from poor farmers and life-saving charity from widows.  With their words, they painted beautiful pictures, but with their actions, they were dealing death.  And they still are.  There are hypocritical deathmongers in our midst to this day.

This is why we get together every Sunday and confess our own hypocrisy.  Because unless we do that, we are not equipped to call out the deadly big-h Hypocrisy that is causing so much suffering in our times.  We come here to pull the logs out of our own eyes, so we can see clearly enough to diagnose the willful blindness and systematic cruelties our society is built on.  Our own hypocritical tendencies do not disqualify us from announcing good news to the poor, which sometimes comes in the form of denunciations of the structures that make the poor poor.

Jesus was unsparing with the scribes and Pharisees.  He used even their protestations of righteousness against them: “You say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our ancestors, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’  Thus you testify against yourselves that you are descendants of those who murdered the prophets.”  At the risk of bringing this back around to Halloween, let me share a similar idea I saw expressed on Facebook recently.  Apparently, there are people who consider it a point of pride to be descended from women who were burned or otherwise persecuted in the Salem witch trials.  I can see how that would be an interesting story to have in one’s family tree.  But the point that was being made was that if you are descended from a resident of Salem who was persecuted, you are likely also descended from someone who was doing the persecuting.  It wasn’t a very big town.  Some women were turned in by their own family members.  Whatever the story is that’s in our heritage, we likely have connection to both sides of it.

Would we have murdered the prophets?  We would like to think that of course we wouldn’t.  But our ancestors did.  Why would we assume we’re better than them?  How can we tell?  The only proof we have is the choices we’re making now.  Who are our modern-day prophets?  Are we supporting and amplifying their words, or are we dismissing them, questioning their legitimacy, and helping to muffle their impact?  Who are the witches in our society today?  Who are the people being vilified, rounded up, put through tortuous tests and even killed?  Are we defending them?  Are we denouncing their persecutors?  Or are we keeping our heads down, making excuses, claiming that people are faking the stories of their suffering?

As followers of Jesus, we are called to live up to high standards of righteousness.  There is no way we’re not going to mess up.  That’s why we come together each week to confess our sins and seek God’s forgiveness.  Because God needs us out there, to proclaim those high standards as the way the world should be, to cry out when they are so egregiously degraded, and to insist that we, not just as individuals but as a society, can do better.  There are a lot of whitewashed tombs full of bones and filth around.  And bones and filth have their place in the natural order of things.  But their place is not to be setting policy or affecting the lives of countless people just trying to build better lives for themselves and their families.  Life doesn’t have to be a horror movie.  Our heritage offers the choice between life and death.  Let us choose faithfully.  Alleluia and Amen.

[1] Just kidding!  Obviously, I am the one who decides what the sermons will be about, and I could have gone in a different direction if I wanted to.  But the song is very persuasive…