So…
Do you ever think of yourself as a hypocrite?
How about someone you know?
It’s alright. A little side-eye at the folks in the pew with you works!
Hypocrites are people who, according to Miriam Webster dictionary put on a false appearance of virtue or religion, or a person who acts in contradiction to his or her stated beliefs or feelings.
Being hypocritical is bad.
We know that because of experience. Having someone say they love you and then betray you is an experience many of us understand very well, and it makes us angry because it is the epitome of hypocrisy.
But we also know that hypocrisy is bad because Jesus said so.
He regularly criticized the Pharisees because of their hypocrisy, holding up God’s Law as absolute, but then themselves not keeping the laws or making creative ways to get around them, or criticizing folks for not being as Holy as them.
So being a hypocrite is bad! We all get that. We don’t want to be hypocrites!
Yet, one of the accusations leveled at the church, especially by those who don’t participate in it is that the people who attend churches are hypocrites.
In study after study, one of the reasons people, and in particular, young people, don’t think much of the church, is because they believe that a significant portion, if not most of church leaders and attenders, set up rules that they promote as standards for ethical behavior, but then violate them at will, almost as if the rules are for outsiders but not for the insiders.
It’s pretty harsh stuff and painful for many of us on the inside, one, because we don’t perceive ourselves that way, and two, because we really do want to be the kind of loving, graceful, accepting, merciful, and joyous people Jesus claims as disciples.
We know we don’t get it right all the time, but we are trying and really hope the larger community sees that.
But it seems they don’t.
And if we the church are being perceived as hypocrites by people we would love to be part of this band of disciples, then we need to fix that.
But how?
One of the comments about the early churchwas was that they were a community of love.
So, how did we get from being a church that is characterized by the outside community as one that is loving, to one that is perceived by outsiders as full of hypocrites?
And then, what do we do about standards for ethical behavior? We know they exist. We want to be ethical!
And what do we do with the Mosaic Law?
Interestingly, Jesus didn’t believe that the Law was somehow faulty.
He points out that not a dotted “i” or a crossed “t” needed to be changed. But he did think its interpretation and application was a real hindrance to God’s people, especially as understood by the Pharisees and Sadducee s of his day.
He even goes so far as to say that we, his disciples, must obey them better than the Scribes and Pharisees.
Yipes; how is that even possible?
Well, you have to see the Law through Jesus eyes. After all, the law is not being interpreted by some faulty human teacher, but by God incarnate!
I saw a meme the other day that I have seen several times before. I had wanted to add it as a graphic up on the screens today but, of course, then went back and couldn’t find it anywhere.
It showed a picture of Jesus facing a group of what looked like religious leaders that said something like “they want to judge love by the law” and Jesus “wants to judge the law by love”.
It’s very close to what Jesus said to the Pharisees about the Sabbath law, that humans were not made for the Sabbath, but rather, the Sabbath was made for humans.
It was intended not to be a drudgery, but rather intended to make life full, a whole day devoted to celebrating God’s love and grace and blessing, including family, and friends, and the whole worshiping community.
Jesus even goes so far as to suggest that if you are helping others who are in need on the Sabbath, with their donkey stuck in a hole or whatever the need was, that the helping should not be understood as work! The law interpreted by love! Helping others is a great Sabbath experience. It’s a joyous extension of worship, where our hands become God’s hands!
So maybe, the real problem of hypocrisy is that instead of rejecting the high standards God has for us and sneaking around them and being all judgy about those who don’t keep them up to our standards, maybe we all need to get in the mud to help our neighbors; to love our neighbors, to get their donkeys out to safety, or their cars out of the snowbank, or put food in their pantries, or give them hugs and prayer blankets when they are grieving, or backpacks full of food for their kids.
One church leader has said that when every church in every community is finally filled with all the broken folks all around us, then, and only then, will Jesus return.
Maybe not to end time.
Maybe just to make us finally see the church as he does, the church he wants, the church filled with the Holy Spirit, ready to make a difference.
The law is good. It reveals to us to us what is perfect. But love. It reveals the very heart of God to us and in us.
May it be so. Amen and Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment