Hypocrite!

“You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.” – Matthew 7:5

Did you ever wear masks as kid? Playing make believe or on Halloween? This may be an alien concept to post-Modern, Uber-hip Homo Contemporaneous humanoids too concerned with the “social message” sent by their children donning masks which may have some hint of misogyny, inadvertent cultural appropriation, veiled gender identification intolerance, embedded racism, or pigmentation privilege. Clearly, their social antennae are more acutely attuned than those of us who simply like a good laugh.

Society seems to place a premium on being socially and politically correct in public

The “enlightened” enjoy a more refined sense of socially acceptable public visage than true matters of the heart. They know what their friends/followers/fans need to make sense of their own personality oddities and cater to those gaps or shortcomings daily.

Society seems to place a premium on being socially and politically correct in public. Say the right things, and the people will approve. Don’t question someone’s private behavior, mind you – what matters is what they say and do in front of an audience or a camera.  The “mask” they wear matters more than the face they bare in private.

Courtesy: Exceptional Sales Performance

I was reminded of this recently when considering Jesus’ final public sermon. Parts of this sermon can be found in Mark and Luke, but to get the full impact we must turn to Matthew 23.

First, a bit of context. The time is Tuesday or Wednesday during the final week of Jesus’ earthly ministry. A couple of days earlier, Jesus entered Jerusalem hailed as the prophesied Jewish Messiah by thousands who had made their way to the city for Passover.

Map courtesy CL Francisco

For three years Jesus had taken his message across the Judean landscape, tirelessly healing and teaching and preaching in synagogues from Bethsaida, Banias and Caesaria Philippi, to Bethany, Jericho and Jerusalem.  By day he taught and at night would find rest with friends and acquaintances. (As a side note, I found one interesting commentary that during his ministry alone Jesus walked over 4,000 miles.)

So now Jesus is in Jerusalem for his last fateful visit. As a prelude to his final public message his first act was to enter the Temple courts where he would teach and share the next three days. He immediately noticed several things: the money changers who converted non-Jewish coins into temple-acceptable tribute-paying shekels (and always at a premium to turn a profit); the dove and pigeon sellers who sold “acceptable sacrifices” at exorbitant prices; the sellers of cattle and sheep who offered these animals as Temple sacrifices, again at crushingly inflated rates.

Infuriated, Jesus overturns the merchants’ tables, temporarily interrupting the revenue flow of the Temple priesthood. Most scholars believe this was the final straw that set the Jewish authorities on a course to organize his arrest. Follow the money. An interesting debate has existing since the New Testament accounts first appeared on whether Jesus did this at the end of his ministry (as told in Matthew, Mark, and Luke), at the beginning of his ministry (as told in John), or both at the beginning and end. An well-reasoned explanation can be found here.

Next, Jesus begins addressing the gathering crowds in either the Court of the Gentiles or perhaps more likely the Court of Israel. An astonishing series of lessons follows, beginning with a direct challenge by the Temple rulers to his theological authority and continuing as he tells three parables (the Two Sons, the Tenants, and the Wedding Banquet), refutes Pharisees trying trap him on over a question of Roman Imperial Loyalty vs. Loyalty to God (paying taxes), defeats an attempt by the Sadducees to ensnare his understanding of scripture in a question of marriage after resurrection (of course, the Sadducees didn’t actually believe in the Resurrection), answered the question of which is the greatest commandment and then to the delight of the crowds stunned the Pharisees into embarrassed silence by proclaiming the Messiah was greater than David.

It’s likely these teachings and public rebukes of Jewish authority took place over a couple of days.  Yet while Jesus was probably drained and physically/mentally exhausted at the end of every day, the words, the challenges, the debates, all served to set the stage for what came next.

Jesus dismantles the moral authority of the Jewish order

On that Tuesday or Wednesday before he left the Temple for a final time to return to Bethany to rest and prepare for Thursday’s climatic arrest, Jesus turned his attention away from the Pharisees and focused again on the crowd. Yet his words were aimed like a heat-seeking blistering spear directly at the heart of the malignancy he knew the Priesthood had become.

Jesus’ open comments were devastatingly effective: “The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat. So you must be careful to do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach.” (Emphasis mine).

*BOOM* In three sentences and 38 words (well, in the English translation at least), Jesus utterly dismantles the entire moral authority of the formal Jewish order declaring the whole priesthood corrupt and false. And he’s just getting started.

“Everything they do is done for people to see,” he says. Does this sound oddly familiar to what we see today in both the Church and secular worlds? “They love the place of honor at the banquets and the most important seats in the synagogues.”

Jesus then proclaims seven “woes” on the Pharisees and teachers – accusing them of shutting the doors of the Kingdom against the people, of turning their so-called “saved” into children of Hell, of being blind guides, of tithing from abundance but ignoring the matters of justice and mercy, of caring more for appearances than for substance, of murdering prophets, and finally foretelling with ominous prophetic vision that God Himself had left the Temple would not return to their presence until they accepted Jesus as the anointed Messiah.

“Really, that Jesus was such nice boy…”

So much for Charles Wesley’s “Gentle Jesus, Meek and Mild.”

The point is this. For three years Jesus preached and taught a message of salvation, a message of redemption through repentance and acceptance of Jesus as fulfillment of prophecy.  In encounter after encounter Jesus healed, forgave sins, and invited the lost home to God’s loving Grace. Yet in his final public appearance he laid out the brutal truth that hierarchy inevitably leads to brazen hypocrisy, false teaching and death.

Where do we see this today? The halls of Congress? Media moguls and their sycophant followers? The lofty modern cathedrals of megachurch celebrity pastors with their mansions and private jets and overflowing bank accounts? The holier-than-thou congregationalists demanding their self-assigned pews but never speaking a single word to the homeless and broken?

Brothers and sisters, hypocrisy lies at the very center of societal decay. Jesus saw that in the Temple and in the heart of man. 2,000 years later very little has changed.  To purge sin from our lives we can start with the masks we each wear every day – you and me.

Love God. Love your neighbor as yourself, regardless of who they might be.  Sin no more. Ask for mercy. Simple words of Truth, powerful words of Life.

Peace.
Colossians 1:17

Shouts! Not Silence

“Let the heavens rejoice, let the earth be glad; let the sea resound, and all that is in it; let the fields be jubilant, and everything in them. Then all the trees of the forest will sing for joy; they will sing before the LORD” – Psalm 96:11-13

A few months ago my wife and I went on a traditional “dinner and a movie” date. Now, this may be no great feat for many of you but with our competing schedules finding time for the just the two of us to get out on a Friday night rather resembles 3-D relationship Tetris!

It was fun – seafood enchiladas at one of our favorite Mexican hangouts, then onto popcorn, diet soda (yeah, I know all about how bad the scientists now say they are), the obligatory box of Nestlé Buncha Crunch and a giant pickle – my infernal movie time addiction.  You can see another reason we don’t get out much …

So in we settled, laughing at the campy trivia questions before the previews, making mental notes to see three upcoming films soon to be released, then sitting back as the feature started.

I canNOT believe she just did that!

Everything was going great! Right up until about 5:27 into the movie, when three girls, er, women behind us – apparently on some sort of girlfriends’ date that I still have never completely understood – began whispering. And not that hushed, sotto voce whisper used for secretive exchanges, mind you. Instead, this was that loud stage whisper people use to make sure those of us all the way on the back row of the balcony are in on their little secret.

For the next hour and thirty-nine minutes, we were treated to a running narrative accompanying the movie soundtrack filled with stories from their personal lives, punctuated with comments like “she’s sooooo adorable,” and “omg! That so reminds me of …” and, well you get the picture.

Somewhere deep inside me still lives the polite Southern Gentleman my momma raised me to be. Accordingly, I held my tongue. But let me be clear: I wasn’t happy. I mean look – I paid my $24 for the tickets and don’t even get me started about the bailout loan I needed for the concessions. This was my movie, by God, and I wanted SILENCE. Why can’t people just learn to sit down and shut up?

I thought about this later after the side-effects of aspartame and salt had subsided. And I flashed back to an altogether different conversation I overheard several years ago in another place between two Elders of a church I was visiting.

Basically, the thread of the discussion revolved around their belief in an “accepted doctrine” view of scripture at odds with the Senior Pastor’s vision for their church. Apparently, and much to the dismay of these two Elders, the Senior Pastor felt that human beings were actually allowed and even *gasp* encouraged to respirate and vocalize during sacred worship time.

Image courtesy of escholarship.org

Their position – and I exaggerate here only very slightly for dramatic effect – was that God means for us to sit somberly and quietly in our pews on Sunday mornings, moving and making noise only when absolutely necessary and as directed by the proper order of service elements by duly appointed conveyors of said accepted doctrine.

Granted, this was an extreme example of doctrinaire imperialism. Few of us today would be so dogmatic as to suggest our fellow congregants “sit down and shut up” (with the possible exception of when attending services at the Inner Springs Church of the Posturepedic). Yet over the years I’ve noticed another, more subtle form of that perspective still spreading through our churches every day: silent solemnity.

Surely you’ve seen it: the long, serious faces on Sunday morning, the stiff backs in pew after pew, the awkwardness when standing for readings or singing; the hesitance to utter any syllable other than a Corporate “amen;” for the most part, a complete lack of joy or emotion in the midst of God’s presence.

I have nothing at all against quiet contemplation. Some of my most profound worship experiences have come when the sheer impact of God’s unfathomable power and love for creation simply overwhelms the soul and the only response is hushed union with the Word. These are moments where all of us can let the noise and clutter of our lives fall away as we’re drawn into the very presence of God.

Yet it strikes me that God wants more than our solemn silence. I’m reminded of this every time I open my Bible to the Book of Psalms, especially Psalms 92-98. Time and again in these verses we read of exhortations and counsel concerning how and why and what we should bring to God in celebration of His majesty. Rarely are we instructed to fall silent and mute in God’s midst. Rather, we’re encouraged to do just the opposite!

God’s manifest act of creation and the resulting kaleidoscope of human experience accompanying our attempts – however imperfect – to enter into communion with God’s creative spirit, are both borne out of joy and delight, not solemnity and seriousness. Momentarily set aside qualms over scripture-as-literal-fact-versus-allegory and look at the astounding language of creation from Genesis 1God speaks and life explodes. Or the Birth Narrative in the Book of Luke, Chapter 2Christ is born into the world and countless angels thunder their joy in song.

King David sang, and shouted with joy, and even danced before the glory of God. We read in 2 Samuel 6 that as David brought the Ark from the house of Abinadab he and all his men – the whole house of Israel – were “celebrating with all their might before the LORD, with songs and with harps, lyres, tambourines, sistrums and cymbals.”

Even in my own experience as a worship leader, I’m struck by the difference in reactions to various services, and how an engaged congregation produces a vibrant, almost electric atmosphere that is literally charged with the power of humans accepting and rejoicing in the presence of God.

The God in my Bible is a God of Life, always in motion, imploring humanity to live our lives in love and celebration of each gifted day 

It seems odd to me that God would prefer our silence and stern faces to our laughter and joyful hearts. Didn’t Jesus surround himself with children as often as he could? Isn’t life itself a celebration of God’s love for His creation? Aren’t we encouraged to rejoice at our reborn spirits? This is how I imagine the true worship of our Creator – shouts of joy and wonderment, not silent vows of pinched frowns and uncomfortable postures masking thoughts of brunch plans and afternoon tee times.

One of my favorite verses in the New Testament is found in Matthew 22. Jesus is engaged in a tedious debate with the Sadducees about resurrection theology, a notion they ardently reject, as once again they attempt to trip Jesus up in details. Deftly defeating their argument, Jesus closes with this statement: “God is not God of the dead, but of the living” (verse 32). I love this! The God in my Bible is a God of Life, always in motion, imploring humanity to live our lives in love and celebration of each gifted day we enjoy.

So the next time you feel an urge to shout out for joy, or close your eyes and raise your hands when singing a song of praise, or simply laugh at the sheer wonderment of creation, bring it on! But please, just make sure you silence that cell phone before the movie starts! Oh – and leave the life stories for drinks afterward.

Peace.
Colossians 1:17