Sometimes I almost feel sorry for hypocrites. Don’t you? Everybody hates a hypocrite.
We may be able to tolerate diverse groups of people in our society, but a group that does not get a pas on is the one made up of people who publicly stand for one thing and do something else. We might be able to forgive a politician who allegedly solicits gay sex, but not when they are one of Congress’ leading gay bashers. It somehow troubles us when we see someone who expresses concern about global warming, and they drive the biggest gas guzzler in the community. Or how about the guy who’s always talking about tithing, but gives a paltry percentage of his income to the church?
Even Jesus disliked hypocrites.
We’re often reminded that Jesus never called anyone a sinner, and that’s true. He looked pass the sin to the person caught in a misdeed. Still, even Jesus had no sympathy for hypocrites. Jesus says in Matthew, “And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men…” and “When you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show men they are fasting.”
Will Willimon was talking with a man about his father. It seems this man’s father was a remarkable man. He did not have a huge amount of education, but by staying up late nearly every night, he self-educated himself in the ways of the law. During the Great Depression, a bank in his native county hired this man’s father to receive and to dispose of the many farms that the bank was foreclosing on as a result of the bad times of the Depression. His father had always been deeply concerned about the plight of African-American farmers, most of whom were sharecroppers. Their situation was little better than slavery. They lived on someone else’s land. During the winter, they had to borrow from the landowner to buy food and fuel, loans at six-percent interest. In the summer, when the crops came in, the first money, taken off the top, went to pay back those debts with interest. And there was never enough money. Each year these sharecroppers sank deeper and deeper into debt. His father would meet with these sharecroppers, now that the bank owned the land on which they lived. He trained them in advanced farming methods. Kept careful records of their crops. Helped them get a good price for their work. By the time he died, by his estimate, two hundred black farmers and their families, who had never owned land or a home, were now proud landowners, living by the fruit of their own labor. And when he died, they were forced to have his funeral at home rather than at the local church, because they knew that most of the folk at the funeral would be black and would not be welcomed at the predominately white church. “My daddy almost never attended church,” the man’s son said. “Couldn’t stand to sit there and watch ushers pass the offering plates on Sunday, knowing how those scoundrels conducted their businesses during the week, knowing the way they treated people when they weren’t all dressed up and playing church.”
Who could blame him for his anger and disgust? Jesus would have felt the same way. People who say one thing and act another way.
The word hypocrisy means, simply, “putting on a mask.” One scholar suggests that Jesus himself coined the word, borrowing it from the Greek actors, or hypocrites, who entertained crowds at an outdoor theater near his home. It describes a person who puts on a face to make a good impression. Of course, none of us would ever do that. Well, most of the time. We might try to impress a client. Or a member of the opposite sex. Or our neighbors with the kind of car we drive. Or anyone for whom it is important for us to project a certain image.
Jesus doesn’t want us to make a show of our faith. Jesus wants us to be authentic in our commitment to him. That’s what Lent is all about. It’s about dropping the pretense. It’s about living the Christ life to the best of our ability and not worrying about what the rest of the world thinks. We pray with the Psalmist, “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.” There was nothing phony about Jesus. There was no desire to impress others. He was real to the end, and that’s what he wants from us. Be real, for Christ’s sake!
It was late November 1943. The U.S. Navy and Marines had spent three days attacking the Japanese in the bloodbath that came to be known as the Battle of Tarawa. More than a thousand sailors and marines were killed outright. Navy gunner Harry Starner was one of more than 3,000 wounded. As the medics gave Starner a life-saving transfusion, he looked at the label on the plasma bag and saw his own name: he had donated the blood while stateside several months before. The odds against such a coincidence were 10 million to 1. To encourage a sense of participation, many Red Cross chapters began having donors sign the labels on the bottles. So Corporal Starner was saved by his own blood.
Staring at the cross, we are confronted with the fact that the blood that saved us is labeled “Jesus Christ,” and it took all the blood he had to do the job.
With that sacrifice in mind, isn’t it time to stop “playing the game?”
Isn’t it time to get real in our commitment to Jesus?
Agape, Mike