Matthew 23:5-12
Everything they do is done for men to see: They make their phylacteries wide and the tassels on their garments long; they love the place of honor at banquets and the most important seats in the synagogues; they love to be greeted in the marketplaces and to have men call them ‘Rabbi.’
But you are not to be called ‘Rabbi,’ for you have only one Master and you are all brothers. And do not call anyone on earth ‘father,’ for you have one Father, and he is in heaven. Nor are you to be called ‘teacher,’ for you have one Teacher, the Christ. The greatest among you will be your servant. For whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.
“Serve to be Seen”
A story is told of a very wise turtle that wanted to spend the winter in Florida, but he knew he could never walk that far. So this very wise turtle convinced a couple of geese to help him, each taking one end of a piece of rope, while he clamped his vise-like jaws in the center. The flight went fine until someone on the ground looked up in admiration and asked, "Who in the world thought of that?" Unable to resist the chance to take credit, the turtle opened his mouth to shout, "I did--"
It’s so tempting to take credit for the good things we do. I mean… I learned early on in my marriage… that if I was going to clean out the dishwasher, to do it when Alyssa could see me doing it. You see… emptying out the dishwasher may indeed be a very good thing, but it helps to be seen doing it!
I know there are exceptions, but generally speaking… it goes against our nature to do things without getting the credit. Sure we’ll help someone out, sure we’ll lend that hand… but normally we want people to know that we did it. We want that glory… we want that warm feeling of someone REALLY appreciating us… we want people to KNOW just how good we are.
Maybe even worse yet, we may begin to keep track in our head. OK… I did this for so and so… now they are going to owe me something, and someday I will collect! Or if nothing else, someone will see my good deed and decide to reward me for my kindness. We begin to feel entitled… to have our good deeds noticed and rewarded.
It’s a state of thinking that can be seen clearly in our scripture this morning.
The Pharisees in our text are something of applause seekers themselves. We are told that they made their phylacteries wide for all to see. I mean… seriously… don’t we all prefer wide phylacteries?!? I’m waiting for someone to say, “Ok, I’ll bite… what’s a phylactery.” To be honest I had to go look it up. Turns out, that phylacteries were small leather boxes containing a piece of vellum inscribed with four sacred texts from the law usually worn prominently on the forehead. The bigger the phylactery… the holier you were!
So to show their piety to the world, these leaders made large, showy phylacteries and made their tassels ostentatiously long. The long tassels likewise showed that they were dutifully following the very letter of law.
So, when you were in the market shopping for your daily groceries and you saw one of the teachers walk by with a phylactery as big as small table mounted on his forehead… and tassels so long that they were in danger of being tripped on… you could look at the man and say… “Boy, he is really full of shhhhhhhinging examples for us to follow and learn from.”
Our scripture goes on… They love the reserved seats at the five star restaurants and they love having the very front pew reserved for their seating. That way everyone can see them attending worship and they get the best seat in the house. They love to be recognized in public and love to be called ‘Rabbi’ which means ‘Master!’ If there were paparazzi back then… surely they would follow the Pharisees around… at least the Phariesees would have wanted them to!
In some ways, you look at this text and it feels like Jesus is building us a straw man… someone SO despicable that everyone can see the folly of their ways. We look at their example and think to ourselves, “Who do they think they are kidding… right?” I mean… the depths that they go through to be seen are so huge that they have become completely transparent. So when Jesus calls them out because of it, sits you and I down… and says don’t be like this… we are like “Duh!”
And yet… can we really claim to be that different? How many of us… if we examine ourselves closely and are completely honest with ourselves… would see that we walk around with table-sized phylacteries to show just how good we are.
You know… I’ve spent a lot of time this week… thinking about my sermon last week. I admitted to you all that it had been an extremely long and hard week and that my sermon suffered severely for it. When my friend Craig and I were talking about our sermons later that day he asked me why I even bothered to tell you all that I was going to give a bad sermon! He had a good point. I could have just gone on like any other week and prayed that the Holy Spirit blessed the sermon to your ears… but part of me wanted you to know.
I don’t know… I think part of it was that I felt like I needed to justify my lack of preparation… and if I’m honest with you all again… in the light of this weeks sermon, I’ve really wrestled with whether or not a small part of my sinful nature wanted to build a phylactery for you all to see… so that you would see what an awesome pastor I had been that past week despite my terrible sermon.
I find myself… after close examination guilty of the same sins of the Pharisees. I think if we were all very honest with ourselves… we would find ourselves standing right next to the people Jesus is condemning more often than not.
Perhaps it is so… that each one of us stands there… side by side with the Pharisees… with table-sized phylacteries strapped to our foreheads… receiving this condemning word from Jesus.
So… my phylactery wearing friends… what should we do about it? How do we move from being the bad kind of Christian that Jesus condemns… to the good of Christian that Jesus calls us to be?
The heart of today’s message from Jesus is about service! Not simply doing good things… but doing them for the right reason! Indeed we are all called to be disciples and to do good deeds but we are not to do them because we feel guilty… we are not to do them because we seek glory… we are not to do them because we are seeking reward.
We need to be diligent to make sure our heart is in the right place. To make sure we are in a spot where everything we do is done to worship and glorify God. We need to be prepared to give greatly… and to do it in a way that puts all of the focus on WHY we are doing it… instead of putting the focus on WHO is doing it! We need to act in such a way that when we do great works… people see Christ… and not us.
It is humbling… to give up the credit of really good deeds to someone other than ourselves. Its tough to see someone else reap the rewards for our hard work… we struggle with feeling entitled… feeling that we have earned this. But brothers and sisters, do we really?
Everything we have comes from God… do you believe that? Every good deed we do that goes against our own sinful human nature is done ONLY through the power of the holy spirit… do you know that? The very reason we are here today, focusing on this text and struggling with its meaning for us 2000 years later… is because of what Jesus Christ has done for you. In the light of all of this… who really deserves the credit?
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
