Title: Why Go to Church: Real People! (The People Are Real!)
Text: John 3:1-3
Thesis: Church is a place where we may be imperfect but where we are also in the process of becoming better.
Introduction
The word “hypocrisy” comes from the Greek word “hypokrisis” which means “play-acting.” Our word “hypocrite” (Greek word “hypokrites) may be understood as someone who is an actor or one who is putting on a performance. Along the way I believe I have heard being a hypocrite likened to wearing a mask so as to portray a false identity.
My favorite British sitcom is Keeping Up Appearances and stars the well-known British actress Patricia Routledge. Routledge plays the part of Hyacinth “Bucket” but in that “Bucket” is entirely too common, she prefers the pronunciation “Bouquet.”
She was born into a working-class family but managed to marry Richard Bucket, who may barely be considered upper-middle-class. He is a low level civil servant. Hyacinth is the epitome of a snob who is perpetually trying to climb the social ladder and doing her best to impress her neighbors and friends of her high social standing. She looks down on others and is embarrassed by her sisters, Daisy and Rose and particularly with her brother-in-law, Onslow. Onslow and Daisy live in tenement housing in a depressed part of town and have an old junker car sitting on blocks in the front yard.
All of the episodes are highly entertaining as viewers can easily see that her obsession with appearing socially advantaged is intended to compensate for her own insecurities and the fact that she comes from a family she considers common.
Unfortunately hypocrisy is not always so innocently and amusingly portrayed. Hypocrisy becomes most heinous when we discover a well-known televangelist who rails against pornography and prostitution and homosexuality is found to be a user of pornography, a frequenter of prostitutes or is engaged in homosexual activity. It is most heinous when a politician who claims to be a Christian and who espouses family values is caught in an illicit affair. It is most heinous when a person wearing a mask of business savvy and integrity bilks people out of their savings and squanders their money living in luxury even as the ponzi scheme comes crumbling down.
Some time ago the camera was on a well-known and admired politician who was attending a state funeral… he and another pol were walking together and appeared to be chatting and joking as they walked. Then when he saw that he was on camera, he immediately began to appear to be wiping tears from his eyes. Putting on a show of sadness so as to be socially correct is hypocrisy.
I am not foolish enough to make this a blanket statement because I would be wrong to say it is always the case. But my observation is this, whenever someone gets all condemnatory and judgmental about an issue, that person is likely fighting with his or her own demons. They, like Hyacinth, do not like to think of themselves as common.
We’ve all seen hypocrisy and perhaps even behaved hypocritically.
Jesus openly condemned hypocrisy.
I. Jesus condemned hypocrisy and hypocrites.
Seven times Jesus said, “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites!” (23:13,15,16,23,25,27, and 29)
The only times Jesus ever really nailed someone was when they were behaving hypocritically. And it seems his charges of hypocrisy were leveled at religious leaders. Reference Matthew 23:13-19.
When Jesus nailed someone for hypocrisy it was always in conjunction with a person putting on appearances. He compared them to the outside of a cup and dish that they were careful to wash on the outside but inside the cup and dish were still filthy dirty…
I often have breakfast at George’s Café during the week but I usually eat somewhere else on Saturday because of the heavy patronage there on Saturday and they only run their specials during the week so… I was eating at another breakfast spot.
I placed my order for a big glass of water and a cup of coffee, an omelet and fruit – no taters, no toast. The server brought my water and coffee, I lifted the cup and immediately knew something was wrong when it touched my lips. There was a huge lipstick imprint on the side of the cup. He apologized explaining that whatever waxy stuff is in lipstick does not come off in the dishwasher and they have to catch them and clean them before putting them through the washer. He brought me a second cup which I noted was clean on the outside. But when I got to the bottom of the cup there was some kind of brown crude stuck to the bottom of inside of the cup.
I didn’t die and I know the cup had been put through a dishwasher that surely soaped and scalded to death any living thing that might have been lurking in my cup… but just because something looks clean on the outside does not mean it is clean on the inside. That was the charge Jesus was laying on the pretentious religious leaders.
He then compared their hypocrisy to a whitewashed tomb that gleamed and sparkled in the cemetery as a thing of beauty, but inside that nice shiny mausoleum were, as he put it, “dead men’s bones and everything unclean.” A few verses later in the text Jesus said to those he had just called hypocrites, “You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape from being condemned to hell?” Matthew 23:33
Jesus was not a big fan of hypocrisy and he did not want his followers to be hypocrites.
II. Jesus is concerned that his followers not be hypocrites.
“Be careful not to do your acts of righteousness before men, to be seen by them… if you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.” Matthew 6:1
Jesus spoke to the way we practice our acts of righteousness or our piety and specifically singled out caution in three areas:
• How we give our money. Matthew 6:1-4
Apparently it was not uncommon for the religious people of Jesus’ day to make a big show of their acts of generosity… he spoke of some of them as even blowing trumpets to draw attention to themselves when giving. The thing these people wanted was for everyone to look their way and take note that there goes an exceedingly generous and thoughtfully kind person.
• How we pray our prayers. Matthew 6:5-15
In the same way he spoke of the attention some people brought to themselves by the way they offer their prayers. He spoke of them “standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men.”
When I am in a large gathering for the purpose of conducting business, i.e., denominational annual meetings for example, where there is debate on the floor over some issue to be acted upon, I like to wait in smug anticipation to see who will take the microphone, because I am convinced that some people just like to hear themselves talk. Of course the fact that I am smugly observing all of this does not exactly speak highly of my own motives either. But sometimes we may pray to hear ourselves pray and to be heard praying…
• How we do a fast. Matthew 6: 16-18
And of those who used fasting as an attention getter he said, “When you fast, do not look sober as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show men they are fasting.” Don’t look like a half-starved, gaunt, ashen-faced, quivering with weakness faster… instead do not be at all obvious about what you are doing. Get up, shave, shower, comb your hair, get dressed nicely and go about your business… what you are doing is between you and God, not a show for your neighbors.
Jesus was not a big fan of hypocrisy and he did not want his followers to be known for it. However, hypocrisy does happen in the Christian community. Christians aren’t perfect and sometimes Christians behave hypocritically and when we do… Jesus doesn’t much like it.
And of course, hypocrisy is one of the biggies in terms of charges made against the church. We’ve all heard the charge of all those hypocrites in church and sometimes we are…
But I don’t believe the church has the corner on hypocrisy. My observation is that there is hypocrisy and there are hypocrites all over the map The hypocrisy that keeps people from going to church does not seem to keep them from shopping at the same markets where hypocrites shop or from buying gasoline from the same service station frequented by hypocrites or sitting in the stands down at INVESCO Field where there must be at least a few hypocrites in attendance or sitting in the classroom with a hypocritical classmate or living next door to a hypocritical neighbor.
In fact, though hypocrisy does happen in the life of a church, I do not think that hypocrisy is the norm.
How many of you woke up this morning and thought to yourself, “I had better get up and go to church so I can pretend to be righteous and appear to be holy? How many of you got us this morning and came to church to impress your neighbors with your piety? How many of you wrote out a big check and placed it face up in the offering plate so everyone could take a gander at your generosity? How many of you made spectacles of yourselves during the singing of hymns or the praying of prayers in order to be perceived as a deep and devout worshipper?
The fact of the matter is, we are all just people. Sometimes we get it right and sometimes we don’t. Sometimes we are actually behaving hypocritically but usually what we think of as hypocrisy is nothing more or less than the gap between who we wish we were and where we believe we should be.
The fact of the matter is that we have all sinned and come up short in light of the glory of God. ( I think that is in the bible somewhere… Romans 3:23.) We are all just people saved by grace and in the process of being conformed to the image of Christ.
And that is precisely one of the major reasons I like to go to church.
III. Church is the place where those of us who are seeking Christ and those of us who are following Christ will find people who are just like us… we are all on a journey of faith. We are all learning to be followers of Christ.
“Let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another – and all the more as you see the Day approaching.” Hebrews 10:24-25
Church is a place where we experience what it means to be together.
A. No one is perfect. We are all recipients of God’s mercy and grace.
“As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him; for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust [people].” Psalm 103:13-14
The news has been punctuated with news of wild fires burning north of here along the Front Range. The first was the Fourmile Canyon Fire that eventually proved to be very destructive with the loss of around 170 homes. Then just as the Fourmile Canyon Fire was being brought under control the Reservoir Fire broke out west of Loveland and the latest is the Peewink Mountain Fire.
When I saw news clips and photos of the people who had to evacuate their homes and of those who lost their homes I was surprised. Wealthy people lost their homes and poor people lost their homes. Highly educated people lost their homes as well as the not so much. Young people lost their homes. Middle-aged people lost their homes and elderly people lost their homes. Some of the homes were large and expensive and other homes were not. But despite the diversity of people who lived in the Fourmile Canyon area… ultimately, they were all in the same boat, so to speak. They all needed a new roof over their heads.
So it is with all of us… we are all in the same boat and we all need the grace of God and so here we are from week to week. We are all in the same boat.
And, despite all that is different about us, we are in the same boat together and we are all headed in the same direction.
B. No one is perfect but we are headed in the right direction.
“Being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” Philippians 1:6
In 1964 in a game between the Minnesota Vikings and the San Francisco 49ers… the 49er quarterback was scrambling to escape being sacked when he saw a receiver downfield. He fired the ball and the receiver caught it but then fumbled the ball. Minnesota defensive player Jim Marshall scooped up the ball and ran the wrong way for 70 yards where upon crossing the goal line he tossed the ball into the stands in elation thinking he had scored a touchdown for his team rather than a safety against his team.
No one is perfect and occasionally we may be headed in the wrong direction but our teammates forgive us and embrace us and by the grace of God we continue on in the right direction.
“Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. Everyone who has this hope purifies himself, just as he is pure.” I John 3:2-3 We are not who we will be, but one day we will be.
“[God has placed people in our lives] to prepare us for works of service, so that the body of Christ, i.e., the church, may be built until we all reach unity in the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ… we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ.” Ephesians 4:13-15 We are not mature but we are maturing.
Conclusion
One of the reasons I go to church is that it puts me in the company of other people who want to narrow the gap between profession and practice. It is good to be among people who favorably influence you and encourage you to be better by the grace of God.
A pastor told of an experience he had one day at the local public library. He was in his car and about to leave the parking lot when a scraggly man, pushing a shopping cart filled with what looked to be junk, began to cross the drive. As he waited the front wheels of the shopping cart caught in a crack in the pavement, the cart tipped over and everything in the cart was strewn in the middle of the drive. There was no way out until the man picked up his stuff and moved out of the way.
As he sat there impatiently drumming his fingers on the steering wheel, a young woman in the car behind him got out, walked past his car to where the man was and began helping the man place his things back in the cart. And she then helped him get his cart past the rough place in the pavement so he could continue on his way.
The pastor said that he never in all his life felt more hypocritical than at that moment. He did not know who the woman was or if she was a Christian but he knew he wanted to be more like her. Her example inspired him to become better.
Being with people who live like that, encourage us in our own pursuit of Christ-likeness.
Real people live in the world and real people go to church.
Church is a place where real people encourage other real people to continue in the process of becoming increasingly conformed to the image of Christ.
