The Rev’d Quintin Morrow
St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church
www.st-andrew.com
According to the Chicago Tribune, a man named Joe from Rockford, Illinois, ran a live Internet sex site called Video Fantasy. Joe had a ten-year-old son. On his home computer Joe installed filtering software to limit the surfing that his son could do on the Internet.
Joe explained, “It’s not that I keep him sheltered, but my wife and I pay close attention to what he reads, what he watches on TV and what he does on the computer because we have a responsibility to him to be the best parents we can.”
Joe’s sense of responsibility to his son is commendable. Joe’s sense of responsibility to the children of other parents (and the parents themselves!) is deplorable.
Can there be a more stark illustration of hypocrisy?
Nobody likes the hypocrite. The hypocrite rates at the bottom of the social ladder somewhere between telemarketers and junk bond salesmen.
We get our English word hypocrite transliterated directly from the Greek word hypocrites. In classical Greek the word was associated with actors who wore masks to play a role. It was a short jump from there for the word to denote pretense, pretending, and deceiving.
The hypocrite does have one unique and distinguishing characteristic: He seems to be singularly able to keep people from attending church. Yet, hundreds of people attend Cowboys and Rangers games who have no interest in what is happening on the field, but only go to drink and socialize, but these hypocrites don’t keep us from the ball park. Dozens are dragged kicking and screaming to cocktail parties, the opera, and the symphony, yet these hypocrites don’t keep us from the parties or Bass Hall. You see my point: We never consider ourselves hypocrites, and we are selective in our distain for hypocrisy in others.
In the portion of the Sermon on the Mount we will be examining today, Matthew 6:1-8, 14-18, our Lord Jesus shifts thematic gears and takes aim at hypocrisy. He uses three examples, the giving of alms, praying, and fasting to demonstrate that our spiritual life must first and foremost be a holistic, uncompartmentalized, dynamic, and personal, daily relationship with God the Father through Jesus Christ, and not merely outward performances of piety to impress men.
At this stage in the beginning we must be clear about what a hypocrite is and what he is not. A hypocrite is not a humble Christian who struggles with sin, sometimes falls, asks God for forgiveness, receives it, and gets up, dusts himself off, and tries again. The hypocrite is one who has no personal relationship with God but makes a big show of his piety in public to impress others. One anonymous author defined a hypocrite this way: “A hypocrite can be defined as someone who complains that there is too much sex and violence on his VCR.”
Jesus begins in the first four verses of chapter six with some important instruction on giving alms:
Take heed that you do not do your charitable deeds before men, to be seen by them. Otherwise you have no reward from your Father in heaven. Therefore, when you do a charitable deed, do not sound a trumpet before you as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory from men. Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward. But when you do a charitable deed, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, that your charitable deed may be in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will Himself reward you openly.
You will find the same pattern throughout this passage. Jesus admonishes us to practice our piety with a concern as to whether God will accept and reward what we do, and not as to whether other men approve or even notice what we are doing. The Lord’s didactic pattern is: “Do such-and-such secretly, trusting the God who sees in secret to reward you, and not openly, that men might praise you.” The religious crowd of Jesus’ day—He calls them hypocrites here in chapter 6, and again, scathingly in chapter 23—used to hire musicians to blow horns before them to alert the crowd that they were coming to give money to the Temple treasury. Jesus said, “Don’t be like them. The public praise they receive from men is all the praise they’re going to get.”
The NKJV translates the old KJV word “alms” with “charitable deeds.” Alms is better, because Jesus is speaking about giving to the Temple and giving to the poor.
And notice Jesus says “When you give alms,” not “If you give alms.” It was an expectation of the followers of Jesus that they would give.
I once heard the story of the Baptist preacher who wrote a Texas oil millionaire and asked for a contribution to help build his church building. The millionaire wrote back and declined, adding: “And as for this Christianity thing, it seems to me that it is nothing but give, give, give.” The preacher wrote back and thanked the millionaire for the best definition of the Christian religion he had ever heard.
There are three principles about giving I want to share with you briefly. Firstly, your giving is in direct proportion to your self-surrender to God. If you believe God’s promises, you will give generously knowing He will provide for you, and that you cannot outgive God. Conversely, if you really don’t believe all this personal God stuff, and Jesus dying and coming back from the dead, and coming again someday to judge every man according to his works, then you will feel no need to give sacrificially, but will throw in a couple of ones and “tip” God has the plate goes by.
Moreover, making the decision to give generously is the one act that will take the baby Christian to the next level of spiritual maturity.
Secondly, we should give seeking spiritual reward and not favor from men. Giving is hard enough, but giving anonymously is excruciating. We want people to know how generous we are. But give secretly, and see the Lord bless you publicly. And thirdly, give sacrificially. We don’t give whatever is left over after we’ve paid our bills and spent our discretionary income on things we want. No. We determine to tithe—that is, give God 10% of our income—and we give it off the top. We give to God sacrificially first. He deserves our first and our best.
Next, Jesus admonishes us to a private, daily prayer life.
And when you pray, you shall not be like the hypocrites. For they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the corners of the streets, that they may be seen by men. Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward. But you, when you pray, go into your room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in the secret place; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly. And when you pray. do not use vain repetitions as the heathen do. For they think that they will be heard for their many words. Therefore do not be like them. For your Father knows the things you have need of before you ask Him.
We Episcopalians receive a lot criticism from our Evangelical friends for reading our prayers from a book. But the point of common prayer is that you bring the intercessions and thanksgivings from your daily worship time at home with you to church on Sunday morning. If the only praying you do is from the pray book, you’ve entirely missed the point of common prayer. Having said that, the prayers in this book are wonderful. They become our prayers with continued use, and these prayers teach us how to pray.
How are we to pray? We are to pray believing. And not just believing that God is able answer the request, but believing that whatever the outcome of your prayer God is working out the best for you and glory for Himself.
And we are to pray to the Father, through the Son, and by, or in, the Holy Ghost. It is this dynamic, daily praying that moves heaven and changes hearts.
And finally, as an admonition that His disciples live consistent, daily, holy lives, and not merely show off their pretended piety for the sake of others, Jesus commands us to fast in anonymity.
Moreover, when you fast, do not be like the hypocrites, with a sad countenance. For they disfigure their faces that they may appear to men to be fasting. Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward. But you, when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, so that you do not appear to men to be fasting, but to your Father who is in the secret place; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly.
Fasting, as most of you know, is the abstinence from food for spiritual reasons. In Scripture, fasting is usually done to express a profound grief, as a sign of repentance, or to subdue the desires of the flesh to those of the spirit.
Notice Jesus again says “When you fast,” not “If you fast.” His expectations were that His followers would fast. But most of us would have to admit that fasting is not even on our spiritual radar screens.
Richard J. Foster, in his book Celebration of Discipline, writes:
In a culture where the landscape is dotted with shrines to the Golden Arches and an assortment of Pizza Temples, fasting seems out of place, out of step with the times.
From the text, it is clear the Father rewards fasting. But like giving, fasting as Jesus said is one of those “Where-the-rubber-meets-the-road” signs of our spiritual maturity. Fasting is hard enough. We’ve trained our stomachs to growl and demand food at certain times of the day. When we refuse to satisfy our stomach’s demands, it makes us miserable. But fasting anonymously is extremely hard. Such Herculean effort on our parts must be noticed by someone!
No. When we fast—and I am admonishing you to fast, not to lose weight, but for spiritual gain—we are to do so forgiving others; we are to do so secretly; and we are to do so to put our spirits before our flesh. Remember the word of God, and how Jesus used it during His 40-day fast and temptation by Satan in the wilderness: “Man does live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.”
At the 1993 annual meeting of the American Heart Association, 300,000 doctors, nurses, and researchers met in Atlanta to discuss, among other things, the importance a low-fat diet plays in keeping our hearts healthy. Yet during mealtimes, they consumed fat-filled fast food—such as bacon Cheeseburgers and fries—at about the same rate as people from other conventions. When one cardiologist was asked whether or not his partaking in high-fat meals set a bad example, he replied, “Not me, because I took my name tag off.”
As born again children of God we cannot take our nametags off; our “nametags” are the Holy Spirit, given to us at our regeneration as a permanent resident to sanctify us, and as a seal of our redemption.
Jesus once again is telling us that God wants our hearts, and not just a group of people who can mimic the truly pious with outward shows. Be not as the hypocrites, for they love the praise of men. But I tell you, they’ve already received their reward. What you do for God, do to please Him and not men. And your Father in heaven who sees in secret will reward you openly.
AMEN.
