Practicing What We Preach

 

Practicing What We Preach

Matthew 23:1-12[1]

There are a lot of reasons why people engage in religion. For some, it’s simply what their family has always done, and so they do it too. For others, attending church or synagogue or mosque is an integral part of their ethnic identity. But there are other motivations. Some practice their religion as a way of “keeping up appearances.” For others, their religious accomplishments are a source of personal pride, and they parade them every chance they get. In recent times, especially in this country, the Christian faith has become a sanctified means of wish fulfillment: if you pray the right way or follow the right steps, all your dreams will come true. I would have to say that some of our motivations for faith are problematic!

Talking about motivations may seem confusing. We’re used to thinking about our faith in terms of what we do. And while that’s important, I’m afraid it’s easy to fall into the routines of what we do and overlook what’s going on in our hearts. To do that is to risk making our faith superficial, hollow, and even somewhat phony. As we follow up on the Gospel lesson where Jesus teaches us about the two great commandments, to love God and to love others, I think one of the ways they can help us is by clarifying our motivations.

Our Gospel lesson for today is all about motivations. This chapter stands at the conclusion of the conflict between Jesus and the Jewish leaders in Matthew’s gospel. At this point, it reaches a fairly high pitch. If we were to read the whole chapter, we would find that it’s filled with references to the Jewish leaders’ hypocrisy. Simply put, they did not practice what they preached (Matt. 23:3). What’s more, it would seem that their main motivation was their own ego. Jesus said, “They do all their deeds to be seen by others” and “they love to have the place of honor” (Matt. 23:5-6). I would say those two—ego and hypocrisy—tend to go hand-in-hand in religious circles.

Now, I think it’s important to say that while no one would dispute that there were “pious frauds” among the Jewish leaders, it would be unfair to assume that all of them were hypocrites.[2] It’s also important to recognize that this kind of hypocrisy has found a home in all religions, including the Christian faith! As one commentary puts it, “all the vices here attributed to the scribes and Pharisees have attached themselves to Christians, and in abundance”![3] A brief overview of Christian history demonstrates that. And our own experience in the church confirms it!

Given that caution, when you look at all the ways Jesus criticized some of the Jewish leaders, it seems clear that they were motivated by their own ego. In all the ways that he pointed out their hypocrisy, it seems that where they went astray was that they used their religion to get “strokes” to make themselves feel important. The truth of the matter is that, whether we want to admit it or not, religion has always been susceptible to being corrupted into just another way for us to feed the unhealthy pride that lurks in the corners of our insecurities.  It’s what tempts us to try to make ourselves look more important or more moral or simply better than others.

But when we indulge that temptation to “exalt ourselves” at the expense of others, we’re really only reinforcing our own insecurities. If my sense of self depends on being better than you, then I always have to find ways of reassuring myself that I am indeed better than you. And I do mean always. And so it becomes a vicious circle—insecurity, pride, ego, hypocrisy. It becomes something of an obsession. Or perhaps even an addiction.

The remedy to this pandemic of hypocrisy in religion is simple but not easy: we humble ourselves and serve others. Jesus said it this way: “The greatest among you will be your servant. All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted” (Matt. 23:11-12). The antidote to the vicious circle of ego and hypocrisy is humble service. When we experience God’s love so deeply that we can truly love him with all our hearts, we will find that we can love our neighbors. Instead of viewing them as “competition,” we can see them through the eyes of compassion. Then we can humble ourselves enough to serve them. It’s important to note that even here, where Jesus harshly criticizes the pious frauds of his day, he also expresses his compassion for them (Matt. 23:37-39).

Our motivations truly determine the quality of our faith and the way in which we put it into practice in our lives. If we’re honest with ourselves, we have to admit that we all have some of the “Pharisee” in us. We all have that part of us that practices our faith because it makes us feel good about ourselves. We all have that part that looks down on certain people as “inferior.” When we practice our faith from those motivations, we can easily fall into the trap of hypocrisy. But when we can squarely face our own insecurities and open ourselves to God’s love, we can have a change of heart. We can begin to love God and love others. We can view them with compassion instead of envy. And when we view them with compassion we can humble ourselves enough to serve them. When we do that, we will be following Jesus’ example: we will be practicing what we preach.

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[1] © Alan Brehm 2020. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm, Ph. D. on 11/1/2020 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] Cf. Douglas Hare, Matthew, 263.

[3] W. D. Davies and D. C. Allison, Matthew 19-28, 262.