Joel 2:1-2, 12-17 • Psalm 51:1-17 • 2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10 • Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21
Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven. So whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be praised by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms may be done in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. And whenever you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces so as to show others that they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that your fasting may be seen not by others but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
Jesus could well have had the following true story in mind as he taught the disciples about living lives of integrity:
There once was a magistrate in a rural town in South Africa, to whom everyone brought a wide range of problems that needed solving. In the village there was a widow, trying hard to raise a teenage son. The child would not eat any healthy foods but only consumed candy full of sugar. The boy would not listen to his mother. So she brought him to the magistrate, and she asked him, “Will you talk to my son and tell him to stop eating sugar?” The man was silent for a moment and said, “Would you bring the boy back to me a week from now?” A week later, the woman brought the boy and asked again, “Will you now please tell my son to stop eating sugar?” But he replied, “I’m sorry. Would you please bring him back in another week?” A week passed, and the woman, desperate by now, came and again asked the man to talk with her son. This time he complied, and the problem was completely solved. He talked to the boy and told him it was imperative he stop eating sugar. When he was finished the woman took the magistrate aside and asked, “When we first came to you, you asked us to come back in a week. Then, when we came back, you asked us to come back in another week. Why?” He said, “Because I had not realized how difficult it would be for me to give up sugar.” (Rhodes, The Challenge of Diversity)
Jesus exposes the disciples and us to our hypocrisy just as quickly as this man’s integrity reflects a desire to have his inner values be in sync with his outer behavior. Both Jesus’ words from Matthew, spoken each Ash Wednesday, and this man’s story both confront us with our double standards, insincerity, and two-faced duplicity that we may try to avoid but cannot hide from.
However, hypocrisy has a broader reach than just us individually. Jesus also exposes the hypocrisy of the church community. The church will say it believes one thing, and then does another. The church professes to open its doors to all, and then closes them. When we say we go to church, I’m sure many of us have heard friends or neighbors or family respond, “Oh, church folk. They’re just a bunch of hypocrites.”
But as much as we put God out of the center of our lives, and as much as we take faith in Jesus out of the church’s way of operating, Jesus also always leaves the door of his heart open to us. When the faith of our lives and of the church is not as seamless as we would like them, Jesus opens the door to us, but does not lower the bar so we can get off lightly. Lent offers us a chance to see the door that Jesus has left open to the church—a chance to deepen our walk with him together, and so let him remove the rusted, ransacked parts of the body of Christ, and fill it with his forgiveness and his justice, so that the church can shine forth with the rich treasure of his grace.
Today begins the Lenten theme of United Lutheran Church for 2011: “40 Days of Purpose.” The goal of this Lenten season is to be able to have a collective answer when someone asks a member of this congregation, “So what is the identity of the church, anyways? Who are you, and why is your church here? Right now we all have good, faithful answers of what that is—but they are entirely different, and they are not questions the wider culture answers for us. Tonight begins a 40 day journey where United Lutherans will become grounded in study and prayer about who we are as Lutheran Christians, and what the purpose of church is. No matter how close or far we stray from the center who is Jesus, tonight we entrust ourselves to being filled with the treasure of who God makes us in the cross of Jesus Christ. This Lenten journey of “40 Days of Purpose” promises to be a rich and renewing time that enlivens our church’s vision of the community Jesus creates—community he creates tonight—not created by the depth of our integrity, or by how many people see the ashes on our foreheads, but by his grace and justice that flow tonight through his cross…to us…and into the world. Amen.
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