Hypocrisy Revisited

It is easy to be critical of people who say one thing and do another, but I think that sometimes hypocrisy might be a good thing — read why …

Hypocrisy Revisited

1 Thessalonians 2:9-13 Matthew 23:1-12

There is no criticism of Christianity that is harder to refute than the accusation that we are hypocrites. Even Jesus joins in the chorus: “do whatever they [scribes and Pharisees] teach you and follow it; but do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they teach.” [Matthew 23:3] Okay, granted – he was talking about first century Jewish scholars and leaders, not Christians – but the point is still the same: religious people are known for saying one thing and doing something else.

I think it is time that we stopped apologizing for the all the times that we say one thing and do something else, especially when our words are nobler, more generous, and more compassionate that our deeds. I think it is time to say a word in favor of hypocrisy.

You see, I believe that hypocrisy is the sign that we hope to do more than we can do, that we understand more than we can enact, that our sights are higher than our capacities. And it seems to me that those are good things. It is good that our own shortcomings and limitations do not keep us from higher and better aspirations.

Those aspirations are precisely the things of which our faith is constructed. We aspire, at the heart of things, to do what God wants us to do, to be whom God wants us to be, and to build the community of shalom that God wants for all of creation. Yet everyone one of those things is beyond our capacity to accomplish, or more accurately, beyond our capacity to accomplish by ourselves.

So these very limitations – these failures to live up to our own hopes and dreams – set up the situation where we have to ask for help. We have to appeal to God for guidance, strength, wisdom, and whatever else we think we are lacking. And we have to ask one another for help, by teaming up and sharing our differing gifts.

It is interesting, I think, that we always think of hypocrisy in this way: plentiful good words linked to limited good behavior. It would seem equally logical to ask about the reverse combination: limited good words with plentiful good behavior. That is, I think, what Jesus is suggesting to the crowds and the disciples who listened to his criticism of the temple leaders.

Instead of lecturing like a teacher, he tells them, act like students. Depend upon God to be your loving parent, and upon the Messiah to instruct you in what God wants from you. Act like a servant – saying little and doing much.

When I think of the saints in my own life, a great many of them fit this reverse-hypocrisy model: they did not brag nor call attention to themselves, but they devoted themselves to doing the things that they believed most needed to be done in the world. Even those with considerable knowledge and experience did not set themselves up as experts so much as they understood themselves to be the companions. They did not downplay or misrepresent their talents and skills – that’s a kind of false modesty that is no help to anyone. Rather, the ones I am thinking of were people who accurately knew their talents and skills, and considered them to be tools that could be used in service to others.

By and large, the saints are not people who have figured out how to be as perfect as they pretend to be, they are people who have stopped pretending to be perfect. They have stopped being hypocrites because they no longer claim to be more than they can be, nor promise to do more than they can do.

At the risk of over-generalization, let me say folks in our community are especially prone to pretend to be perfect. There is a high value put on excellence here in Northfield, a value that turns out to be a considerable burden for many of us. Ordinary efforts, everyday talents, acceptably good results do not earn much respect; the pressures to do better, do more, and do it faster and more elegantly takes a terrible toll. And it is devilishly difficult to challenge a culture of excellence – after all, what could be better than excellence?

And yet, it is just this kind of insistence on a particular definition of excellence that leaves us feeling like hypocrites; our own behavior can never live up to the unreasonable standards that we have set for ourselves – and neither can our children’s.

I think the religious kind of hypocrisy follows this same pattern: our genuinely faithful aspirations somehow grow out of proportion, leaving us feeling uneasy and looking inconsistent.

And the sad thing about all of that is that God’s high hopes for us do not require that we always be able to live up to them. At the heart of God’s mercy is God’s understanding of our limitations and foibles, our shortcomings and our sins. God absolutely understands – and celebrates – that our reach is longer than our grasp and our hopes more ambitious than our abilities. God celebrates the ways that we are able to live into our faith, rather than criticizing the ways that we are not yet able to do.

In short, God is forgiving of our hypocrisy – conventional or reverse – precisely because God is always nudging us towards bigger dreams, greater hope, deeper healing, more authentic reconciliation, wider compassion. God welcomes our hypocrisy, because it is the sign that we are reaching forward past our present and into God’s future. And if God welcomes it, we can stand a little criticism from bystanders who don’t see the whole picture.

Amen.

Prayer for November 2, 2008

Almighty and everlasting God, creator of all things seen and unseen, hear now our silent prayers, as we open our hearts to you in the sacred quietness.

God of faith and hope, we bring before you our prayers for those we have named this morning – we especially remember … Bring to each of them the gifts of mercy and grace that are most needed, according to your wisdom and love.

Holy One, we come to you this morning feeling buffeted by economic and political events.

We are weary and worried about financial matters, angry at those who have taken advantage of others, divided about who to blame and who to help, and shaken by the fragility of economic systems we thought were robust. Help us, we pray, to keep these matters in perspective, and to hold off feelings of panic and despair. Give us reason and patience to chart a course for ourselves and for our nation that will protect the vulnerable, reward the prudent, and sustain the earth.

We are weary and worried, too, about political matters. We have been assailed by arguments, accusations, innuendos, and claims; we have heard statements designed to divide us and make us afraid. Help us to hear, amid the din, the hopes we all share for our community, our state, and our nation. Help us to call forth the best from those who are campaigning, and help them to call forth the best from us.

And we are weary and worried about those matters that have been pushed aside in the rush of financial and political news. Rekindle in us the deep longing for the peace that is your Shalom; revive in us the passion to work for justice; restore in us the commitment to inclusion and diversity. Do not, we pray, let us be distracted from our vocations by the clamor of the world, but rather let us move ahead faithfully where you are calling us.

All these things we pray in the name of the one who is our companion through all the events – both great and small – of our lives, even Jesus the Christ, and we pray together now in the words that he taught us ….