Introspection: I, Hypocrite

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I, Hypocrite

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!  For you are like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful, but inside they are full of the bones of the dead and of all kinds of filth.  So you also on the outside look righteous to others, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.

Matthew 23:27-28 (NRSV)

I focused on the score
But I could never win
Trying to ignore
A life of hiding my sin

To label me
A hypocrite would be
Only scratching the surface
Of who I've been known to be

From "Undo" by Rush of Fools

If you been following this blog for a while, you probably know that I am a certified Lay Speaker in the United Methodist Church.  In other words, I am occasionally called to preach and lead worship at a church within the denomination when the pastor is unable to do so.  This morning, I preached at a church pastored by an old friend of mine who is currently out of the country on a mission trip.  I had already written a sermon based on the Gospel reading prescribed for today by the Revised Common Lectionary, so I planned to preach it again this morning.

When I prepare to preach sermons I've written previously, I look for ways to revise them.  As I reviewed the sermon I would preach this morning, I thought it was fine as it was.  I couldn't find anything I really needed to add or delete.  That said, I felt rather uneasy about preaching it.  In my sermon, I suggest that we are daily presented with the choice to be either wise or foolish.  I go on to suggest that the wise servants of Christ are the ones who love God with all their hearts, souls, and minds and love their neighbors as they love themselves.¹  They serve Christ by serving the people with whom He directly identifies, namely their neighbors who are in need.²

I often worry about what people think of me, but I have to admit that sometimes what I really fear is that people are seeing what I know to be my own faults and shortcomings.  In the last few months, there have been at least a couple of instances when people might have perceived in me some apathy toward someone who needed help.  Naturally I have been feeling some cognitive dissonance about preaching a sermon about our calling to serve our neighbors in need.

My sermon didn't need much work, but I need a lot of work when it comes to practicing what I preach.  I have a long way to go when it comes to loving my neighbors as Christ has called me to love them.

Peter Rollins tells a story about a prince who hates the church so much that he actively oppresses Christians in his empire.  He goes so far as to disrupt worship services and to imprison church leaders.  The prince especially hates a certain wise and kind priest who is beloved by his community.  The prince tells himself that the priest is just a hypocrite and a liar, but the truth is that he is actually envious of the respect that the people have for the priest.

One day the prince devises a plan to put a stop to the priest's work once and for all, without drawing the ire of the people.  Knowing that the priest is poor, he approaches him and offers him ten thousand rupees to write a letter confessing that he is a hypocrite and a liar.  This letter will be distributed throughout the empire.  The priest takes a moment to consider the prince's offer and then agrees to do what the prince has asked, on three conditions.  The first is that the prince must stop harassing him and his church.  The second is that the prince must release all of the priest's fellow church leaders from prison.

The third condition is that the prince give the priest time to raise the ten thousand rupees.³

The prince approaches the priest with the intention of bribing him into destroying his own reputation by confessing his dishonesty and hypocrisy.  The priest, knowing his own fallibility, agrees to confess his dishonesty and hypocrisy, but he misunderstands the prince's offer and thinks that the prince expects him to pay a fine for said dishonesty and hypocrisy.

I suspect that most - if not all - preachers and teachers in the Church are guilty of some degree of hypocrisy.  What I mean is that I suspect we all fall short of practicing what we preach at times.  We study our holy scriptures so that we may learn God's will for humanity and then teach it to others, yet, because we are imperfect human beings, we quite often fail to actually do God's will.  We do not always practice what we preach, but, if we are going to follow our calling honestly, we cannot preach only what we practice.  We have to proclaim what we believe to be true, even when we fall short in living according to it.

In the event, dear reader, that you ever read one of my blog posts or listen one of my sermons and suspect that I might be a hypocrite, I just wanted to go ahead and confirm your suspicions.  One of the most common criticisms lobbed at Christians is that we’re hypocritical.  Sadly this criticism is often true.  The suggestion has been made that the Church is actually not full of hypocrites because there is plenty of room for more.  One reason we need the Church in the first place is that we need a community in which we challenge each other to be our best selves and to actually live according to what we claim to believe.


Notes:

1. Matthew 22:37-40
2. Matthew 25:31-40.
3. Peter Rollins.  The Orthodox Heretic and Other Impossible Tales.  2009, Paraclete Press.  pp. 52-54

My "shadow selfie" was taken by me in 2014.