20 Pentecost, Cycle A
Proper 26, October 30, 2011
Micah 3:5-12
Ps. 43
1 Thessalonians 2:9-13,17-20 Matt. 23:1-12
Anti-Semitism
is a hatred or prejudice towards Jews because of their Jewish heritage. The very notion of anti-Semitism did not
crystalize until after the atrocities of the Nazis in Germany even though from
the Crusades on through Christian European history there had been periods when
the Jews suffered because of their ethnic identity. Some later mistreatment is said to have been
inspired by some of the portions of the Gospel that seem to present Jesus,
as a Jew, against the Jews especially
the various Jewish religious party.
We need to
remember that Gospels were coming to their final forms as the Jesus Movement
was separating from Judaism. As followers
of Jesus were being excommunicated from the synagogue, as families were
divided by their religious party loyalties and as the Gentiles began to fill the ranks of the Jesus Movement, then one can imagine that the rhetoric
got quite heated up. As the Gospel
writers interwove the sayings of Jesus with the situations in their own
communities, the meanings within their later communities would be different
from the settings for the original sayings of Jesus.
If we
understand the Hebrew Scriptures, we understand that some of the most scathing
criticism of God’s people came from other God’s people. The prophets were brutal critics of their own
people in terms of their relationship with God.
If we understand Jesus as a prophet, we understand that he was one who
was a critic of the status quo in how he viewed the religious life in the
Palestine of his time.
Prophets make
sweeping generalizations. If we were to
believe the words of Jesus that are in the Gospels, one might say that all Pharisees and
Scribes and Sadducees were bad people.
When the Gospels are dislodged from specific contexts where specific
people were being referred to, we are left with a generalization: All scribes,
Pharisees and Sadducees were bad people.
But that would not be true even in the Gospels, since Nicodemus was a
Pharisee and an honest seeker. The
father of John the Baptist was a priest and he is presented in a favorable
light.
We could
further deconstruct a bias against the scribes and Pharisees by noting the
words of Jesus to love our enemies and to love those who hate us. Would that not also apply to scribes and
Pharisees if they were the enemy?
When we read
the criticism against the scribes and Pharisees today, how can we read this and
interweave it with themes of life that are operative for us in our lives today?
I believe
that the issue of reform and renewal are always issues in the life of a person,
community or a nation. The sources of
reform come from within and from without and in many ways. A person like Mahatma Gandhi from a different
tradition than our own can inspire us and rebuke us to take new directions of
authenticity in how we live our lives and how we treat people in our lives. He inspired Dr. Martin Luther King,Jr., a
Christian, in the path of non-violent resistance to injustice. Prophets from within our own tradition can
resurrect forgotten or neglected themes of justice within our own tradition. Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German Lutheran
pastor, made the witness with his life in exposing Nazism as being non-Christ-like.
The issue in
the appointed Gospel for this day is the issue of authenticity and congruence
between the appearance of being faithful and the practice of being
faithful. The critique that confronts
each of us today is the challenge of authenticity:
Does the way I appear and present myself in public agree with how I act
in my life?
Halloween
costumes are fun because we can appear to be someone different than we are. Acting on the stage is the art of
realistically trying to convince the theatre audience that one is someone
else. And in acting there is great reward
for being really good at deception. In golf, one
well knows that having the most expensive set of golf clubs and golf apparel does not make one a
good golfer.
The words of
Jesus as they were recounted within the Matthean community reveal a community
that was concerned about authenticity.
Does our behavior match the words that we speak? In another place in the Gospel of Matthew,
those who look the part of being religious but who don’t back their appearance
up with authentic deeds are called hypocrites, or actors.
And I’ve had
people tell me that they don’t come to church because they find so many people
in the church to be hypocritical. And I
can’t fully disagree with them, but I also like to distinguish between
hypocrites and “recovering hypocrites.”
I consider myself the latter.
Why? To preach the Gospel, is to
preach a very high ideal; one that is quite hard to live up to in every aspect
of our lives. A recovering hypocrite
knows that our message asks for more than we can live up to. And this should make us humble in knowing
that we always have more to achieve in authenticity. A recovering hypocrite is one who knows that
one is never good enough to judge another people as less than we are, since the
future good that always beckons us never give us cause to judge.
Jesus as a
prophet was a critic of those who appeared to have achieved a final plateau
from which they could judge others.
Jesus reminded them that what God revealed to Moses and to the prophets
was nothing less than the perfection of God, and in that direction everyone has
plenty of room grow. And in keeping our
eyes upon where we need to grow, we are less likely to spend our time worrying
about where we think other people are lacking.
The dynamic
of faith in the Gospel is a dynamic towards authentic lives whereby the deeds
of our lives are actions towards the ideals that are always elusive, since there is
always a higher rung on the ladder of the perfection of love. The elusiveness of the perfection love should always
keeps us in the state of being “recovering hypocrites.” Won’t you join a fellow “recovering hypocrite”
today? Amen.
