Sunday, October 01, 2017

Hypocrisy and Humility

St. Paul’s Church in Bergen, Jersey City NJ
October 1, 2017

Year A, Proper 21: The Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost
Ezekiel 18:1-4, 25-32
Psalm 25:1-8
Philippians 2:1-13
Matthew 21:23-32

Hypocrisy and Humility
            Like many other young adults before me and after, when I graduated from college I had no idea what I wanted to do.
            I applied for, and was accepted into, a graduate program in History but after giving it some thought, I decided I wasn’t ready to put in so much time and money into something I wasn’t really sure about – and that would leave me with a ton of student loan debt.
            So, finally, I decided I would teach for a year or two until I figured out what I wanted to be when I grew up.
            That was the start of my fifteen year teaching career.
            Of course, aside from having been in classrooms nearly my whole life, I had absolutely no preparation or qualifications to teach, but when you’re young you don’t let pesky little details like that get in your way!
            It took a while to find a job, but near the end of that summer, just before the start of the school year, I interviewed for a position teaching eighth grade at Our Lady of Mt. Carmel School in Bayonne.
            By then, I was getting a little desperate and I think they were getting desperate, too, so they hired me despite my total lack of credentials. I think I seemed presentable enough – and I was willing to work really cheap!
            As it happens, Mt. Carmel turned out to be a great place to learn how to teach, although the fact that I taught math (among other subjects) was one of the all-time great malpractices in the history of education!
            Mt. Carmel was a way more old-fashioned school than what I had attended.
            It was a very strict and conservative school, where whenever a teacher or the principal would walk into the classroom, all the kids would shoot up out of their seats and proclaim,
            “Praised be Jesus Christ! Good Morning (or Good Afternoon) Sister So-and-So or Miss So-and-So!”
            I remember the first time they did that for me I froze, certain there was something I was supposed to say in return but having no idea what that might be.
            Their religion classes were a throwback to another era since they spent much of the time poring over what was called the Baltimore Catechism which had long before been discarded by most Catholic schools and they learned and prayed the Rosary – nothing at all wrong with that, but not something done in most Catholic schools in the year 1989.
            And, of course, we prayed before every class, with the kids looking like angels, their hands folded, heads bowed, as they repeated words they had long since memorized.
            At the end of every day, we prayed a prayer that will be familiar to those of you who come from the Roman Catholic side of the family: the Act of Contrition.
            “O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee, and I detest all my sins because of Thy just punishments, but most of all because they offend Thee, my God, who art all good and deserving of all my love. I firmly resolve, with the help of Thy grace, to sin no more and to avoid the near occasions of sin. Amen.”
            Kind of heavy for little kids, but a powerful prayer, right?
            So, each afternoon at the end of the school day, we all prayed these serious words and the kids would head off onto the streets of Bayonne.
            In my class that first year there was a boy, who I’ll call David, who was a little strange, maybe a little overprotected by his mom, and often the other kids would steer clear of him or would sometimes make fun of him.
            Well, one day after school, not long after we had all had very piously and seemingly sincerely asked God to help us avoid sin and near occasions of sin, some of these same kids who had just had their hands folded in prayer, cornered “David” in the park, mocked him and beat him up.
            Needless to say, word got back to us and there was a lot of upset in the school about this behavior.
When I tried to think of how to address this in my class, I thought back to the serious prayer we said each afternoon. And so, the next day in class I used the occasion to teach my students a new word:
            “Hypocrisy.”
            I really let them have it, pointing out the hypocrisy of standing like little angels with their hands folded as they prayed these serious words to God and then going out and attacking one of their own classmates, one who was obviously weak, and who deserved love and certainly not violence.
            Hypocrisy.
            Of course, although the violence was a little shocking, there was nothing surprising about those kids being hypocrites – saying one thing and doing something quite different, right?
            It’s an old story.
            And speaking of old stories, there’s a lot going on in today’s Gospel lesson, this tense encounter that takes place in the Jerusalem Temple between Jesus and the chief priests and elders.
            These official religious authorities feel threatened by the “unofficial” Jesus, this charismatic and mysterious rabbi from Nazareth - just as they had earlier felt threatened by the “unofficial” John the Baptist.
            Jesus slyly questions the official authorities about the source of John the Baptist’s unofficial authority and they wisely punt the question, recognizing that they couldn’t criticize the popular John, but they couldn’t admit that he was the real deal, either.
            And, Jesus uses this tense little exchange as an opportunity to tell a parable – a parable about two sons.
One son says all the right things but doesn’t do the right thing.
He’s a hypocrite – his words and actions don’t match.
And the other son doesn’t say the right thing, but eventually comes around and does the father’s will.
Pretty clear message, right?
Now, here’s the problem:
If I were preaching in front of Royal Liquors right now or to the group of addicts hanging out at the corner of Fairmount and Bergen, this would be an easy sermon.
But, I’m preaching in church filled with people who for the most part come to church all the time. We profess to be Christians, followers of Jesus Christ - Jesus, who holds us to such a very high standard, who calls us to love the unlovable, to give even when we think we have no more to give, and to forgive infinitely no matter how much we really don’t want to.
Which, I’m sorry to say, means we’re all hypocrites.
How could we not be?
The Church has a long history of hypocrisy, of course, gathering great wealth, burning heretics at the stake, holding some people to very high moral standards while conveniently overlooking the failings of others…I could go on.
But, it’s not just “the Church.”
I’m a hypocrite every time I walk down Bergen Avenue and pass the man begging in front of Wonder Bagels or Dunkin Donuts and don’t even give him one of the quarters that’s rattling around in my pocket.
I’m a hypocrite every time I pass the group of homeless people camped out on the steps of Old Bergen Church and hurry up, hoping no one will spot me and try to engage me in conversation or ask for help that I don’t think I can, or just don’t want to, give.
We usually do pretty well here in church, but let’s admit it, our hypocrisy kicks in pretty quickly after we leave here, sometimes as soon as coffee hour, which is often like a school cafeteria where we sit with our cliques and some are welcome at our tables but others not so much.
It’s all very human, right?
No, there’s nothing terribly unusual about any of that, except that each week we come here and we say and pray and sing these beautiful words but then our actions fall far short of Jesus’ very high standards.
So, what exactly should we hypocrites do?
Well, I think the answer is found in today’s reading from Paul’s Letter to the Philippians:
“Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves.
The cure for hypocrisy is humility.
By making our own act of contrition, we need to admit to God and to one another that, yes, we fall short of the high standards of Jesus all the time, that too often our actions don’t match our words, and that, really, we are no better than anyone else.
The good news is that God is the best and the easiest teacher in the universe, always offering us the extra help we need, always willing to give us hypocrites yet another chance, and always grading us on a very generous curve.
Thanks be to God.
Amen.