What about hypocrisy in the church?

Introduction

Last week, we started a series entitled: “Questions Christians Avoid.” For the next few weeks, we will be talking about topics and questions I often come across when talking with young adults and people searching for God. Last week, we talked about what we mean when we say the Bible is inspired meaning that God still speaks through scripture while also recognizing both limits of the human writers and the limits of us as interpreters.

This week, we are going to tackle a topic that often comes up. Why should I follow Jesus when so many Christians are hypocrites? Or, why should I go to church when pastors or Christian leaders keep getting caught up in all sorts of scandals?

If we put our heads together this morning we could likely come up with a dozen large churches or Christian organizations who have had some sort of scandal in the past few years. Hillsong and their lead pastor. Willow Creek and Bill Hybels. Ravi Zacharias. Christianity Today. And many more.

And the scandals are also tied to money. Christianity Today recently posted an article estimating that globally $59 billion had been embezzled from Christian organizations. Roughly 6% of all money given is misappropriated. Now, to be fair, a greater percentage of embezzlement happens outside the US than inside as our accounting practices and laws are better enforced. But still. Roughly 1 in 3 churches has experienced embezzlement.

And none of that even considers all the ways Christians proclaim one ethic, wether it be on issues of marriage, finances, forgiveness, kindness, and then fail to live up to the teachings of Jesus on that issue.

I was listening to Tara Beth Leach recently. She is a younger pastor, well, younger than me. She recently wrote a book called Radiant Church, all about restoring the credibility of our witness. So, I was listening to her and she made a comment that has stayed with me. She said something to the effect that many older people in church can worry about the younger generations who are leaving the church> We can worry about what we see as the decay in society. And we can spend s lot of time finger pointing and wondering what is wrong with them that they are not in church. But, she says, if we listen to young people we will need to look harder at ourselves because it is our witness, our lives, that are pushing young people away. They perceive us as picking and choosing what to care about in the Bible and ignoring the things that make us uncomfortable. They feel like we are playing at following Jesus, but not truly committed to all Jesus calls us to. They feel like we are hypocrites.

So, what do we do when the church is full of hypocrites?

For that answer we will turn to Jesus in the gospel of Matthew. But before we do so, let us pray.

Lord, open our hearts and minds by the power of your Holy Spirit, that we may hear your Word with joy. Amen.

Text

Matthew 6:1–6 NIV

“Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven. “So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. “And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

L: This is the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ!

P: Praise to you, O Christ!

General Hypocrisy

This morning, I want to look at two different passages, this first passage focuses on the temptation to hypocrisy we all face and the second will focus more on leaders.

As we look at this text, there are time when we need to do some careful word study to know what a text means. You might be wondering today, what is the Greek word behind the word hypocrisy in our text. Well, it is the word hypocrisy. We just took the Greek word and brought it over into English. Originally, it referred to people who were actors on stage, but by Jesus’ day it was often used negatively to refer to people who were faking their righteousness, their goodness, in order to be admired by others.

In Jesus day, people did this by performing religious acts in very public places so they would be given credit or honor by other people. Their desire was not to please God, but to please the crowd. So, if they were going to give money, they would make a big show of it at the temple. if they gave to a local synagogue, they might want a plaque telling everyone how they had given to build the room or maybe even the whole building. In a culture that determined your value not by your wealth, but by your honor, giving in this way carried a lot of rewards. You got invited to the bets parties. You made new connections for your family. The entire community would owe you a debt of gratitude for your generosity.

I was thinking about this other day as I drove down Fulton downtown passed Secchia Hall on the GVSU Pew Campus, and saw the DeVos Center, and the Steelcase Library, and then passed Van Andel Arena as I made my way up toward the DeVos Children’s hospital and finally to the Meijer Heart Center. Thankfully, we don’t struggle with that same temptation anymore. Seriously, we have a lot of very generous families in our community and it is very hard to keep our good deeds to ourselves.

Jesus says, the people who do their good deeds to be seen have already received their reward from the crowds. Those who keep their good deeds private will receive a different reward from God.

This is part of what leads us into hypocrisy. When we practice our faith in order to receive the approval of other people, we will limit the teachings of scripture, the topics we care about, to those the crowd cares about. And your people and non-believers see the inconsistency.

And so, if our crowd is of a more liberal bent, we may be passionate about ending the death penalty and be quiet about or even oblivious to the tragedy of widespread abortion because our crowd might reject us for condemning abortion. If our crowd is of a more conservative bent, we may be passionate about keeping LGBTQ teaching out of the schools, but rarely consider the way many older single adults violate God’s commands on chastity within and celibacy outside of marriage. We compromise on the clear teachings of scripture in order to fit in or gain the approval of our peers.

And then we can wonder why younger people and non-believers question if our faith is in the Jesus revealed in scripture or the Jesus of our social group.

For those of us who are older, we need to humbling examine our lives and admit where we have settled for a partial gospel or even a comforting lie rather than the full call of Christ to die to ourselves and live to him. We need to be humble when we receive criticism from seekers or younger people,. listen to the truth they speak that we may need to hear.

And, start worrying less about impressing your peer group with your views and start thinking about how your words, attitude, and actions reveal Jesus to our world. Do people see Jesus in you? Or maybe even better, does Jesus see his love reflected in you? His is the only opinion that will matter in the end.

Now to younger people or people seeking after God and discouraged by the church, I have a word for you as well. First of all, join the club. Everyone who knows the church well and loves the church is disappointed by the church. We see all sorts of ways we fall short of who Jesus has called us to be. You are not the only who disappointed in us. Many of us are, too.

And secondly, remember, you are a hypocrite, too. All of us are. None of us fully live up to our own ethical standards and certainly we do not live up to those established by God. That is literally the entire point of Christianity. All of us fall short.

No matter where you go in life, you are going to be spending a whole lot of time with hypocrites. Every religion. Every social movement struggles with hypocrisy. The solution to hypocrisy is not to avoid religion or church people. The solution is two-fold.

First, righteousness, things like praying and giving to poor people are good. So, be a righteous person who practices your spiritual disciplines faithfully. Just do it for God and not the crowd. This is the good Jesus is desiring for us, not turning our back on organized religion.

And then secondly, keep your focus on Jesus and his teaching, not the shortcoming of other people. Let the teachings of Jesus guide your life. Like the rest of us you will often fall short, but you will also catch glimpses every so often of Jesus and his kingdom right in the middle of your life.

You are going to find hypocrites in church, and you will be one of them, but the answer is not to avoid church, but to sink deeper into the teachings of Jesus.

But what do we do when the hypocrisy is not just from other believers, but the leaders of the church. What do we do when our leaders fail to follow Jesus? For that tough question, we are going to jump ahead a few chapters to Matthew 23.

Text 2

Matthew 23:1–12 NIV

Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples: “The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. So you must be careful to do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach. They tie up heavy, cumbersome loads and put them on other people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them. “Everything they do is done for people to see: They make their phylacteries wide and the tassels on their garments long; they love the place of honor at banquets and the most important seats in the synagogues; they love to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces and to be called ‘Rabbi’ by others. “But you are not to be called ‘Rabbi,’ for you have one Teacher, and you are all brothers. And do not call anyone on earth ‘father,’ for you have one Father, and he is in heaven. Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one Instructor, the Messiah. The greatest among you will be your servant. For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.

Leadership Failure

Sometimes, when we get old, we can begin to idealize the past. For just about everyone, the good old days are whenever they were 8 to 12 years old. You have gotten some freedom, but no real responsibility and most of the time you are still protected from all the ways the world is messed up. And so, it can be easy for us older people to act as if when we were young everything was great, but now it is all messed up. But, everything has always been messed up.

That is the entire point of the old Billy Joel song We Didn’t Start the Fire from 1988. As he says, it was always burning since the worlds been turning. Everything has always been a mess. But when you are a kid, people hide it from you.

Even 2000 years ago, they dealt with religious leaders who were more interested in power, influence, and fame than actually following their own teachings. They are all about the show.

There are still pastors and priests and religious leaders today who are more worried about looking good than being good, more worried about their political influence than their prayer time, more concerned with the money in their pockets than the empty stomachs in their communities. It has always been this way.

Notice how Jesus tells us to respond. Listen to their faithful teaching and ignore their terrible example. Learn what you can from people like that, but when we discover their are a fraud, a hypocrite, obey the teaching of God and move on from them.

I have gone through this process several times in the past few years as people whose teaching I have appreciated have had their hidden sins made public. I have on occasion thrown out their books and other times kept the book because it had such great teaching. There is some discernment required.

But notice, Jesus doesn’t say, “Give up on God because the teachers are terrible people.” Follow God even when the teachers are not following themselves.

But most of all, I want to call your attention to the very last paragraph of the text we read. In the church, jesus says don’t give people titles of honor like teacher or pastor or father. (Yeah, we didn’t obey this very well.) Instead, he reminds us that in his kingdom, the leaders serve. They are not servant leaders. They are servants.

Don’t put leaders of the church on a pedestal. They are just fallible broken people. Keep Jesus at the center of your life and worship.

Listen to people who do not seek the spotlight. Listen to people who serve quietly. Listen to people who live humbling and willingly accept correction and humbly sit under the authority of others.

A study came out a few years ago now that people who preach and lead churches are much more likely to narcissistic than the general population. That seems so odd, because we want people in the role of pastor who have compassion and empathy for others. People who will humbly serve. But those in the role are drawn to narcissism. This is one of those chicken and egg situations. Are narcissists drawn to be preachers or does preaching lead to narcissism? As a preacher, I will tell you, I have no idea if narcissists are drawn to preaching, but I know doing this, getting up in front of people and explaining the word of God, pastoring a local church, this life can draw you toward narcissism. It is dangerous for your soul to get up in front of people week after week and say, “This is the word of our Lord.” You can begin to confuse your words with God’s words.

That is one reason I am thankful for Rick and Jeremy, every time they preach. I need times to be in worship where I am not needed. Where I am irrelevant. I need that physical reminder.

So, I would ask you to pray for me and pastors in general. Not because we are particularly holy, but because we have been asked to do work that over time can be dangerous to our spiritual souls. And, when we fall, the damage to others faith is often deep. Do not pray for our success, but for our faithfulness in the work God has put before us.

No matter where you go, you will find hypocrisy. It is simply part of human nature to fail to live up to our own ideals, to fall short of our aspirations, and in weaknesses to compromise values to get what we want in the moment.

Honestly, this is why we need to church. To have a place we go every week to be honest about who we are. To admit our shortcomings. To admit our weaknesses. And be reminded again that we too are loved as we are by the God who made us. And, all he asks of us is that we show the same grace to others and love them on their journey with Christ.

In the name o the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, amen.