"Hypocrisy Exposed"
How to spot it and what to do about it
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, June 16, 2002
Text: Luke 11:37-54
For many years, at the junction of Massachusetts Avenue and Harvard Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts, two very well-known beggars used to sit on the steps as people were going down to the subway. These two very well-known beggars were delightful men and, if one took the time to strike up a conversation with them, one would find that they had many fascinating and nourishing life experiences and were, as I always commented to a friend, a source for many a sermon illustration.
Well, this last month when I returned to Boston, I ran into one of those men. He was no longer sitting on the steps holding out his hat hoping that people would give him money; rather, he had a large plastic bag over his shoulder filled with aluminum cans. Not wishing to miss any opportunity to talk to him, I went over and once again introduced myself after many years. He was as polite as if he remembered who I was (but I'm sure he didn't) and I asked him: "What are you doing these days with your life?"
He said: "Well, I'll tell you what happened. Remember my friend and I used to beg here?"
And I said: "Oh, yes. I remember you both very well indeed."
He said: "Well, a gentleman came along one day, oh, about three years ago, and took great pity on me. He decided that he would offer me a job and it was a job that I couldn't refuse. The job was to go and clean up Harvard Square and the surrounding areas all the way down to Central Square and pick up the aluminum cans, bring them back to him, and he would pay me handsomely for them."
He said: "It has been fantastic. I've done really well."
I said: "I'm so glad for you, but what about your crony who used to sit here with you all the time?"
He said: "No, he turned it down - because it might jeopardize his pension, he said."
I realized that of the two men, one had been a well-known veteran of the Vietnam War, the other had not. The one had had a pension and had sat there begging simply to make a few extra dollars along the way, whereas the other one had begged out of a profound sense of need.
Here was a symbolic difference between two men: the one who had a difficult circumstance in his life and had the courage and the grace and the hard work to pull himself out of it; the other one who was a hypocrite, who was posing as something that he wasn't in order to make some money and to fleece people for his own benefit. The one was sincere: His outward appearance marked his inward need and vice versa. On the other hand, the other had a disconnect: His outward appearance as a beggar did not in fact correspond with his inward need.
This is the original meaning of the word hypocrite. A hypocrite is someone who is an actor, who puts on an outward show but isn't the real and the legitimate person. He or she is playing a part, but isn't the real thing. It is an actor like that, a real hypocrite, who makes this distinction between our outward appearance and inward motivation.
To some extent, I think it is fair to say we are all actors and therefore we are all hypocrites. None of us, if we were really honest and true, could say that at all times and in all circumstances our outward appearances and expressions coincide with our inward thoughts and values.
I remember (and I consider myself an expert on this subject, I might add) that I was in a similar situation oh, a few years ago, though not one that I couldn't tell you about (unlike some others), when I was caught as a hypocrite. Someone had met me at a dinner and had come to me and told me that she was from New Brunswick. I explained that for a while I lived in New Brunswick and I loved the province very much.
She said: "What do you miss most about New Brunswick?"
I didn't have a clue what to say. My mind went completely blank and I thought of all the things that I had done while I was in New Brunswick - all the vices - and I thought, "Well, I'd better not say those," so I said: "Fiddleheads. I miss fiddleheads." Not only did I do that, I compounded it and went on to extol all the many health virtues of fiddleheads; how I could eat fiddleheads every day of the week for the rest of my life.
The woman took me literally. Within a matter of weeks there was a shipment from New Brunswick: pounds and pounds and pounds of fiddleheads. Privately, I hate the things. I hate them, but it was the only thing that would come into my mind at the moment, and so I'm a hypocrite.
Well, we all do it, do we not? We all say, for example, "Oh yes, I would love to go to such-and-such a restaurant," knowing that this is the favourite one of the individual, only to think for five days beforehand what a terrible pain this is going to be to endure. We all do it to some extent.
But there is a distinction. The distinction that we have to make is a distinction between a sort of very mild form of hypocrisy, where we all play a part; and making that part in fact our lives and basing our reputations, basing what we do, basing how everyone else sees us and thereby even putting others down, as a result of this hypocrisy.
In many ways this has become a social disease in our current era. It has become a social disease that can have a devastating impact on other people's lives. It is not a mild hypocrisy. It is a heavy hypocrisy. In a world that is often very relativistic in its understanding of truth, in a world that is often very expedient and that puts appearances ahead of real and genuine need, it can devastate people's lives.
In fact, if you really analyze, for example, the whole situation of Enron and the collapse of that company and you look at what has happened to its auditors since, as a result of all this, you can see that there was a profound hypocrisy at work. There was a pretence going on, a pretence of respectability and appropriateness when, in fact, deep down inside there was nothing more than greed and avarice. A pretence of respectability, on the one hand, by a corporation that looked as if it were serving the public; that gave money to charities and had its name up in lights because it was giving to charities, but all the while being a sham to its shareholders; exploiting, in fact, many of its workers and destroying many people's lives in the process.
You see, my friends, hypocrisy is serious business. It's not just a simple, once-in-a-while appearing as if we are not. It can be even a social disease that profoundly affects people's lives and can actually destroy life and undermine our economic system.
In the time of Jesus, we encounter exactly the same severity and a similar problem. There were those who had an outward appearance of respectability, but inwardly, in their hearts, they did not.
In this magnificent passage from the Gospel of Luke, Jesus is invited to a dinner and he attends only to realize that the hosts are out to trap him. But not only are they there to trap him, they also have the hypocrisy to put on a meal and pretend to be hosts, but then condemn him immediately because he does not embark upon the ritual washing of hands. So no sooner had the guest walked in through the door than the host turned on him and belittled him. This immediately set up a confrontation.
Jesus was looking, then, not only at the outward appearances of everything, he now also realized that he was being attacked at the very core of his being. He was being attacked by two groups: on the one hand by the Pharisees, many of whom had a very strict religious code; and on the other hand by people who were known as the nomikos, or the Scribes.
The Scribes were the interpreters, the teachers of the law and if you look at the story it seems that the weight of Jesus' anger rests more with the Scribes than it does with the Pharisees. He is angry with them because all his life he sees that they are burdening people with their minute laws and their interpretation of the laws, laws only they can live up to and that ordinary people cannot adhere to. Because they are in a respectable position, because they are writing the laws, they are putting down the lowly and the meek from their high position, and are imposing a burden on people that almost no-one can match except themselves.
And so Jesus has a woe to them. He sees them imposing a burden on ordinary people and hiding behind their respectability.
He also sees that they are not lifting a hand to help people who are not abiding by the law. It is not as if, as an act of grace, they are going out of their way to make sure that people are able to obey the law; rather, they are just standing at a distance and criticizing.
He even says that they have taken away from people the "key of knowledge." In other words, they have no desire for people to know the truth and to be able to follow it. They keep it to themselves and as those who possess it, they look down on those who do not.
Jesus even says that they are the type who build tombs in which to place the great prophets, and then he has something very scathing to say to them: "But you are the type that would kill the prophets in the first place, so why are you building tombs for them when you are exploiting people and you know that it would be the prophets who in fact would be criticizing you? But oh no, you build tombs for them."
In both the case of the Pharisees with their religious law, or the Scribes with their interpretational law, they face the venom of Jesus because Jesus sees a profound disconnect between their outward appearance and their inward reality. It is not so much in a sense that these are not "holy men," but that they are holy men who are using that holiness to put down others and, thereby, cease to be ipso facto holy. Because they are leading others astray, they are not in fact doing the work of the Holy God. That is what makes them such profound hypocrites.
Jesus is exposing to us then, in this passage, the false view that religion is about externals, not about internals; that it's about our salvation, not the salvation of others; that it's about how we are received and seen, rather than how we enable others to understand and appreciate and celebrate the grace and the love of God. In many ways, the hypocrisy of the Scribes and of the Pharisees still lives on very much today.
One of the programs that I love on television the most, and I don't know why because it really is in a sense perverse, is a British comedy on PBS called Keeping up Appearances. Now you all know - you've seen the program, haven't you - of Hyacinth Bucket, right? Well, you know you can't help but love this woman. I identify with her all the time because not only is she like some members of my family back home in England, I'm afraid to say, but there is a sense in which you understand that her motivations are very often good and proper and seemly; that what she wants, in fact, is for her guests to appreciate a nice dinner at her candlelight suppers and that she goes out of her way to impress everybody else by what she has. But you see, the problem with Hyacinth is the problem with the Scribes and the Pharisees. They invite you to dinner just like Martha did in our lesson last week, to impress you with how great they are as hosts, rather than by bringing you into the covenant relationship of love; rather than thinking of your needs, they are thinking of their own. That's what makes Hyacinth so diabolical and lovable at the same time.
So much of religion is like that. So much of religion puts emphasis on prima facie things rather than on things of depth and sincerity. And when we do that, people look at religion and they say: "Ah, look at all the hypocrites who go to church."
Well, of course they are going to find that and of course we are all going to be hypocrites if we don't look first at the real heart of faith. The real heart of faith is what Jesus was about and what Jesus was about was bringing people into the Kingdom of God by grace and love.
There is a beautiful story told by Frederick Douglass in his autobiography. Frederick Douglass was the great 19th century black legal scholar and wonderful orator who went around the United States speaking against slavery. He even went to Scotland to deliver a message and I think I quoted him to that effect a couple of years ago.
Frederick Douglass tells in his autobiography of one of the things that he wanted to do. When he went from community to community he wanted to ask church leaders to allow him to speak on slavery. He said he went from church to church and very often he was confronted with a negative response, but that it was always qualified with: "Well, let us ask the Lord whether or not you are to come to this church" and "Why don't we just come together and pray about it?" He said there was one thing that he found: Every time someone wanted to pray with him, he didn't get to use the church.
In other words, people were hiding behind their religion, hiding behind their prayers and their respectability but all the time with the intent of refusing him the opportunity to be heard. This is the wickedness, I think, of hypocrisy and this is why I think it often does such great damage.
La Rochefoucauld once said: "Hypocrisy is the homage that vice pays to virtue." That often is the case even in matters of religion, where we pay homage to what we believe to be true and have an outward appearance of religiosity, but our hearts don't beat with the justice and the love and the truth of Almighty God.
Woody Allen tells a delightful story (and he has done so many times because, I think, it must have had a profound effect on his life) of when he once received a phone call from the Smirnoff vodka company. The Smirnoff vodka company asked him if he would be willing to do advertisements for them on the air. He thought about this long and hard and he said: "Oh, I don't think so. You see, really I don't drink much and if I did drink it wouldn't be Smirnoff vodka, so I don't think that I should do it. I would be a hypocrite."
The person on the other end of the phone said: "There's $50,000 in it for you."
He paused and said: "Just a minute. Let me get Mr. Allen to come to the phone." He held the phone quietly and then came back on and said in another voice: "Now then, what is that that you would like me to do?"
The person said: "We would like you to advertise for vodka for us."
He said: "Look, before I do that (and I realize there are great moral problems in this) I want to speak to my rabbi."
They said: "Fine."
He goes and he speaks to his rabbi and he says: "Rabbi, I really don't think that I should do this. I don't believe in this product. I think it would be immoral to use my name to promote liquor in this way. I really don't think I should do it, what do you think?"
The rabbi said: "I agree with you absolutely. It would be wrong to do that."
Two weeks later, Woody Allen is walking along and he comes to Times Square and there is a great big ad for Smirnoff vodka. Who is holding the glass in the photograph? The rabbi, that's who.
Woody Allen says: "I don't even know why I care."
I don't even know why I care. You see, that's what hypocrisy does. It hides behind respectability. It says one thing but it means another and this is the problem Jesus had with the Scribes and the Pharisees: They weren't bad people. They were just people who had forgotten the real purpose of their faith - to bring others into the covenant. By their hypocrisy they were keeping others out.
This is one of the great dangers of hypocrisy in religion. But there is also a profound sense in which hypocrisy can make a false view of life as well.
I have a very good friend and he is a very honest man. He is so honest that he always says to me every time I bring up the issue of faith: "Well I'm no hypocrite. I don't believe in God and I'm not just going to sit and warm the chair just because you tell me so. I'm no hypocrite. I'm not going to pretend that I believe in God and put on a sham just like so many of the people who fill your church." (This is not Timothy Eaton Memorial, by the way. This was at another church!) He says: "I'm not like that. I won't do that. I'm no hypocrite."
Then when I look at his life I think, well, he might be honest in the sense that he thinks he is no hypocrite. Yet, I look at the way that he lives his life and I look at the values that he has and I never see him really doing much for anybody else. I see him accumulating a great deal for himself. I think he has a very cozy, private, outwardly respectable life, but I really don't think that he goes out of his way to do anything for anyone else in a meaningful way.
You see, there are many people who dump on religion for its hypocrisy because they think that it's all an outward appearance, when in fact, by denying the very inward power of God, they are no less hypocritical. In fact, they are perhaps even more so. They are even more so because they have turned their back on the very God who created them. It might be fine to say: "I don't believe." That might be honest, but it doesn't make them completely and absolutely and totally right.
In a town in the northeast of England where I grew up for a number of my years, there was a very well-known scrap merchant. The scrap merchant was notorious for following the newspapers. He would read the obituary section and about two or three weeks after the death of a married man, or sometimes a married woman, he would appear on the doorstep of the house. He realized that people were vulnerable at this time in their lives and he would offer, if he thought that the widow or widower was in financial difficulty, to buy some of the metal around the house, such as the railings. (In the town where we lived, nearly every garden was surrounded by metal railings and gates.)
And so he would talk the widows out of their gates and out of their metal objects and he would melt them down and sell them off and make a great deal of money. This man would make a big show on a Saturday morning of going down to one of the major department stores in the town. He would drive up in his silver-and-grey Rolls Royce. Very fitting. He would get out and he would make a big show of going and ordering the finest cakes and coffees and teas and then getting back in his car and driving away.
I remember this man well, precisely because I had an opportunity to meet him personally. At the awards assembly at the end of the school-year, this man appeared on the scene handing out awards in his name to the students who had made the greatest contribution to the public good that year in school!
There are so many people just like the Scribes, who no matter how they make their money, or what form they might bring it in, will always try and cover their lives up with the respectability of handing out things or being seen as the great benefactors in society, for they are benefactors whose hearts are full of vice and not virtue. That is hypocrisy.
So the real question, I ask, is how do we deal with this? Are we all then bound to be hypocrites, whether we are religious or secular? What do we do? Well, the answer I think is very clear.
Jesus goes on to say after our text, in the very next chapter:
Be sure to guard against the dishonest teachers. It is their way of fooling people. Everything that is hidden will be found out, and every secret will be known. Whatever you say in the dark will be heard when it is day. Whatever you whisper in a closed room will be shouted from the steps.
You see, my friends, God is the one who cannot be fooled. For all our hypocrisy and desire for an outward appearance, it is God ultimately who knows what is in the heart.
Often we see the apparently unjust succeeding. Often it appears that that is the way; but it is not in the end, for in all things the truth will be revealed, even in Eternity.
In the meantime, what do we do? We confess. God requires a heart that is open and a heart that is sincere. If we honestly confess our hypocrisy, if we confess that our outward appearances and statements do not always coincide with our inward motivations, we have one thing we can be assured of and that is that our God, through this Jesus Christ, can forgive us.
A third thing that we must do, however, and this I believe is critical. It is to make sure that, unlike the Scribes and the Pharisees, our religion, our faith, is not a stumbling block; that it lifts people up; that it understands the weakness of sinful humanity, but in understanding that weakness, seeks to redeem it and to bring it into the gracious and loving presence of Jesus Christ. If there is anything that religion has done wrong, if there is any vice that it has brought to the world, it is that those who have so desired to keep it unto themselves and been unwilling to share it with others have turned the message of grace into a message of law. When this it has been done, it has kept others down.
That is why I have always loved the line in a bumper sticker that an Anglican preacher in my first pastoral charge in Nova Scotia always used to display with great delight, so much so that he ended up putting it on his back window as well as his bumper. This was his creed: Christians aren't perfect. They are just forgiven.
My friends, that is the answer to hypocrisy. We are not perfect. No person is perfect, save one; therefore forgiveness is the key in the heart.
And a word now for fathers, because I really do believe that the greatest example that fathers can give to their families on this day, that the greatest gift they can give back in return for the ties and the golf shirts, is that when they are setting an example for their children, they do it with the understanding that their lives coincide with their deeds.
The greatest way to lead someone astray is to make lives and deeds disconnect. The greatest way to be an example is to bring them together and for that, on this Fathers' Day, I am someone who can always be grateful.
May we therefore not be hypocrites, but may we be forgiven and may Christ use the church and fathers to bring his glory and his love to a broken world. Amen.
This is a verbatim transcription of the original sermon.