"You Hypocrite!"
based on Mark 7: 1-8, 14-15, 21-23 and James 1: 17-27
Jim from B.C.

"You hypocrites!" Jesus said to some of the scribes and Pharisees.

The word hypocrite originally comes from ancient Greek theatre. It meant to act a part in a play, to pretend, to display a mask. A good definition of a hypocrite is a person who is not, on the inside, what he or she is showing on the outside. In other words the person is incongruent. There's a noticeable inconsistency between what's on the inside and what people see on the outside.

So, for example, you've probably known people who are too nice, overly polite, who have no other facial expression but a smile, who fawn and gush over how wonderful everything is, when inside, within their minds and hearts, all is not peace and tranquility. They are presenting a false front to the world.

There's a wonderful scene in the award-winning movie "Annie Hall", where Woody Allen and Diane Keaton, who are playing very neurotic characters, have just met, and they're talking to each other, trying to get to know each other, but not succeeding very well. The scene is clever and funny, because after everything they say, the audience gets to hear what they're really thinking, which is quite different!

The Pharisees whom Jesus met, presented a very righteous front. But Jesus knew what they were really like. You notice in today's Gospel Lesson, that Jesus is not faulting the Pharisees for their cleanliness, but for their incongruence. In one place in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus says: "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."

Here in today's Gospel Lesson, Jesus says to the Pharisees, and by extension, also to us): "You are concerned about appearance and external behaviour, but neglect the more important INWARD things, things of the heart and of the spirit. You pile up rules for outward behaviour, but its just a distraction from dealing with your arrogance, dishonesty, greed, lust and envy." Jesus says, "How dare you criticize others as unrighteous! Your outward behaviour may be wonderful, but on the inside, you're worse than they are."

In today's Second Lesson, James talks about another kind of hypocrisy. He says that there's an incongruence, in those he's writing to, between the hearing of God's word, and doing it. There's an inconsistency between their speech and their action— what we call nowadays: "Not walking your talk." If you don't walk your talk (including bridling your tongue, James says), then "your religion is worthless." And the final verse is very telling: "Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world."

According to James' definition of hypocrisy, all of us are hypocrites, because none of us fully practices what we preach.

Therefore, critics of the church, who complain that the church is full of hypocrites, are correct! And I say, "Well, join the club!" Who in the world has not sinned, in being more concerned with outward appearance than inward purity, more concerned with saying the right thing than doing the right thing, more concerned with what other people think of us than with what God thinks of us?

The Bible tells us that God's concern is with the inward self, not the outward appearance. If you look up the word "heart"in a concordance, you'll find passages like these: "Man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart." "He know the secrets of our hearts." "Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me." "Blessed are the pure in heart." And so on.

When God came to earth as Jesus the Christ, he went straight to the heart of the matter. He said to the Pharisees: "First cleanse the inside of the cup and plate, so that the outside also may be clean."

What did Jesus preach, when he walked the dusty roads of Palestine? The same thing as the Old Testament prophets and John the Baptist: "Repent". Except that Jesus preached it with new urgency, saying: "The kingdom of heaven is at hand. It's come among you in my person (he said), and you have to make a decision about whether you're going to clean up your life.

Jesus scolded the Pharisees because to change outwardly and not inwardly only makes the hypocrisy worse!

Well, if we have let Jesus convict us of our hypocrisy, the next question is: "How do we overcome it?

According to my reading of Scripture, there are three things we need to do:

First of all, try to be ourselves. Be yourself. In the Gospels, we find that Jesus spent more time with the tax- collectors and criminals and prostitutes (the so-called "sinners") than with the scribes and Pharisees, not only because these people were more needy, but also because they were less pretentious, and more open and honest about who they were and what was really going on (and going wrong) in their lives. They were real people, with no need to put up a false front or pretend to be something they weren't.

So also with us. Before we can repent and change, and with God's help improve who we are, we have to BE who we are. We have to admit we are sinners, and not try to pretend we're more righteous than we are. We have to be ourselves, in the sense of being honest about what's going on inside us— opening our hearts to God in prayer, and opening our hearts to others, in self-revelation and private confession.

I love the story of the woman who came home from her first-aid class, and told her husband, "Already today, on the way home, I had a chance to practice my first-aid. I was crossing Main Street, when I heard a terrific crash, and there was a man lying in the middle of the street, tossed from his car. His legs were broken and his skull was fractured, and he was bleeding heavily. Quick as a flash my first-aid training came back to me. I immediately sat down on the curb, and I put my head between my legs to keep from fainting."

Being yourself is the first step to overcoming hypocrisy. Jesus held up children as an example, of unpretentiousness and genuineness (or ingenuousness, I suppose is the word). Jesus said, "Of such is the Kingdom of God." Most children haven't yet learned how to be hypocritical. Unlike adults, they normally have no trouble being themselves. What's inside just comes out!

This sometimes happens near the end of life, too, when elderly people finally realize: Hey, I have no more need to put up a fake front. I don't have the time to formulate nice words; I don't have the energy to put my best foot forward. I am who I am, and people will have to take it or leave it.

The most startling example is when an older person has a stroke, and a blood clot cuts off the flow of blood to the part of their brain which controls their inhibitions. Then they're no longer capable of holding back their inward thoughts and feelings.

My late father is an example. After his strokes, whatever he was feeling, happiness or sadness, automatically showed on his face. Fortunately, he was happy most of the time, so the nurses at the care home gave him the nickname "Happy". But he would also weep at the slightest stimulus. He was like a child, in that sense.

And when I visited him, I sometimes thought: What a shame that all of us were not more like him, like children in our openness and honest expression of what is going on inside.

So be yourself. That's the first thing you can do to overcome hypocrisy.

But being yourself is difficult, when you're in a society or a group or a family that condemns you for being yourself! So the second thing we can do to overcome hypocrisy, is to love one another— love one another enough to accept the other person when he or she has the courage to be themselves.

One of the reasons AA meetings work so well is that it's the one place a lot of those people can be themselves, be totally honest, and still be accepted. Many churches are not like that. They ostracize, or more subtly refuse to accept those who dare to be themselves. And so a lot of people hesitate to be themselves among fellow church members. They don't always say what they're really thinking, for fear of repercussions, for fear of what others might think of them, and for fear of being condemned or rebuffed.

Jesus called the church, not only to be an evangelizing community, but also a caring community. And people will want to be a part of our church community, if they discover that they are accepted for who they are, whoever they are; and if they find that they are encouraged to reveal what's going on inside them; and if they find that any personal information that they share, will be kept confidential; and that their feelings won't be stomped on, but will be respected as sacred ground.

It takes a community of trust, for people be themselves, and that's what the church should be. Because being ourselves and accepting ourselves and accepting one another, is not only the Christian thing to do, the loving thing to do, but it's also the necessary first step towards true repentance and deep change.

Therefore Jesus accepted everyone as his disciples, no matter who they were, as long as they were willing to try to follow him, and to grow, as long as they were attempting to repent and to change whatever was wrong with their lives. Jesus rejected hypocrites, but he never rejected anybody for being themselves.

The third thing we can do to overcome hypocrisy, is to repent, and call upon God to help us to change whatever is still wrong in our lives.

To use an automobile metaphor, to fix your engine, you don't go to the body shop. To fix your soul, the very centre of your self, you don't go to the fitness director, or even a doctor. You must go to the "Soul Man", to the Healer of healers, Jesus our Saviour. He alone offers forgiveness for sins and resurrection for all wrongs. He provides a new Spirit for a new life. Not just a new direction, but a new creation.

St. James says: "Therefore rid yourselves of all sordidness and rank growth of wickedness, and welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save your souls." Sordidness means dirtiness. Rank growth of wickedness implies a stink. We need our sins washed away. We need the perfumed oil of God's love penetrating us to the core. We need Jesus' purity and righteousness, earned for us on the cross, to cover us like a new suit, like a new dress.

And James says that all of this comes from God alone. "Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. In fulfillment of his own purpose he gave us birth by the word of truth, so that we would become a kind of first fruits of his creatures."

How blessed we are! So may God help us, to be ourselves, before God and before each other, and may God then, by the almighty power of His Spirit, give us a new birth, a renewal, from the inside out. God grant it, for Jesus' sake. Amen.