Margie Quinn
A few years ago, I got a Christmas bonus. I went into work and on my desk sat an envelope with five crisp $100 bills in it. I couldn’t believe it and was utterly floored by the generosity of my workplace. Later that day, I went to the post office right before it closed. I was the last person in line.
I stood behind a woman who was speaking to the post office worker with such condescension and malice that my jaw literally dropped. The employee was graciously trying to figure out why her mail wasn’t being delivered to her P.O. Box. She continued to talk over him and argue with him even though this ordeal was not his fault. I was shocked that, at Christmas time when we are at least attempting be nicer than usual, she was being cruel.
I held my tongue, sent my package, and walked out of the post office. I got in my car only to notice the envelope with the Christmas bonus sitting on my front seat. I took out three of the $100 bills and put them in new envelopes before walking back to the post office to knock on the door.
“We’re closed,” the worker mouthed.
“I know, but this is for you!” I mouthed back.
He opened the door and took the envelopes, distributing two of them to his co-workers and keeping one for himself.
As I drove away from the post office I thought, “I’m amazing.”
I thought, I’m not going to tell anyone I did this, because scripture says to do these things in secret. I don’t need to be seen for the good acts that I am doing. I will not tell anyone how amazing I am.
It only took 24 hours for me to tell several friends and family members about my random act of kindness.
Now, this isn’t a story that I naturally thought of when I read our text for today. When I read the text, where the scribes and the Pharisees are being called out for doing good deeds only to be seen doing them, and for having heavy burdens that they should carry with the weak and vulnerable, though they don’t, I thought about all the scribes and Pharisees in our own world. I thought about pockets of Christianity, political groups, and people in power. I thought about frenemies of mine who, to me, represent the scribes and Pharisees more than I do, who don’t practice what they teach, who want respect in the marketplaces but don’t show it to anyone else. I was getting angry just thinking about these people. I was getting angry with Jesus as he admonishes the scribes and Pharisees in this passage.
Two chapters before this text, he drives out everyone who was selling and buying in the temple and overturns the tables of the money changers and the seats if those who sold doves. A couple of verses after that, he is questioned by the chief Priests and elders who want to know by what authority he is doing these things. After telling them several parables in order to answer their question, they want to arrest him. A chapter later, he calls them hypocrites and asks them “Why are you putting me to the test?” A few verses after that, once he has silenced the Sadducees, the scribes and Pharisees dare to quiz him on the commandments. So yeah, Jesus is angry.
We get to our text today and it begins with “Then.” Then, Jesus addressed the crowds and disciples. Which means he is already on an anger tour and then, with all of that being built up indignation inside of him, he looks out at the crowds and his friends and says this: “The scribes and Pharisees sit on Moses’s seat, therefore do whatever they teach you and follow it.” I want to pause there because this text can often be misinterpreted to promote antisemitism. When Jesus says, “the scribes sand the Pharisees sit on Moses’s seat,” he’s validating their authority as teachers and interpreters of the law, given by Moses. They were people who cared deeply for the implication for the Law. Are you picking up the irony here? Jesus then says, “do whatever they teach you and follow it, but do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they teach.” It was not Judaism that provoked this kind of hypocrisy but human nature (something you and I maybe know a little bit about).
“They tie up heavy burdens hard to bear and lay them on the shoulders of others, but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them. They do all their deeds to be seen by others, for they make their phylacteries (small, leather boxes strapped to the arm and forehead, containing parchment with texts from Torah) broad and their fringes long. Wearing these things is not wrong in itself, it is the misuse of touting these garments for show that makes Jesus angry.
“They love to have the place of honor at the banquets and the best seats in the synagogues and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have people call them rabbi.”
At this point, as I’m reading this, I’m thinking, “You tell ‘em, Jesus! Go, Jesus!”
Then, I read something from a guy named Allen Wilson that said, “The temptation of the preacher is to read this text and point the finger. The invitation of the preacher is to speak from one hypocrite to another.”
So, from one hypocrite to another, I am convicted by this text. I would rather be exalted than humbled.
From one hypocrite to another, I read Paul’s letter to the Corinthians that says, “Love is patient and kind” and by breakfast, I have exhibited both impatience and irritability.
From one hypocrite to another, I would rather instruct and teach than to listen or serve.
From one hypocrite to another, I want to tell you the story of how amazing I am.
What we don’t get to hear is what happens right after this passage. We’ve got the before (Jesus is slowly boiling with rage and anger) and after it, Jesus says “Woe to you, hypocrites,” seven times. Woe to you, hypocrites, you lock people out of the kingdom of heaven. Woe to you, hypocrites! You tithe dill and mint but neglect the weighty matters of justice and mercy. Woe to you, hypocrites, you clean the outside of the cup and the plate but outside it is full of greed and self-indulgence. Woe to you, hypocrites! You brood of vipers, you blind guides, you whitewashed tombs. Woe to you!
It can be hard for me to insert myself in the text in the position of the person in authority and power who is missing it. I think this text points out two things that are happening:
1) People teach the law well, but do not follow it. These are people who preach without going out and practicing what they say; people who say that you should be kind to your neighbor and do not do it.
2) People are doing acts only to receive praise. These are people who want to be seen at the event only to be photographed; people who do a random act of kindness only to tell an entire congregation about it. Those people.
Someone told me once that the Church is, if nothing more, made up of 100% hypocrites. That is disheartening…and for me, it’s also freeing. It means that when you heard that post office story, you could relate. It means that maybe, like me, you come here knowing that you have a bunch of crap you’re not proud of but somehow you’re forgiven anyway. It means that, maybe, like me, you need to be humbled week after week for the ways in which you may be wrongly exalted.
On All Saints Sunday, I take a minute to reflect on people who have passed on who did practice what they preached. I think of Saint Tallu, my late sister-in-law, who was never actually ordained as a minister, yet was the best pastor I know. She wrote about the power of a stole. She said,
“a stole is most commonly interpreted as a religious symbol and typically made of fabric and worn by a minister or priest around their neck. It marks the priesthood as an identity that is set apart. I learned the origin of the stole connects back to the actual use and function of a humble cloth draped around a neck to wipe a mouth, mop up a spill, bandage a wound, or dry someone’s washed feet.
In a traditional ordination service, the candidate for ordination steps forward in front of his or her community and, along with their stole, and receives a laying on of hand. But it typically happens inside of a church sanctuary with its white walls and sterile air, and there is no grit or grime of the very work we are most deeply called to do.
There are those ordained by the community of the church and those ordained by the grit and grime of life. My laying on of hands has just been the day-to-day of ordinary work, alongside extraordinary friends, which I believe is sacred in and of itself. And we wipe those hands on the ragged and faded dishcloths from the kitchen cupboard--the stoles which mark our identities.”
Imagine, that instead of my stole I wore a dishrag and after washing your feet, I wiped them with something so practical and holy.
Tallu knew something about humility and for that, she is exalted.
I think about Saint Johnathan Daniels. He was a civil rights activist and an Episcopal seminarian. In 1965, he was killed by a county deputy after using his body as a human shield for seventeen-year-old Ruby Sales. When I went to the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute a few years ago, I saw a portrait of Johnathan with a quote underneath: His greatest sermon was his life.
I think about Saint Risley Lawrence, whose life we honored yesterday here, a man that I sadly never got to meet. During the service, his granddaughter Amanda shared some words about him and told us, “He lived what we’re after.”
And, I think about a Saint named Jesus, who didn’t always want to be called Jesus Christ, but sometimes went by Jesus of Nazareth. Who didn’t always want to be called the Son of God; sometimes he went by the Son of Man. Who preached the Sermon on the Mount and yet isn’t remembered for just that. He took his stole and washed dirty feet, he performed miracles in secret, and he knew something about carrying heaven burdens with and for the oppressed. Who didn’t care about being showy; a guy who “lived what we’re after.”
So, church, from one hypocrite to another, may we be humbled enough to try our best and do the same. To live like Risley, to live like Jesus and Johnathan Daniels and Tallu and for people to say of us, “Her best sermon? His best sermon? It was his whole life.
May it be so.