Invisible Believers

(Uriel Presbyterian Church )

Sermon

“Invisible Believers”

20 February, 2011

Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, A

Faith is the invisible energy that produces visible results.

Hebrew Text: LEVITICUS 19:1-2, 9-18

(NRSV)1The LORD spoke to Moses, saying: 2Speak to all the congregation of the people of Israel and say to them: You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy.

9When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest. 10You shall not strip your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the alien: I am the LORD your God.

11You shall not steal; you shall not deal falsely; and you shall not lie to one another. 12And you shall not swear falsely by my name, profaning the name of your God: I am the LORD.

13You shall not defraud your neighbor; you shall not steal; and you shall not keep for yourself the wages of a laborer until morning. 14You shall not revile the deaf or put a stumbling block before the blind; you shall fear your God: I am the LORD.

15You shall not render an unjust judgment; you shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great: with justice you shall judge your neighbor. 16You shall not go around as a slanderer among your people, and you shall not profit by the blood of your neighbor: I am the LORD.

17You shall not hate in your heart anyone of your kin; you shall reprove your neighbor, or you will incur guilt yourself. 18You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.

Gospel Text: MATTHEW 6:1-6, 16-21

(NRSV) 1“Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven.

2“So whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be praised by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. 3But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, 4so that your alms may be done in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

5“And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. 6But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

The major religious events of ancient Israel are great theater on the grand scale. Noah’s small ark standing on the vast plains of Ur waiting for the billowing clouds of heaven to be rent asunder by the deluge. 

Moses going up on Mount Sinai where  the mists close behind him like curtains. He brings down the commandments, and the children of Israel are unimpressed, and in grand dudgeon he smashes them along with the golden idol they have made while he was gone. 

Building on the dazzling victories and the meteoric rise of his father King David, Solomon builds a huge temple. Inside, behind a great blue, purple and crimson curtain, is the Holy of Holies, where the high priest, like Moses before him, communes with God. He returns from this holy communion with the most precious gift, the forgiveness of sins, the healing of the broken covenant. To this day the pulling aside of the curtain of the ark in the synagogue is done with great ceremony as a reminder of this and with everyone standing and facing the ark as it is opened.

Given all this, it is very interesting that Jesus flies in the face of historical drama and tells his listeners NOT to be seen practicing their devotion openly. In fact he describes those who do so as “hipokritai” (u`pokritaiv,) which i s exactly the same word as ‘hypocrite”   . But even more interesting is that hipokritai doesn’t entirely mean what we think it means in Greek. In Greek it’s not an insult at all, it’s  the word for ‘stage actor’--someone standing on a stage, making a speech. But here it’s being used to describe people who perform religious acts with an eye on the grandstand. People who crave not only people’s attention but God’s as well.

But I’m getting a little ahead of myself. Ironically, I need to set our stage a little bit myself. Just to remind you, we’re in Galilee with Jesus, on a nice afternoon, sitting in the high hills with the wind from the sea of Galilee far below us gently blowing across our sun-drenched backs We’re gathered to hear Jesus teach us his most important lessons, lessons that history calls the Sermon on the Mount. After Jesus teaches us the surprising virtues of meekness, peace and poverty, which he calls the beatitudes, and compares his listeners to salt and light , Abruptly  Jesus begins to  tell us how we shouldn’t act; all those things that make our lives miserable and trapped. But now Jesus changes direction again. He leads us out of the land of "you shall not,"--the land of commandments, to bring us into the land of holy living;--the land of "you shall," That is where we find ourselves this morning. 

Some of the things that Jesus tells us to do are to give alms and to pray and later on his sermon he says we are to fast as well.  These are the things that we are supposed to do because we love God. He tells us this very matter of factly. He doesn’t say IF you pray, but WHENEVER you pray. He doesn’t say IF you give charitably, Jesus says WHENEVER you give charitably. He says straight out, you’ve got to pray and you’ve got to give to others.  

Sometimes it appears that we’ve completely forgotten this. 90 percent of us are embarrassed to pray in public, not just out loud but even silently as well. Maybe some of this reluctance stems from misunderstanding this part of scripture. All too often when I ask who wants  to pray within a group, there is complete and utter silence, I have to ask multiple people because  one after the other each one shyly says, “Oh I can’t pray, I don’t know how.”.  Perhaps we’re secretly thinking: “I don’t want anyone to think that I’m trying to pretend I’m spiritual...or intellectual...or better than everyone else. See how that idea of hypocrite lifts it’s tricky head again?  

To this reasoning I say “nonsense”, and I apologize if I seem so blunt. But the truth is that. you learned quickly enough as a child how to ask your mother for a cookie, and your dad for five dollars; --and both of them definitely made sure that you knew how to say thank you to Aunt Thelma for the sweater she knit you. We can praise the beauty of a neighbor’s flowers, a neighbor’s car, and talk about how fantastic Martha’s cakes are. You learned how to say I’m sorry to your big brother when you got mad and crushed his model airplane... I’ll guarantee no one ever taught you to say sorry to the cat when you stepped on her tail--but you did it any way! 

Most of us would never willingly step on stage in front of an audience in a million years... that is why Jesus is saying it’s all right to be invisible believers. It’s all right to board up that famous “fourth wall” that the acting community talks about and pray and give and fast without eyes watching us... Imagine if your whole life was a public performance sort of like Jim Carrey in the “Truman Show”. The anxiety involved would be unbearable.

But you’re not alone in this anxiety. The disciples obviously felt the same thing and Jesus taught them to pray using the Lord’s Prayer. In it, Jesus showed us that prayer is no more than opening your heart to God, praising, thanking, confessing to and begging your parent in heaven and saying plainly what is on your heart and mind. Some how we get this idea that we have to know how to take three steps forward,  curtsey just right to the ruler of universe, before breaking forth into an operatic solo. But it ain’t that. No fancy speeches, no thou’s or thees or thines involved. In fact when we sound like a King James Bible we sound more than a little ridiculous. 

And this is where Jesus arrives at his main point.  Prayer and giving gifts for God is not meant to be Shakespearean drama played out on the public stage, it’s not even meant to be a sitcom. In fact when we are learning about God, it is God who is the actor and we are watching and learning to follow God’s every move, yet, when we practice what we have learned from God’s pageant in our life as Christians, things are reversed. Instead of the wide open stage of the universe, our place of action is bedroom or our closet or even a garden shed. We disciples are the actors and God is watching us to see what we will do, and how we will be faithful. Will we pray when no one is there to see? Will we give 10% of our means if no one is checking our name off of a list?  Seminary professor, Dr David Wells puts it really well: “The place of encounter between God and his people is not the temple, the great theater, the Holy of Holies. It is the locked room (where the disciple meets God one on one), [it is] the anonymous gift [and the regular enveloppe put in the offering plate], [it is the private vow and] the undisclosed hunger.”1 

There are times when we are called to pray in public, here in public worship for instance. By the way, Jesus was joking about the trumpets, No one, even in ancient Israel, would be such a prat as to carry a trumpet with them to announce themselves at worship time.

But here it should be a joy and a relief to cry to God in prayer and song, and Jesus made no prohibition against that! Let your words and thoughts flow from your tongue the way the Spirit moves them! In fact while I carefully write this sermon every week, spending hours and hours choosing every word, my prayer for worship I never write down. I want them to come forth from the dialogue that we have here with God, to be part of the living that we do together. Some times it is scary because I don’t know where God will take the prayer, sometimes it’s sort of boring maybe, but that’s me and not God. 

 I encourage you to pray out loud at meal times and in hospital rooms, at times of crisis when you ask God to be near, at times of rejoicing when you can hardly shut your mouth because you want to thank God so much. 

I encourage you to not only support this congregation financially, but with your presence and your service here and in the community. And to mutually encourage each other to be more giving as well. 

Amen

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1    The Christian Century, January 23, 2000, p. 205