We all know what the word hypocrite means. It’s someone who says one thing but does another. I’m sure we can all think of people who deserve the label of hypocrite. And perhaps even within ourselves we can find some hypocrisy at work.
Our English word hypocrite comes from Greek, and the Greek equivalent sounds about the same. What is not the same, however, is what the word means. The Greeks would call stage actors hypocrites because the person they portrayed on stage wasn’t who they really are. But there are more subtle meanings to it too. As we find the word in Luke’s gospel it is more closely inclined towards the way it is used in the Greek translations of the Old Testament. So when Jesus says to, “Beware of the yeast of the Pharisees, that is their hypocrisy,” he is meaning people whose actions are not determined by God, and are thus godless.
As Jesus has looked at them and interacted with them for a long time now he does not call they hypocrites because they say one thing but do another thing. He regards them as misdirected in their fundamental understanding of God’s purposes. They are therefore incapable of discerning the authentic meaning of the scriptures, and therefore, unable to present anything other than a distorted expression of piety. They are so lost they don’t even realize they are lost. I believe the current day saying would be that they don’t know how much they don’t know.
Jesus is not saying the Pharisees are at all unique in this hypocrisy. He sees the exact same dynamics happening within his closest followers. They too don’t know how much they don’t know. He presents this warning lest they inadvertently build their own lives in a similarly distorted manner.
Indeed, when you know something is wrong, or perhaps that you are doing something wrong, you have some options. You could do the right thing. That would be to recognize the problem and work to change it. Another option would be to deny that what you are doing is wrong. Then you just keep doing it. A third option, and always a very tempting one, is to make excuses for yourself so that you can just keep doing it. Or you can blame or attack the messenger who brought the fault to your attention.
But what do you do when you’re doing something wrong and you don’t even know it? What do you do when you think you’re doing something right, but you’re actually being duped by someone else?
There are no Wegmans in Victor so I think I can get away with picking on them. A lot of what I know about Wegmans typifies the way the Pharisees and the society they created for themselves worked. Wegmans does a superb job of making customers feel good about themselves for shopping there. I don’t shop there often, but I do know they make it is point to let customers know their food is supporting local agriculture. It's sustainably sourced. It’s gotten fairly. They are often listed as one of the top employers of the nation for how they treat their employees. You can see from the helping hands employees that they make it a point to hire people who may struggle to get jobs elsewhere. And even for all this, their prices remain very reasonable.
Yes, shopping at Wegmans is an experience designed to make you feel good about yourself. But then there’s the truths underneath the surface. A few months ago I was talking to Jen Sainsbury, former employee of Wegmans. As for them being such an amazing employer to their employees, she says they simply manipulate the system to get those high marks. When it comes to employee satisfaction surveys, they do not take feedback from their entire workforce. They choose which employees fill out the surveys. Then they edit them as necessary. As for labels like local, natural, sustainable etc., they all mean basically nothing.
People who live in Canandaigua know that Wegmans owns most of the key real estate with retail potential. They play hard ball in the real estate market, keeping competition out. Why is the Tops in Canandaigua where it is? Because it is land Wegmans couldn’t control.
I don’t know if they still have the signs, but several weeks ago the Canandaigua store had a sign as you enter: “Stop hate. End racism. Choose love.” How quaint! How politically correct and proper! …coming from a store located in a wealthy liberal minded suburban area. What happened to all the Wegmans that used to exist in the poor areas of downtown Rochester? They closed because they didn’t meet profit projections. Notice that the recent shooting in Buffalo didn’t happen at a Wegmans. Why? Because Wegmans won’t invest where there really is need. They invest in wealthy white liberal suburbs in the east, and they cater to the political whims of such people. Notice it is Tops who actually dared to open a store in a rough place in Buffalo. Yeah to them! That’s real commitment. That’s truly putting your money at risk in the name of good.
Now I’m not intending to trash Wegmans. And I’m not intending to make Tops out to be a saintly store. Both stores are major retailers who know how to successfully run a business and make a profit. That often means being tough. Inasmuch as it is fair, that is the way healthy society works. But my point is that it is so easy to be a Pharisee and do things that make you feel good about yourself. There are business whose business model is to make money by helping you feel good and right! The same sort of dynamics went on in Jesus’ day. The Pharisees were hypocrites not in a conscious way, but in a way in which they did not understand and could not see.
What do we do? To pull in a phrase that Jesus uses elsewhere, how do we take the log out of our own eyes before taking the speck out of our neighbors?
The rest of our gospel reading is Jesus teaching some very radical ideas. He says, “Do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear.” And, “Sell your possessions and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, and unfailing treasure in heaven.” There are also several teachings about being alert and watchful for his return. It’s been almost 2000 years, how long are we to stay awake?!? What do we make of these teachings? How are they going to keep us from being hypocrites?
Is this supposed to be a life of misery?
In John 10:10 we read Jesus saying, “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.” That is where we start. That is how we dismantle the hypocrisy.
Wegmans may indeed make you feel good about yourself… for a while. But do they really give abundant life?
Jesus says not to worry about what you wear or what you eat or about what people think. These may sound challenging, but they are actually freeing.
If you worry about what people think of you then you are a slave to their opinion of you. That will never bring life.
If you always need to have the latest and greatest then you are a slave to that. That will never bring life.
If you worry about this life only, and focus your attention on “making it” then you will always be a slave to success. That will never bring life.
Focus on God. Focus on God providing; knowing that God loves you.
Jesus never said it would be easy. Quite the opposite, as we read Jesus giving several warnings of persecutions to his follower, which we read today. It makes sense. Those who invest their lives in the hypocrisy of the world feel threatened by those who live authentically. Jesus also knows that his followers will make mistakes. That’s why even as he was teaching them he let them know about forgiveness.
That’s where we wrap up today’s sermon, and where we wrap up Jesus’ teachings too; the parable of the unproductive fig tree. After years of unproductivity the most practical thing to do with an unproductive tree is to cut it down. But in the parable we have the gardener begging the owner to give it one more chance – and not just another chance, but to actually invest more in it.
That is God’s love for us. Knowing we will fail, knowing we are often ignorant, knowing all our shortcomings, God continues to want to invest in us; giving us opportunities for the life of true abundance.
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