Are We Hypocrites?

Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

This people honours me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me

Hypocrite!  What does the word mean?  We may not use it often, but when we do, what we usually mean is most likely not what Jesus meant when He used it.

Our modern dictionary says that hypocrites are people who are playing a part, people who deliberately pretend to have beliefs and virtues that they, in fact, do not have, and which the hypocrites both know they don’t have and don’t particularly want to have. Hypocrites in this sense are people who are faking it and who know they are faking it. The point is deception.  

Religious Hypocrisy in this sense is really vicious.  It’s a misuse of our faith, and it mocks God and His Church.  Doubtless, this sort of hypocrisy greatly grieves our Lord.  But two other things need to be said about this sense of hypocrisy.  First, the Church is not full of this kind of hypocrite and, second, this isn’t what Jesus was talking about, anyway.

So – the first definition of hypocrite, an actor practicing deception, doesn’t fit church members.  Most church people, indeed virtually all church people, believe what they say they believe, or they want to believe it, or they are trying to believe it, or they wish they could believe it.  Certainly, here at Mystic Side we all believe.  Outright, deliberate faking belief in order to seem good while planning to be bad is rare, and you are not going to find it here. The Church is not full of that sort of hypocrite. The church is full of sinners - but that’s another matter entirely.

So – what did Jesus mean when He used the word “hypocrite”?  First, we need to remember our New Testament was originally written in the street Greek of the day, known a koine. The notion of acting a part was a Greek notion, and there are really no Hebrew or Aramaic parallels to this idea of hypocrisy.  But Jesus didn’t speak Greek.  When the word that Jesus used was translated into the Greek in which our New Testament is written, it became the word “hypocrite”, but we don’t know what Aramaic word Jesus used that the Gospel writers translated into the Greek.  So, again, what did and does Jesus mean?

To better understand His meaning, we can look at the people Jesus openly called hypocrites - the Pharisees and scribes.  Jesus does not attack the Pharisees and scribes for pretending to be good when they were really evil.  The vast majority of them were not evil.  Instead, Jesus rebukes them because their self-righteous convictions about their own goodness had built a smug wall around them, isolated them from the rest of the community, and made them deaf to any further word from God.

The Pharisees kept the law, and keeping the law - the moral law and the religious law - is a good thing – something we also should do. But to believe and act like our own righteousness in the sight of God comes to us because we keep the law and follow the rules - this is absolutely deadly, and it is the heart of what Jesus means by hypocrisy.

For us to cultivate moral virtues and behavior which not everyone around us cultivates is, again, a good thing.  Indeed, it’s a distinctive mark of the Christian life.  But to believe and act like our own righteousness in the sight of God comes to us because we are more virtuous than most people we know - or more virtuous than some other group, or some specific other person - because we “know better” (that last being perhaps the pitfall to which we just might succumb) - this is what Jesus insisted was far more evil than the details of any individual sinner.

There is only one place to look if we want to find out how good we are, or how righteous we are - only one place. That place is God - God’s absolute goodness, God’s absolute justice, God’s absolute demands, and, finally, God’s absolute love and mercy.

If we look to ourselves for our righteousness, if we look to the things we have done, or the rules we have kept, or the law we obey, or if we look to the failings of others (and say, “at least I’m not like them”), if we do that, if we try to find in ourselves, or in others, the answer to how good we are, or how righteous we are, then we are who Jesus is talking about when he talks about hypocrites.

It is important to obey the law and to live the life we are called to live.  The way we behave matters a lot.  Paul talks about how every speck of virtue we can nurture is absolutely essential if we are to live our calling. But at the same time, we need to remember that Jesus is talking, not about evil people who pretend, but about well-behaved people who trust in themselves, who consider themselves finished products, and so cannot see or hear either themselves or God very well.

The Church is not particularly full of this sort of hypocrite; but we are not immune either.  Jesus thought it was very important that we understand this - so we have to pay especially close attention and keep alert, not watching others, but beginning with ourselves. 

Our trust, and our hope, and our confidence, can be found in only one place - it is never in ourselves - it is always in the love and the mercy of God.

 Let us pray:

Heavenly Father, give us the humility which realizes its ignorance, admits its mistakes, recognizes its need, welcomes advice, accepts rebuke.  Help us always to praise rather than to criticize, to sympathize rather than to discourage, to build rather than to destroy, and to think of people at their best rather than at their worst. This we ask in Jesus’ Name. Amen.