A few months back I was mindlessly watching little short videos on Facebook which they call Reels and I came across one that made that royal waste of time and life suddenly have some worth. It started with a young woman of university age speaking on the topic that Americans are suddenly waking up to the fact that Shakespeare is better performed with a Southern accent. Then the video switched to a young Japanese-American named Reed Choi who began to recite Hamlet’s To Be or Not to Be soliloquy with a Southern accent. He even had a dip of snuff and a bottle to spit in for authenticity. It went something like this:
“To be, or not to be – That is the question; Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing them; to die: to sleep”.
The soliloquy is a very powerful bit of overthinking by Hamlet on the question of whether it’s better to live with shameful hardship brought on by the actions of one’s family or to take one’s own life. The conclusion is that the fear of the unknown after death makes cowards out of us and so we resign to endure undeserved hardship. That’s as best as I can figure what Hamlet was saying. I don’t get Shakespeare half the time.
What struck me about this video wasn’t that Shakespeare actually sounded good with a Southern accent. It actually did. But it wasn’t that. What got me was how good of an actor that young man was. He drew you right into it. He had a good sense of the cadence, when to pause, even when to spit. That short moment was mesmerizing. He was a really good actor. He was good at stepping outside of himself to play a role. That’s admirable. He was a very good hypocrite.
Now, why would I call him a hypocrite? Back in the Greek and Roman world, acting and the theatre were quite popular. Actors would put on masks and go out on stage to play their role. It was weird because you couldn’t see the emotions of the actor unless it was somehow portrayed in the mask. Theatre was a Greek innovation. Most cultures enjoyed just sitting around and listening to a good storyteller tell a story. It is likely that the Gospels were meant to be portrayed in public that way. They were memorized and performed by good storytellers. But the Greeks, they were the ones who developed the art of telling a story by actors acting out the various roles. This art of acting was called hypokrisis or hypocrisy as we know it and actors were hypocrites or hypocrites. So, my young actor was thus a good hypocrite.
But the meaning of words changes over time. By Jesus day, the theatre and hypocrisy had been in the land of Israel ever since the days of Alexander the Great, the 300’s BC, when the Greek Empire conquered the Land and Greek culture began to infect the cities. Jews were not keen on hypocrisis and hypokrites –hypocrisy and hypocrites – and not simply because they were Greek activities. Jews saw the profession as deceptive, as pretending to be something that you are not. Putting on a mask and hiding your true identity to them was an affront to the God who created us as unique persons who should be the persons God created us to be.
Looking at our text in Luke, this is why Jesus tells his disciples to beware of the yeast of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. When yeast gets into your dough or into your grape juice it works its way through the whole batch. Particularly with wine, if a wild yeast makes it into the batch, it will ruin the taste. So, keep the wild yeast out. To Jesus, the Pharisees were good at putting on the mask of the externals of dress and dietary codes and following the jots and tittles of the Law of Moses and pretending to be righteous or rightly related to God. But it was all a deception. They lacked love. They were judgmental. And worse, they didn’t practice the way of justice and equality that were at the heart of the Law. They simply used their religious pretense to gain power and grow wealthy. They were hypocrites, actors, not faithful Israelites. What they looked like on the outside was not reflective of who they were on the inside.
Now there’s a catch here to what Jesus was saying to his disciples. The hypocrisy he was warning them against wasn’t the legalism of the Pharisees. It was actually the opposite. He was warning them against the hypocrisy of acting like they were not his followers when they were in public for fear of being persecuted. It’s the hypocrisy of denial. If they try to hide their faith, they will inevitably be found out for God’s powerfully working in them through the Holy Spirit cannot be hidden under a bushel basket. That little light is going to shine like it or not. The changes that were happening in them by the living power of the love of God in Christ simply cannot be hid or denied. You can’t deny Jesus’ and his resurrection when you’ve been filled with his new life.
Last week we talked about faith as being the hypostasis of the hoped-for things, the coming to light of unseen things. Hypostasis meaning the settling out or the becoming visible of the unseen, behind the scenes things that God is doing to save and heal his very good creation and especially humanity. Faith is our participation in what God is doing. It’s not simply believing ideas and stuff about God as opposed to doubting. Faith is found in the acts of faithfulness which are the coming to light, the becoming tangible of God’s doings.
The opposite of faith isn’t doubt. It is fear, the fear that we will be judged, rejected, shamed, or even physically harmed for our loyalty to Jesus. A fear that causes us to hide behind a mask of looking and acting like we are not a part of what God is doing to save and heal everything through Jesus Christ. Jesus addressed this fear with his disciples because persecution for association with him was a harsh reality they lived with. If they denied him, they could spare themselves ostracism, job loss, prison, torture, even death. One of the strongest arguments for Jesus’ resurrection was that none of the disciples who saw him raised from the dead denied it even while being tortured to death. Nevertheless, like Hamlet, fear can make cowards of us.
I feel a bit apprehensive of talking about this kind of hypocrisy to you folks. In this day when people have walked away from the church and largely from following Jesus and to be quite frank, at the heart of why that has happened is Christian hypocrisy in one form or another. But usually that form of hypocrisy was like that of the Pharisees, a hypocrisy that boiled down to those who called themselves Christians were very good at judging people for doing things the Bible says not to do while failing miserably at the things the Bible says to do such as: Love one another as Jesus has loved us. Seek justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God, and forgive. Be generous, welcome the stranger, i.e., the immigrant, feed them, clothe them, shelter them. Turn the other cheek. We’ve put keeping tradition before faithfulness. We’ve mistaken the church building for the Body of Christ. We’ve put nationalism before faithfulness to Jesus. We’ve let bullies get their way. We’ve followed false teachers, false messiahs. We’ve hurt children, women, and vulnerable people. We’ve just simply and to our shame had some really nasty wild yeasts work their way through us.
Regardless, in this day and age when there appears to be next to nothing left of the North American church, you folks still come. You keep the doors open and the lights on. You’ve raised your families in the church, lived the faith before them at home only to stand bewildered at their apathy, ambivalence with respect to Jesus. The media has had nothing good to say about Christians since the movie Home Alone back in 1990 when a lonely young boy convinced a lonely, estranged old man to reconcile with his son while sitting in a pew anonymously watching his granddaughter rehearse being Mary in a Christmas Pageant. He went home and made the call. As a minister, in 27 years of ministry I’ve gone from being a valuable part of town life to being largely irrelevant if not suspect. The question is always why do we continue on?
Please notice here that Jesus wasn’t accusing his disciples of the hypocrisy of denial. He was just warning them, because they were going to face some pretty dreadful opposition and they would have reason to fear. Fear is the opposite of assurance and cowardice is the opposite of faithfulness. Cowering in fear to the point of denying Jesus is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, it is to waste one’s life to the point of deserving being thrown on the trash fire that was Gehenna. Jesus was prodding his disciples to remain faithful for the God who loves each and every sparrow, loves us each even more. In those fearful times when put on trial, the Spirit would be with them giving them what to say and do.
So, it is for us in these trying times. Keep the doors open and the lights on. As Peter wrote in the first of his two general letters to the churches, to Christians simply suffering because they were good, upright people, “Always be ready to give account for the hope that is in you.” Your gracious behind the scenes well-doing, generosity, loyal friendships, love; these are embodiments of the hope this world so desperately needs, the hope that is in Christ Jesus who will yet again soon begin to call people to himself. Endure. Amen.
