What's in a Name: Lazarus

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Luke 16:19-31

Why did Jesus give that poor beggar the name Lazarus, inquiring minds want to know.  This is just a parable by which Jesus was addressing the Pharisees about how their love of money and consequent neglect of the poor was disqualifying them from being true descendants of Abraham and they needed to repent.  Jesus could have just stuck with saying there was a poor man who daily sat begging outside a rich man’s door, but instead Jesus named him Lazarus and on top of that he doesn’t name the rich man.  Why?  Obviously, there must be something about that name, Lazarus, that informs the parable?  Bear with me a minute and I’ll tell you what I think.

Right off the bat some would say it was the Lazarus that Jesus raised from the dead in John’s Gospel.  Afterall, Jesus mentions someone being raised from the dead there in the last verse.  I don’t think that’s it, because neither Luke, nor Matthew nor Mark seem to know of that event for some strange reason.  It is more likely Jesus was referring to his own resurrection which the Pharisees, who were responsible for his crucifixion, dismissed as a hoax.

The name Lazarus as it appears in our Bibles is a Latinized version of the Greek name Lazaros which is a Greekized version of the Hebrew name Eleazer which means “God has helped”.  In the Old Testament, the most famous Eleazer was the son of Moses’ brother Aaron who became High Priest after Aaron died.  Yes, a good many to most of the leaders of the Pharisees would have been from priestly families, albeit wealthy priestly families.  But I don’t think this Eleazar is the Eleazar Jesus was calling to mind.  There’s another more recent in memory to Jesus’ day that’s worth a long hard squint, but first there’s some armchair history you’ll need to know.

In Judea during the mid-100’s B.C., the Greeks had been ruling in Judea for about 150 years.  The leader of the Greeks at that time was Antiochus Epiphanes who was a twisted, sick individual.  He sacrificed a pig in the Temple as well as put a statue of Zeus on the altar.  He burned Torah scrolls and banned circumcision and all forms of observance of the Law of Moses.  His favourite pastime was publicly forcing Law-observant Jews to eat pork or be tortured to death. 

During his tenure, there arose a loosely configured resistance movement of faithful Jews known as the Hasideans.  It’s not really fair to say they were a resistance movement though.  Their devotion to keeping the Law of Moses was due to their unwavering faithfulness to God.  It was not simply a way of resisting Greek rule.  Antiochus, for some reason, hated their devotion to God.  

From among the Hasideans there arose the brothers Maccabeus who in 167 B.C. started a three-year-long revolt that drove the Greeks out of Judea resulting in a period of Jewish independence that lasted roughly forty years.  The festival of Hanukkah arose out of that revolt.  Oddly, the majority of Jews at the time opted to just keep their heads down and their faith private and took up the Hellenistic or Greek way of life.  Thus, the Hasideans were tortured for their faithfulness while the Hellenists lived comfortably.  Just so you know, a pretty convincing argument can be made that the Pharisees of Jesus’ day traced their origins back to the Hasideans.

The Hasideans had some key teachers, some very devoted men.  One of them was an elderly scribe named Eleazer.  He was probably in his 80’s at the time of the revolt.  There is a very well-known account of the day Eleazer and Antiochus Epiphanes met up (see 4 Maccabees 6).  Antiochus actually quite respected Eleazer for his intellect, his ability to speak eloquently, and his rationality.  He just didn’t understand why a rational person would keep such strict adherence to such a strict Law out of devotion to a god, especially a non-Greek god.  After a bit of debate, Antiochus decided to get on with testing the old man’s faith by threatening to have him tortured to death if he didn’t eat a piece of pork.  They debated some more and then with a bit of reluctance; Antiochus had the guards take him away to be flogged with a scourge.  That’s a whip made with many straps that is effective at ripping the flesh open.  They stripped him naked to humiliate him, tied his hands, and commenced scourging him.  He stood there bravely and took it for longer than expected.  Eventually he fell and then one of the guards started kicking him in the side trying to make him stand up but he couldn’t due to his age. 

The guards soon started to feel ashamed of what they were doing to this old man and pleaded with him to just eat a piece of meat and say it was pork so that they could stop the atrocity. Eleazer’s answer was basically, why should he let his long life of faithfulness end in such an act of cowardice.  What sort of an example would that set for the young.  It would be shameful to do such a thing just to gain a few more days which he would spend being mocked, particularly by the tyrant Antiochus.  He finished saying, “O children of Abraham, die nobly for your faith!  And you, guards of the tyrant, why do you delay?”, i.e., “Are you ashamed of what you are doing?” 

The guards then got on with it.  They took whatever metal things they could find and made them red hot and burned him to the bone with them all over.  Then they poured stinking liquids into his nostrils (sewage probably).  While they did this he looked towards heaven and said to God, “You know, O God, that though I might have saved myself, I am dying in burning torments for the sake of the Law.  Be merciful to your people, and let our punishment (there were seven brothers and their mother being martyred too), let our punishment suffice for them.  Make my blood their purification, and take my life in exchange for theirs.”  Then he died.  (Some serious theology there.)

If you remember, Eleazer means “God has helped”.  That may not seem to have been the case for Eleazer but not long after his death the brothers Maccabeus defeated the Greeks and drove them from the land.  For forty years the Jews enjoyed independence.  That was the last time until 1948 that they enjoyed that.

Eleazer (Lazarus) suffered for his faith in God and his faithfulness to the Law.  The Pharisees, his theological descendants, were on the other hand getting rich off of keeping the Law, one could even say they were being tyrants about it and that they were persecuting fellow Jews with it.  Actually, they were more like the Hellenist Jews in Eleazer’s day than the Hasideans from whom they originated.  I think Jesus used the name Lazarus (Eleazer) in this parable to truly convict the money-loving Pharisees of their hypocrisy.  Eleazer died for his faithfulness by being undeservedly tortured with flaming things. 

The rich man in the parable was also being tortured with flaming things, flames.  He was himself a Jew and should have gone to “Abraham’s bosom” where faithful Jew’s went to await resurrection.  But instead, he was in Hades, the afterlife that the Greeks believed in, where he was being tortured with flaming things because he deserved it.  He was a self-absorbed money-lover who neglected the poor right outside his door.  Even in death he thought that poor beggar Lazarus ought to be waiting on him.  So, it was with the Pharisees.  They missed what was at the true heart of the Law – the mercy that that rich man never showed to poor Lazarus and instead were using to Law really just to make people serve them and their hunger for power.

Let me try to lighten the mood. I knew an elderly man up until a couple of years ago when he died.  He had been a banker by career.  We all make assumptions that bankers are wealthy, but with this man you would never know if he was or wasn’t.  He and his wife kept things pretty simple.  He was a devoted Christian, husband, and family man.  Everywhere they lived they always found and attended a church.  When I first met him, he was treasurer of his church.  When I came on board, within just a couple of weeks he had me over to his house under the auspices of catching me up on the financial situation of the church.  The real reason was that he wanted to strike up a relationship, a friendship with me.  He thought a minister ought to know his people and their struggles and pray for them.  He wanted me to know that his wife had periods of not being well and he was afraid of losing her.  Whenever she got sick and went to the hospital, he would call me so that I could pray.  

He was a faithful man, but I do have to admit (as he would) that after having to live separated from his wife through Covid after a bazillion years of marriage, her death, his own health issues, and great untreatable pain there in his last two years, he was tempted to eat the pork so to speak.  He was also anxious that I was going to take a call somewhere else, so I had to routinely assure him that I would not take a call away from here before he died, that I would be here to bury him.  Number three on my list of reasons for not taking a call elsewhere is that there are so many of you just like him who have been faithful all your lives and deserve to be buried by someone who knows you.  He was a faithful, humble, generous man.

On a number of occasions his last couple of years, he had me over to talk about his funeral because he believed death was imminent or at least he hoped it was.  When it came to what if any particular Scripture he wanted read, he was adamant about one verse in particular, Micah 6:8: “He has told you, O Mortal, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.”  This man was Mac Elliot.  He passed away two years and nearly two months ago.  Whenever I come across the story of Eleazer (which is more often than you would think), he is one who comes to mind.  Mac knew what was at the heart of what God expects from humanity.  He was faithful all his life but had his faith tested there at the end, but still he endured…a just, kind, humble man before God.

Many small churches such as our four today are like Eleazer (Lazarus) keeping the faith and keeping the doors open and the lights on though it seems pointless.  On top of it all, the churches that are growing seem mired in the false beliefs Christian Nationalism, hating the immigrant, making the poor help themselves, (“The good Lord helps those who help themselves” is found nowhere in the Bible.) patriarchalism if not outright misogyny…and at the root of it really does seem to be the love of money.  But you folks, stay faithful, beloved of God.  Continue to listen to Jesus, the one who was raised from the dead.  The love, the friendship, you have here is an embodiment of him.  Keep the faith.  Amen.

 

Grifting

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Luke 16:1-16

If you’ve been a voyeur to American politics the past decade, you will have no doubt heard the accusation of grifting blaring out from both sides of the political spectrum towards each other.  Grifting is basically gaining people’s trust by dishonest means in order to get money or property from them.  There’s a bit of a diminutive insult in calling someone a grifter.  For example, Conrad Black was convicted of fraud for embezzling money from a company he was working for.  Though what he did would fit the definition of grifting, he should rather be called an “embezzler” than a grifter.  What he did was big-time and white collar.  Grifting, on the other hand, is something usually small change done by someone who’s sleazy.  It’s like rolling into town and pretending to be a world class pie chef and going to the PTA and after convincing them you will make world class pies for a fundraiser but you need cash up front for the ingredients and then absconding with that cash.  

Grifting is apparently commonplace among the rich and famous.  Celebrities do it quite often when they use their identity as a celebrity, their “brand”, to gain people’s trust to do things like run for public office when they know nothing about how the government works or even what it is to be a public servant.  They do it just to further their “brand”.  Or, like the actress G. P. back in the “90’s when she used her celebrity identity to assume the role of a health and wellness influencer while having no credentials in nutrition or mental health.  She started by selling juice blends for the use of cleansing the body not orally but from the bottom up.  She claimed particular blends could help particular health conditions and emotional states when administered that way.  She gives relationship advice too.  On the political stage, we’ve seen people go to a foreign country and use your identity as the son or sons of an American president to get business deals.  But here at home we should be really concerned when celebrities use their “pretend identity” as a celebrity to get elected to public office and then use that political and economic power to crash the stock market hoping that investors would instead buy their brand of Bitcoin.  Just saying.

Looking here Jesus’ Parable of the Shrewd Manager.  I would like to suggest that there is some grifting going on here but surprisingly, it’s not the shrewd manager who is doing it.  He’s an embezzler like Conrad Black and a skilled one; quite wily.  He’s a cut above a simple grifter.  I think the Grifters here aren’t even in the Parable but are rather the people the character of the shrewd manager represents.  It’s the Pharisees and Scribes from a chapter back who found it completely distasteful that Jesus kept company and even ate with tax collectors and “sinners”.  They were hypocrites like actors in the Greek theatre.  They were very good at putting on a mask and playing the role of devout religious authorities.  They knew the Scriptures, the law of Moses, the traditions, the traditional and authoritative teachings of the Rabbi’s going back to the 400’s BC.  There in the midst of Roman domination, they seemed to be keeping the faith by being as un-Roman as possible which they did by very publicly keeping the dress and dietary codes of the Law of Moses.  

These Pharisees (the Conservatives) along with two other groups, the Sadducees (the Liberals) and the Herodians (the royal Billionaires) were very politically savvy when it came to placating the Romans (a faux-democracy led by an Authoritarian).  If you were a devoted member of one of these Jewish sects (Parties), you would grow wealthy and powerful under Roman rule.  The Romans let you thrive as long as you kept rebellion against them at bay and gave them a cut on whatever grift it was you had going.  Rome by and large sent their most inept civil servants to govern in Judea and they were largely absent.  Rome held power over Judea primarily by military occupation and tax collectors who were Jews themselves but were seen as traitors.  The Roman military in turn kept order through bullying and extortion.  They weren’t known for mulching the public flowerbeds of Jerusalem or anywhere else.

Back to the Pharisees, their reason for being legalistic was that they were expecting God at any moment to send the Messiah to deliver them from Roman occupation and to establish the Kingdom of God once and for all forever and ever amen.  They believed that in the Kingdom of God the Law or Moses would be kept without exception.  If a Jew wants to be in God’s Kingdom when the Messiah comes, then they must live as faithful to the Law of Moses as possible in the present.  They also believed the Messiah’s coming could possibly be hastened if more and more Jews were keeping the Law so they were pretty good at making or rather coercing conversions.

The problem with the Pharisees was that they weren’t known for mercy.  They were actors, hypocrites (remember that sermon).  They were known for policing Law-observance and placing outrageous fines on those they caught violating them.  They didn’t really care about the real physical needs of widows and orphans, or refugees, or the poor in general.  They knew how to create loopholes in the Law where the Law required compassion and generosity from them.  They knew little about how to grant forgiveness to people who were weighed down in shame and guilt.  They weren’t very good at loving God with all their mind, soul, heart, and strength and their neighbour as themselves.  They were just good at keeping up appearances and penalizing those who didn’t.

In the Parable Jesus has the Landowner surprisingly commend the Manager for his shrewdness even though the manager had cheated him.  It was because when the Manager reduced the debts held by the tenants, even though it was for selfish motives, he was showing mercy, attending to the real needs of the tenants.  Like the Manager, the Pharisees were using their religious authority to grow wealthy by taxing the sins of others and in turn not using that wealth to help the poor among them.  They didn’t practice mercy.  Do you remember the story of the widow who came to the Temple and put her last two copper coins in the alms box?  That was all she had.  The Pharisees should have rather been looking out for her needs, but here she was not knowing where her next meal was coming from because she believed that you don’t come to Temple (church) empty-handed.  Like TV preachers, J.O. for one, they had no qualms with getting very wealthy by grifting on the spiritual needs of even the poorest among them.

It was apparent that the god the Pharisees really served was one called Mammon or what we would call Wealth.  Jesus warned his disciples that they cannot serve both God and wealth for they will inevitably love and be devoted to one over the other and their primary affection will likely be for mammon because that’s the way people are.  If we, Jesus’ disciples, choose to serve Wealth, we will likely get wealthy, but we’ll lose the Kingdom.  

Jesus will later tell his disciples in Chapter 22 after they have shared the Lord’s Supper and had a surprising argument about who is the greatest among.  Jesus said: “I confer upon you a Kingdom, just as my Father conferred one on me, so that you may eat and drink at my table and sit on thrones” (Lk 22:29).  His disciples will be tempted by Satan with political power and with wealth.  They must avoid those temptations and the King will be manifest in their midst.  

The Kingdom of God is about community, people bearing one another up in the love of Jesus Christ.   The end of chapter four of the Book of Acts gives a staggering image of what this community of the Kingdom of God looks like: “All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they shared everything they had.  With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and much grace was upon them all.  There were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned lands or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to anyone as he had need.”  

This passage from Acts describes beautifully what Jesus meant when he told his disciples to use their worldly wealth to make friends for themselves so that these friends may welcome them into the eternal dwellings.  Sharing what wealth we have with others according to need is Jesus’ rule for the handling of wealth in his kingdom.  This is what he was speaking of when he told his disciples “whoever is faithful with a little will be faithful with a lot”.  After all, the wealth that we have really is not our own.  

We, our very selves, belong to Jesus Christ.  He has bought us with his own blood.  We are his beloved slaves and everything we have is his own wealth which he has entrusted to us.  If we are not faithful in sharing the worldly wealth that is at our disposal, how can we expect God to entrust us with the true riches of his kingdom which are the peace of Christ and joy in his Spirit, knowing of God’s love, and genuine Christian community.  I may be stepping out on a limb and sawing behind me, but Jesus seems to indicate here that in the Kingdom of God there is a direct correlation between generously sharing wealth and truly receiving the riches and richness of the Kingdom of God in community.

To conclude, learning mercy by showing mercy is the first step into the kingdom.  Those who know this basic lesson pertaining to mercy and who strive to live accordingly will learn that the love of wealth threatens our God-given community.  If we are not faithful in our stewardship of the worldly wealth entrusted to us by sharing it according to need even to the point of exhausting it, (after all, Jesus gave his life) how can we expect the Triune God of grace to entrust us with the true wealth of the Kingdom of God, which is his very self embodied in Christian community?  Amen. 

 

Lost Yet Loved

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Luke 15:1-24

Years ago, when my son was about three and my daughter was still a babe in a stroller, the family went downtown Toronto to the Aquarium.  It was very crowded and a challenge to keep track of the kids in tow.  At the end of the visit, we went to the ultra-crowded gift store.  My son and I were wandering around looking at stuff.  I guess I must have let go of his hand to pick something up.  In just a matter of about three seconds, he was gone.  He had probably caught sight of his mother and off into a sea of people he went. Thankfully, the lost-ness lasted only about 15 seconds if that.  He didn’t know he was lost…but I certainly did.  It scared the socks off me.  

I remember once when I was maybe four being with my mother in Woolworth’s department store.  I don’t know what happened, but all of a sudden, I wasn’t with Mom anymore.  I was all alone and fear set in.  Little children don’t know how to process that.  I just froze and started to cry.  A salesclerk heard me and came and assured me we’d find my mother.  She took me to customer service and sat me on the counter then picked up a microphone and said, “Would the mother of a boy named Randy please come to Customer Service.”  Seconds later, Mom showed up crying and was very relieved.  

Those two stories shared; I can’t imagine how it would feel for your child to get so lost that they wished you were dead when all you’ve been is kind and gracious and provided for their every need.  Then after demanding their inheritance, they took off and squandered it.  Then, they show up a year or so later, maybe remorseful, but likely not.  That has to hurt…and the fear…and the grief.  You don’t stop being a parent.  When your children get lost you feel it.

In our reading today we have three parables involving something being lost.  They demonstrate three reasons for being lost; by accident, by neglect, and by willfulness.  We’ll spend a moment with each.

The first is the lost sheep.  When an animal wanders off, it’s not like they meant to.  It’s accidental.  It followed its nose or something.  We do that.  We’ve all been out driving or out for a walk, enjoying the day, not realizing we took a wrong turn or missed the turn and wound up somewhere else not knowing how to get back.  It’s accidental and yes, there’s a threat of danger. 

Getting lost in life happens as well.  We can get lost while following pursuits that take us away from the important things which are our relationships in life particularly with God.  We can just get too busy or overcommitted.  We can get caught up in doing and being what I want to do and be and suddenly we find ourselves alone and scared not knowing how to get back and mend the relationships we wandered away from.  We find ourselves being metaphorically just like the sheep in those paintings of the Parable of the Lost Sheep, alone and stuck in the bushes or on the side of a cliff where we can’t go forward and we’re unable to turn around. 

The thing to notice in this Parable is the shepherd’s concern for that one sheep who accidentally got lost.  The Shepherd leaves the other sheep, possibly to their detriment, and goes searching for that one that got lost.  When he finds it, over the shoulders it goes and he brings it back.  He doesn’t punish it, or lock it up by itself, or make it first on the slaughter list.  He celebrates.

Next, neglect can be the reason something gets lost.  That coin didn’t lose itself.  It’s a coin and it can’t wander off.  It was the woman who lost it probably in a moment of not paying attention.  Just like at the Aquarium, my son wandered off because I let go of his hand.  At Woolworth’s, I didn’t wander off from my mother.  She just assumed I was following her every twist and turn among the racks of the clothing section.  She took a turn without making sure I was with her.  Sometimes our getting lost is not our fault but of the one watching over us.

So also, it can happen in our relationship with God, sometimes our getting lost is God’s fault.  That’s a hard thing to grasp, but it’s true that sometimes God loses us.  Stuff happens and it seems God is not there.  Where are you God?  Why won’t you act?  These are two persistent questions.  Please notice in the parable that the time comes when the woman, when God realizes that he has lost his treasured coin.  You will be found and a lot of those “why God” questions will get answered.  Remember, when we feel cut off from God, alone amidst those faith shattering things that come out of left field, it is then that God is actually vehemently seeking for us and will find us.  Our task is to wait.

Lastly, there’s willful lostness when we abandon God and the good life he’s given simply looking for more.  It can and usually does happen when we are in a time when things seem to be going good. The marriage and the family are good.  The social life is good.  Church is good.  The prayer life is good.  Life is good.  But, then suddenly it isn’t.  Suddenly, what was once good is now not good enough.  We want more out of relationships or just plain want new relationships.  We’ve lost our connections to the old ones.  God, and we question if there is a God, seems to be a million miles away.  We’re trying to figure out who we are except in a context that doesn’t include the God who made us who we are.  The Church which we once experienced as quite supportive, we start to think is a fraud.  We no longer feel connected to our friends, especially our Christian ones.  In love they try to help, but we don’t accept their help and insist on finding it ourselves, whatever “it” is.  We just want to take what’s ours, or what we feel we’re entitled to, and leave.

Beware of wolves in sheep’s clothing.  They will show up and subtly convince the lost that they have or that they themselves are that more we’re looking for, that there are many ways to fill that hole in you that only God can feel.  They are caring and supportive and very encouraging of us as we inadvertently begin to hurt the people closest to us.  Time passes and we’re suddenly find ourselves believing that we are in life solely for ourself, fending for ourself, trying to make a name for ourself…and sadly we believe that that’s all there is.

Willful lostness will actually require us to betray ourselves, our core values.  To justify ourselves particularly our leaving people behind and hurting them, we find fault in them and blame them.  Our relationship to God, past friendships that were solid and good for us, well, we suddenly begin to see them as being bad for us, restrictive, preventative of our becoming who we truly are, who we truly want to be.  We will also rationalize what we’re doing by buying into the latest self-help videos on YouTube.

If you noticed in the Parable of the Prodigal Son, the Father wisely and with great restraint doesn’t blow up at his son or seek after him.  Instead, he very bravely allows him to go and make his own mistakes.  Being in life solely for oneself will usually lead us to a rock bottom at which we hopefully will come to our senses and return to the good life we had and hopefully we will not have burned those bridges too badly.  At least with God, the door is always open and the light is always on should we want to come home, but with the people we’ve hurt, there’s trust to rebuild.

These three parables teach us a great lesson with respect to God’s love.  When we get lost in life, God does not cease to love us.  God will either seek us out or when it’s a case of willful lostness wait for us, wait for us to come to our senses.  We also should do the same for those in our lives we know to be lost.  Don’t be like the older brother and judge, continue to love and forgive.  Amen.

 

Fear: The Opposite of Faith

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Luke 12:1-12

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.