2017 11.05 Matthew 23:1-12 1 Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, 2 The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses seat; 3 therefore, do whatever they teach you and follow it; but do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they teach. 4 They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others; but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them. 5 They do all their deeds to be seen by others; for they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long. 6 They love to have the place of honor at banquets and the best seats in the synagogues, 7 and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have people call them rabbi. 8 But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all students. 9 And call no one your father on earth, for you have one Father the one in heaven. 10 Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Messiah. 11 The greatest among you will be your servant. 12 All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted. 1
Talk the Talk, Walk the Walk The new season of the National Basketball Association, or NBA, as it s commonly known, began just two weeks ago. The NBA is one of the most popular sports leagues, not only in America, but in the world. The best players are household names far from the stadiums where they play in America. In fact, the game s current best player, Steph Curry [SLIDE], along with his brother who is also a professional player, visited Korea earlier this year and appeared on the TV program 무한도전 (Infinite Challenge). Among the challenges they faced were [SLIDE] an opponent armed with twenty arms, [SLIDE] multiple giant inflatable defenders, and [SLIDE] a backboard and rim that rotated 360 degrees. As popular as the NBA is today, many would argue that the best days of the NBA were the 1980s. That was the era of the great Celtics/Lakers rivalry [SLIDE]. The Boston Celtics and the Los Angeles Lakers were the two greatest teams of the decade. Over the course of those ten years 1980 to 1989 those two teams alone won eight titles (three for the Celtics and five for the Lakers). They played each other in the finals three times, with the Lakers winning two. The Celtics/Lakers rivalry was a sportswriter s dream come true. It was a rivalry of easily recognized contrasts: East Coast versus West Coast; Boston s blue collar style versus LA s flashy showtime; the green and white of the Celtics versus the purple and yellow of the Lakers. Plus [SLIDE], you had the game s two biggest stars... Magic Johnson of the Lakers and Larry Bird of the Celtics. Larry Bird was an unlikely basketball star. He wasn t known for his speed. He wasn t known for his jumping ability. But what he was known for was his ability to shoot a basketball from anywhere on the court with deadly precision. Three-point line, foul line, base line, even behind the backboard, every spot on the court was within range for Bird. 2
Bird could also pass the ball like a magician [SLIDE] behind his back, [SLIDE] looking the other way, even bouncing a pass between an opponent s legs. Yet Bird s greatest talent didn t require him to have the ball in his hands. Bird is generally regarded among his peers as the greatest trash talker of his generation. To talk trash is to boldly proclaim to your opponent that you re better than he is. It s to score against your opponent and then tell him that you re going to score again and there s nothing he can do about it. Trash talk is part of the culture of basketball. Larry Bird used trash talk as a psychological tool, as a means of intimidating his opponent. His trash talk was legendary. One of the most famous examples occurred at the three-point-shooting contest at the 1986 All-Star Game. Bird sauntered onto the court and told his fellow competitors, I hope you all came here for second place, because I m winning this contest. He proceeded to do just that [SLIDE], blowing away the competition. Bird didn t confine his trash talk to opposing players but sometimes included the opposing team s coach. When Bird was having a particularly good game, he would tell the opposing coach to have another player guard him because the one who was trying to guard him wasn t good enough. Coach, don t you have anyone who can guard me? This guy sure can t. Bird could even trash talk without saying a word. In 1984, Bird was on a team of NBA all-stars who were playing an exhibition game against the US Olympic team. Back then, pros were not allowed to play in the Olympics. The US team was made up of the country s best college players. The star of that 84 Olympic team was a junior from North Carolina named Michael Jordan. 3
The story goes that, before the game, the two teams were warming up at opposite ends of the court, the pros on one side, the college team on the other. A loose ball from the college side rolled into the pro s side of the court and stopped at Bird s feet. Michael Jordan jogged over to retrieve the ball. He walked up to Bird, put out his hands in a motion to catch the ball. But Bird didn t give it to him. Instead, he heaved the ball over Jordan s head back down to the opposite end of the court. It was Bird s way of saying, I don t care how good of a college player you are. These are pros that you re playing with. You don t belong here, son [SLIDE]. Bird was trying to intimidate Jordan. He was trying to get inside Jordan s head. Bird didn t have to say a word, but his trash talk still spoke loud and clear. The thing with trash talk is, it s only effective if you can back it up. Bird didn t just tell opponents he would beat them, he beat them. He backed up his talk with winning. If you can t back up your words with action, then all the talk is just that... talk. If you re going to talk the talk, you d better be able to walk the walk [SLIDE]. Talk the talk, walk the walk is an idiom that means backing up your words with action. It means that what you say is what you do. Some people talk a good game, but when it comes to backing up their talk with action, they re lacking. In today s passage, Jesus accuses the scribes and the Pharisees of being all talk, no action [SLIDE]: The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses seat, he tells the crowds, therefore do whatever they teach you and follow it; but do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they teach (Mt. 23:2). Today we turn once again, and probably for the final time, to Matthew s Gospel. In a few weeks it will be Advent and we will start a new lectionary cycle with the Gospel of Mark. As we find things here in Matthew 23, the tension between Jesus and the Jewish religious leaders is building. 4
It s not just the scribes and Pharisees. Other groups within Judaism s elite, like the chief priests and Sadducees, have also taken issue with Jesus. In the preceding chapters, all these different groups who were rivals with each other, have come together to ask Jesus questions designed to entrap him or mock him. Teacher, is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar? Teacher, if a woman is widowed and then marries her husband s brother, which man will be her husband in the afterlife? Teacher, which of the commandments is the greatest? Jesus answers their questions in ways they could not have imagined. One by one he stuns his would-be critics and accusers into silence. Now here in chapter 23, Jesus goes on the offensive. He s not taking any more questions. He speaks boldly in calling out the hypocrisy of the scribes and Pharisees, these religious leaders who do not practice what they teach, who talk the talk but don t walk the walk. Pharisees. Just the word itself makes us think negative thoughts. Opponents of Jesus. Legalists. Hypocrites. If this were a Western cowboy movie, we would picture the Pharisees as the men in black hats, the easily recognizable bad guys. Then it may be surprising to hear Jesus lift up their teaching. Do whatever they teach you and follow it, he tells the crowds. Do what they teach you, just don t do what they do. Jesus doesn t challenge the Pharisees teaching, only that their actions don t match their teaching. They don t teach by example. They say one thing but do another. It would be so easy to preach a sermon about the hypocrisy of the scribes and Pharisees. They re such easy targets. Maybe I could extend it to the dangers of hypocrisy among religious leaders in the church. The Korean church, unfortunately, offers many examples of hypocrisy among its leaders: pastors who treat the church like a family dynasty, passing it on to their son when they retire; pastors and elders who treat the church like a business, more concerned with financial profits than with the words of the prophets. 5
It would be easy to preach a sermon like that. It would be easy to point to those people over there you know, those hypocrites as if I weren t one of them, as if we all weren t among them. But I am, and you are. We all are. The church is full of hypocrites. The church pews are filled with them. We profess Jesus is Lord with our lips, but if a hidden camera were to follow us just for one day, it would reveal that we have many other lords. Politics is lord. Money is lord. Our job is lord. School is lord. What people think of us is lord. The church is full of hypocrites. We hear Jesus tell us to welcome the stranger, but then we pretend not to see them or we wait for someone else to do it. We hear Jesus tell us to forgive, but then we hold a grudge like a drowning man clinging to a life preserver. We hear Jesus tell us, as he does again today, that greatness lies in service, and yet we stand around and wait to be served. Yes, the church is full of hypocrites. That s not news. Everyone knows it, including people who don t go to church. Maybe you ve invited a friend or coworker to church, only to have them rebuff you. Church? No thanks. It s full of hypocrites. To that I say, Amen. The church is full of hypocrites. That s why shortly after the start of each worship service we say a prayer of confession. That prayer keeps us honest. That prayer reminds who we are. We are sinners. We are people who have proclaimed Jesus in one breath and denied him with the next. We are Peter. Surely not I, Lord. Even if all others forsake you, I never will. Indeed, we are sinners. But that is not all we are. The prayer of confession is always followed by the assurance of grace. The assurance of grace is God s way of reminding us that although we are sinners, we are sinners who have been forgiven. Our sin does not define us. It never has and it never will. God does not say, Oh, you 6
dirty sinner! You faithless disciple! Out of my sight! Away with you! No, that is the lie that we are tempted to believe. But the truth is that God s love and grace are relentless. When we try to run, God pursues us. God won t abandon us to ourselves. God simply won t leave us alone. Think again of Peter, how after he denied Jesus he ran away in shame. He must have nearly drowned in self-loathing. The disciple who was most sure of himself proved that he didn t know himself at all. Yet Jesus, after he was raised, with the wounds from the crucifixion still fresh on his hands, came to Peter and with those same hands healed and restored him. And so, our hypocrisy is no obstacle that God cannot overcome. God s grace is overwhelming. Therefore, rather than worry about whether God will really forgive us for our hypocrisy, it makes more sense to ask what leads us to speak in one way but act another? How is it that we can say Yes to Jesus but then No to what Jesus calls us to do? The easy answer is because of sin, but it s more complicated than that. What underlies that sin? We get closer to the truth if we notice something that Jesus does. He calls out the Pharisees not only for their hypocrisy but also because when they do what is right it s all for show [SLIDE]: They do all their deeds to be seen by others, he says, for they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long (Mt. 23:5). Like the Pharisees, who do all their deeds to be seen by others, we too can be masters of self-promotion. But self-promotion takes different forms. There is selfpromotion as the Pharisees do it, as a performance meant to be seen. But there is another quieter form of self-promotion that I bet many more of us can relate to. And that is self-promotion as make believe [SLIDE]. We can be under an enormous amount of stress from work, or school, or home, or a relationship we can feel miserable, angry, depressed, doubtful, anxious, but we walk in the church doors wearing a mask of holiness. We make believe that life is just great. Nothing to see here. 7
Everything is fine. Halloween has ended, but we re still wearing our mask! We think that if we don t show everyone else that we re doing just fine, then our peers might judge us and God will be upset with us. Who do we think we re fooling? We might fool the person next to us, but God sees right through our mask. Like the Pharisees, who love to sit in the place of honor and be greeted with respect in public, we also yearn to be recognized, and not only recognized but elevated above others. It s not enough that we be acknowledged, we don t want anyone else to be acknowledged alongside us. We want the platform all to ourselves. Where does it come from, this insatiable need for approval from other people? Whether it s wearing a mask to hide our imperfections or broadcasting our piety so that all can hear, the common denominator is that they are both done to win the approval of our peers. What I think is happening is that we re exchanging God s quiet approval for the more obvious praise of people. What we think we re not getting from God, we look for from others. I ll give you an example. As a pastor, it s tempting to seek approval in the kind words that people sometimes say after a sermon. I ll be honest, it s a great boost for my ego, especially as someone who is often filled with self-doubt, to receive a compliment on a sermon. And I m not saying that it s wrong to give a compliment if it s sincere. I just mean that it s tempting for me to anxiously look for approval in those compliments rather than resting in God s quiet approval. Preaching then becomes a performance. It s no longer proclamation but performance. A show. But the same can be said for any aspect of faith, like praying, or reading the Bible, or volunteering with a ministry of the church. We perform to win the approval 8
of other people because we lack confidence that we have God s approval. And so here again is the good news that we have such a hard time accepting: God. Loves. You. Those aren t just words. That isn t just talk. When it comes to love, God talks the talk and walks the walk. God gave us himself. God sent his Son into the world to show us how to love God and how to love one another, to show us that greatness is not a matter of elevating ourselves above others but lowering ourselves in humility and service, because those who humble themselves will be exalted. Let me say it again: God loves you. That means you don t need to perform to win God s approval or anyone else s. You don t need a perfect score. You can take off the mask. You can put down the megaphone. You are loved...wholly, unconditionally. And so, we who are so freely loved by God are now free to love as God loves. We are free to talk the talk and walk the walk of Jesus Christ. 9