Scripture: James 1:17-27; Mark 7:1-8; Isaiah 29:13-16; Romans 7:15-19; 1 John 3:2-3; 2 Corinthians 3:5-6; 1 Corinthians 9:14; Romans 5:23 Series: After Pentecost
Preaching on James 1:17-27 and Mark 7:1-8, the sermon argues that hypocrisy is one of the easiest human inclinations, evidenced from Cain through David, Solomon, and even Paul’s confession in Romans 7. It urges a sympathetic reading of the Pharisees (earnest God-followers who held to human tradition over the heart of the law) rather than a good-guy/bad-guy dualism that fed Christian antisemitism. Drawing on Isaiah 29, 2 Corinthians 3, and Torah as ‘the Way’ fulfilled in Christ, it names integrity as the opposite of hypocrisy: being doers of the word, honoring God with both lips and heart. Such integrity is possible only by grace, since every good gift comes from God (who works even through non-Christians), and the church is called to grow in it through worship, giving, serving, Scripture, and prayer.
Illustrations: hypocrisy-like-laziness, football-center-perfect-snaps-blowout-loss, parenting-do-as-i-say
September 1
The Opposite of Hypocrisy
James 1:17-27
Mark 7:1-8
Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. In fulfillment of his own purpose he gave birth to us by the word of truth, so that we would become a kind of first fruits of his creatures. You must understand this, my beloved brothers and sisters: let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger, for human anger does not produce God’s righteousness. Therefore rid yourselves of all sordidness and rank growth of wickedness, and welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save your souls. But be doers of the word and not merely hearers who deceive themselves. For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like. But those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act—they will be blessed in their doing. If any think they are religious and do not bridle their tongues but deceive their hearts, their religion is worthless. Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself unstained by the world. - James 1:17-27
Now when the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around him, they noticed that some of his disciples were eating with defiled hands, that is, without washing them. (For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders, and they do not eat anything from the market unless they wash, and there are also many other traditions that they observe: the washing of cups and pots and bronze kettles and beds.) So the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders but eat with defiled hands?” He said to them, “Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written, ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines.’ “You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.” - Mark 7:1-8
One thing that’s not often talked about is how easy it is to be a hypocrite. It’s one of the easiest things in the world. It’s like being lazy. You don’t wake up one day and struggle to do less. People don’t wake up one day and struggle to be a hypocrite. I mean, you can habituate yourself out of it, but I think there’s a natural human inclination to say one thing and do another: to say you’re gonna do something and not really wanna do it. To know what the right thing to do is and not quite follow up. I’m not saying we’re all hypocrites, I’m just saying it’s not hard to be a hypocrite. Like we shouldn’t be surprised by hypocrisy in this world. It’s been around since the beginning. Think Cain and Abel “Am I my brother’s keeper? Adam and Eve, Adam and Eve saying one thing and doing another. The Old Testament is full of hypocrites. Jacob, King David, King Solomon, all great examples of hypocrisy. Even in the letters of Paul in Romans seven, near the end of his life, Paul makes this acknowledgment of hypocrisy in Romans 7. “I know the good I should do, but I don’t do it. And the thing I don’t know I shouldn’t do, I do.” There’s a bias towards hypocrisy in the fallen human heart. Hypocrisy is not an attractive quality in another person. We don’t like it when we see it in other people, but we need to understand that it’s easy to fall into that trap.
Mark
When we read, in Mark 7, about the Pharisees challenging Jesus, it’s easy to judge the Pharisees from this distance of time. The Pharisees were a group of non-priestly Jews. The priesthood in Israel during second temple Judaism was a dynastic system. It was an aristocracy of sorts. You had to be from a certain kind of family to be a priest. But there were other Jews who felt like following God was super important and wanted to follow God in a really strong way. These were the Pharisees. And so they taught and lived in certain ways to follow God in ways that they thought were faithful and clear according to the Bible. This is why modern Judaism doesn’t have priests. They have rabbis, teachers, because a priest is a specific claim in Judaism to specific sacrificial practices and to a specific genealogy. Without the temple and without pure genealogical records, no one can claim to be a priest.
In order to read Mark 7, and all of the New Testament, really, we need to start from a position of sympathy towards the Pharisees. If we don’t, it will turn into this good guy, bad guy thing that masks what is going on in the Bible. The history of Christian antisemitism came from bad readings of the Bible that ignored the actual words of Jesus in favor of winners and losers. Jesus explodes those expectations and understandings of the world. There’s a good side and a bad side is really doesn’t have much place in the Christian Gospels. There are other religions that are dualistic if that is what you are into. Zoroastrianism is a great example of a perfectly dualistic religion. There’s a good God and a bad God. Gnosticism, which came out out of Christianity, but is a different religion, in Gnosticism there’s a good and a bad and it’s super clear and pretty. When we read the Bible, we see that, in some ways, we’re all bad guys, and in some ways, we all have the possibility of good. It’s how we are phrasing it, how we’re looking at it. What is the situation. Like in Romans 5, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Or 1 John 3
“Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we shall be has not yet been revealed. We do know that when it is revealed we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.” 1 John 3:2-3 NABRE
When we think about the Pharisees in a positive light, they are people earnestly trying to follow God to the utmost of their understanding and will, and they notice Jesus and the followers of Jesus, and something looks off. And it looks like these people are following God, but they’re mistaken because the followers of Jesus aren’t living the way they should live. And the Pharisees call them out on it, “why your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands.
Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders but eat with defiled hands?
This isn’t an indictment of the disciples but of Jesus, because Jesus is the authority figure. Jesus is the Rabbi. And the Rabbi should be the one correcting his students, that’s what disciples are or students. So the Rabbi should correct his students. “Why are you not correcting your students? Why are they acting in this way?”
And so Jesus responds,
Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written, This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines.’ “You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.”
The Pharisees are missing the point by holding to human traditions here. The passage Jesus is quoting from is Isaiah 29. Let’s hear a little more from this passage,
The Lord said: Because these people draw near with their mouths and honor me with their lips, while their hearts are far from me and their worship of me is a human commandment learned by rote, so I will again do amazing things with this people, shocking and amazing. The wisdom of their wise shall perish, and the discernment of the discerning shall be hidden. Woe to those who hide a plan too deep for the Lord, whose deeds are in the dark, and who say, “Who sees us? Who knows us?” You turn things upside down! Shall the potter be regarded as the clay? Shall the thing made say of its maker, “He did not make me,” or the thing formed say of the one who formed it, “He has no understanding”? Isaiah 29:13-16
Jesus is calling the Pharisees hypocrites in a specific way. He’s not saying that they are claiming to follow God and not following God. He is saying that they are holding on to the parts of faith that don’t matter as much. They are missing the point. It is like watching a football game and celebrating that the center never fumbled a snap when the team loses 72-6. Sure, it is good for the center not to fumble, but you are missing the forest for the trees.
This connects directly to Paul’s description in 2 Corinthians 3 about how the letter kills but the spirit gives life. Paul writes: our sufficiency is from God, who has made us sufficient to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.
What is the point of Torah? What is the point of the way, of Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament, the holiest books in Judaism. Torah can be translated as law and as way. I think way is a helpful understanding. Torah is a journey with God.
The Way is also a central word for Christians, because one of the early names for Christians before they were called Christians was followers of the way. And it’s this sense that for Christians, and especially Jewish Christians at this time, Torah is fully revealed in the life and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We understand it fully. There are only pieces in the scriptures, but they’re fully made alive in this human flesh. God with us, Emmanuel, who reveals that there are ways of living that follow scripture which are hypocritical, that we can do the things and miss the point. We can praise God with our lips, we can honor God with our lips, but our hearts can be far away from God. We can focus on the Center position in the football game, connecting on every snap and ignore the whole game. I think the letter of James is helpful here and clarifying about what’s going on in following God.
Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights…be doers of the word and not merely hearers who deceive themselves. For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like. But those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act—they will be blessed in their doing.
This is it. Be doers of the word and not just hearers. Don’t honor God with your lips and keep your heart far from him. Get hypocrisy as easy to fall into. It was easy for the Pharisees, it was easy for the early Christians. It is easy for contemporary Christians. It’s one of those temptations that’s just right there. It’s easy as a parent. The old saying, do as I say, not as I do, which we all know how far that goes. If our kids hear us saying one thing and acting another way, what are they gonna latch onto? Right? What do they see that’s important? If we don’t make a priority of it, what priority are they going to make of it? It is in the way we react to people and act. We call someone out for something, but if we do it ourselves. How are they gonna respond? Are they gonna trust us?
The opposite of hypocrisy is integrity. A life of integrity is being a doer of the word and not just a hearer. A life of integrity is someone who honors God with their lips and honors God with their hearts. A life of integrity is what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 9:14: So also, the Lord has appointed to those proclaiming the gospel to live from the gospel.
A life of integrity, of true and full integrity, is possible thanks to grace. Because every good gift comes from God the Father. This is one of the great faith claims of Christianity. If there’s a good in the world, if there is something good going on, it comes from God. If we see someone out in the world who’s not a Christian and they’re doing good, they’re being gifted by God, even if they don’t know it. God uses them. God works through them. The God who is love is present with everyone. God is not restricted by religion or creed. We’re the ones who make these restrictions. God does not.
But if goodness can be found wherever God wills, why should we go through the trouble of being doers? Why not just be a hypocrite and then accidentally do good every once in a while?
The reason also comes back to integrity. God offers us a gift of an integrated life of life through grace to live in the kingdom of God now. We don’t have to wait. Because while there are goods in the world, the human heart leans towards hypocrisy and self-destruction. Grace offers us new life here to see the world rightly and serve God’s kingdom through the means of grace. By becoming holy, set apart for love here and now. By letting go of destructive habits. But growing in grace. We do this through worshipping together, through giving. Through serving. Through reading the Bible together and praying together. Do these things. Praise God with your lips and your hearts. Be a doer. Our church was founded on being doers and not just hearers. Serve! Give! Love! Witness! Show up when others don’t. Care when others don’t. Live for God. Don’t just receive and feel better. Do. Be a doer! Remember you are loved. You are included. You are forgiven. Go and offer that in this world.
In the name of the Father and the Som and the Holy Spirit. Amen.