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February 13th.
2008
HYPOCRITES
“You know why I don't go to church?
Because the place is filled with hypocrites.” As the saying goes: “If I
had a dollar for every time I have heard that…”
And yet, as I knelt before the cross on Ash Wednesday I was struck
during the Litany of Penitence: “We confess to you, Lord, all our past
unfaithfulness: the pride, hypocrisy, and impatience of our lives”.
Hypocrisy: the practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs
to which one's own behavior does not conform is how my dictionary
defines it. The general simplistic definition seems to be: saying one
thing and doing another.
Is our church filled with hypocrites? Sincerely, I don't believe so, at
least not intentionally. Frankly, what I believe is that most of us are
a part of our faith community because we are working on making our words
and actions consistent.
The reality is our church is as Augustine wrote, “The Church is not a
society of morally perfected, but a hospital for sinners.” Any
suggestion that because we are striving to live as God calls us means we
have “arrived” is misguided.
We gather to be fed by Word and sacrament. Within the context of a
supportive, encouraging environment the hope is we are as Paul commends
to the Church in Philippi, “…work out your own salvation with fear and
trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to
will and work for his good pleasure.” (Philippians 2:12-13)
We are not “perfected.” Rather, we are “work(ing) out (our) own
salvation.” The beauty of our faith community is that we are not
expected to “have it all together” but instead we are doing our best to
assist folks in becoming the people God is calling them to be. That is
what we promise in our Baptismal Covenant, specifically when we answer,
“I will with God's help.”
We are rightly accused if we even hint at saying we “claim to have moral
standards or beliefs” while our actions say otherwise. If, however we
are working on becoming the person who God created us to be then we are
not hypocrites but children of God.
Blessings,
The Rev. Brian N. Prior, Rector
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