I was tempted to call this sermon “The Ballad of Bucky Merrigold, or Why Stacy
Dumped a Perfectly Good Boyfriend and Missed the Homecoming Dance” because it
begins with this story about teenage love. Bucky was a high school sophomore. He
had always liked girls, but the girls he liked rarely liked him back, so he had
never had a girlfriend. The main problem with this, as he saw it, was social.
All his friends had girlfriends. They all had dates on Friday nights. They
talked about their girlfriends. They had someone to take to the homecoming
dance. Bucky did not. He felt like an outcast. So he set about fixing the
problem. He needed a girlfriend. The question was whom? She had to be decent
looking, reasonably popular, and above all willing to go out with him. He
scouted about for a few days and found the most likely candidate: Stacy. She was
a freshman, kind of cute, kind of quiet, not popular but certainly not
unpopular—all around a good bet.
So Bucky walked up to her one day between classes and started talking. Things
went well. After a couple of days of chatting and a few text messages, and of
course all the back channel gossip between their respective friends, he asked
her to the homecoming dance, which was about six weeks away. She accepted. That
Friday they went with a group of friends to a movie.
Bucky was thrilled. He was one of the boys again. Now when he got together with
his buddies, he could talk about his girlfriend. He would wait until a few guys
were together to call her on his cell phone, so he could act cool, “Hey, babe,
what’s up?” This girlfriend thing was working out great, with one small catch.
When they talked privately, he found they really didn’t have much to say. They
didn’t have much in common. In fact, he didn’t like Stacy all that much. What he
liked was the social benefits of having a girlfriend. He was careful to do
everything right. They went for movies and burgers on Fridays with their little
gang, because their parents would not let them go alone yet. He called her. He
gave her candy and little gifts. He was planning on some nice flowers for the
homecoming dance. He took pride in doing everything right. He did all the stuff
his friends did for their girlfriends. From his perspective life was good.
From Stacy’s perspective, life was wonderful. She was beginning to blossom as a
young woman, and Bucky was the first boy to show real interest. At first she was
thrilled. Soon, however, delight turned into something else—love. Stacy was head
over heels in love with Bucky. She waited for his calls. She daydreamed about
him. She wrote his name over and over in all her notebooks. Her science notebook
had “Stacy Merrigold” written over 90 times on the inside back cover, though she
would have died of embarrassment if anyone had seen it, especially Bucky.
Love may be blind, but it is not always stupid. Stacy was an acute young person,
and she quickly sensed something amiss. But what? Bucky did everything right. He
was a model boyfriend. What was wrong? Then one day at lunch as she sat next to
Bucky and picked through her tater tots while he carried on with his friends, it
hit her. She was in love with him, but he didn’t really care for her at all. He
was just using her. Not in a cruel way; he was nice. But that did not change the
fact that he did not return her feelings. She realized he wanted a girlfriend,
not necessarily her.
At first she was crushed. She did not confront him, but over the next week she
tried to get him to show genuine interest in her. Nothing. By now the big dance
was four days away. Her resolve stiffened. Her backbone, which up until then had
merely held her torso upright, found a whole new purpose in life. And four days
before homecoming, Stacy dumped her perfectly good boyfriend and missed the
dance. I say, good for her.
Hopefully you have figured out by now what this saga of teenage love has to do
with today’s scripture reading. Replace the name Stacy with the name God, and
replace the name Bucky with the word hypocrites, and all I did was translate
Jesus’ commands into a narrative. Teenage girls are not the only beings whose
affections are toyed with by the insincere. God holds the record for being
invited out just to make an impression on other people. He doesn’t like it
anymore than you would, probably less; and unlike a lot of people, he doesn’t
put up with it.
Today we continue our series on Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. This passage assumes
two truths we have encountered often in Jesus’ teaching. First, the Christian
life is a love affair with God. It is not a list of doctrine to be believed,
although truth is important. It is not a list of rules to follow, although how
we live certainly matters. Above all Christianity is about knowing our Creator.
God is personal. He is Person (capital “P”). Through Jesus, his Son, he restores
our relationship with him. He makes us his children and his people. He gives us
a vital role to play in his plans for the world. Even his commandments express
his love, because they help us to know and do what is best for us—and for other
people whom he also loves. Second, what matters in Christian living is the
heart. If your heart is right, your actions will be right. If you heart is not
right, your actions will be evil. The way the Bible uses the word “heart” it
includes not only how we feel but also what we know and what we resolve to do.
Thus, we heard Jesus explain that hating a person is as bad as murder and lust
is as bad as adultery. I explained that the difference between temptation and
sin comes down to “what would you do if you could get away with anything.” C.S.
Lewis said it well: “We may think God wants actions of a certain kind, but God
wants people of a certain sort.”
In today’s passage we find these truths working together again. The heart is
what matters most, and God desires a relationship of love with us. We are not
surprised, then, to hear Jesus say that when you go to show your love for
God—which is what religion is about—you had better really love God, not just
want to make a nice show to impress others. Religion is particularly susceptible
to this sort of abuse. God knows our hearts, but other people do not. All they
have to form an opinion of us is our actions, which they can see. This means
they can be fooled.
If I give a lot of money to the church, attend often, show off my knowledge of
the Bible, pray eloquently, and all the rest, what will people think? They will
think I am a godly, mature Christian. And they may be right. I may be. Then
again, maybe not. God knows. And I know.
Given the changes in our culture over the last 50 or so years, there is less
motivation to fake religion than there once was. When religion loses its social
clout, why pretend? It is still a temptation, of course, especially among
Christians whose friends are all Christian. Imagine what it must have been like
for the people who first heard Jesus say these things. For first century Jews,
God, country, family, and race were all one thing. To be patriotic meant to be
pious and vice versa. Everything that mattered came under one umbrella. Being a
Jew defined a person in every way. But what did it meant to be a good Jew, a
faithful Jew, who loved God, country, and fellow Jews? Beside circumcision for
men and the food laws and the scriptures and holy days, three practices stood
out. You can guess what they are: giving alms, prayer, and fasting. Doing those
was what religion was all about. Jesus assumed his disciples would be religious
in those ways, but he was concerned once again about their heart and their
motives.
What is the point of religion? Looking back on the parts of the Sermon on the
Mount we have covered already, we find two things we might call the point of
religion as Jesus taught it: loving God and living as kingdom people. Jesus
tells us we have been chosen as God’s special people, and this means God has a
mission for us. We are to live in such a way that other people look at our life
together and see enough of God’s kingdom that they want it.
This second goal is not inconsistent with what Jesus says about giving, praying,
and fasting secretly. People are not drawn to God by your displays of piety.
They will be drawn, if they are drawn, by your love and by the life of the whole
Christian community. It is not your donation that will reach them; it is your
generous heart and a church that uses the money well. Your eloquence in prayer
may be pleasant to listen to—and if it is, I salute you, for I have never
achieved eloquent prayer; my prayer always seems more like stammering, but I
think my heart is right because I always mean what I say and want to lay
everything before God because I believe only he can make it right. Anyway, you
may be eloquent, but what draws people to the kingdom is not the words of the
prayer but the spirit behind the prayer. Is your prayer, whether in public or in
private, motivated by faith in God and concern for his broken world? If so, that
spirit within you is like a magnet. Its pull may not be visible, but it will
draw others toward the kingdom—and that is what it means to be a kingdom person.
Jesus explains: If a hypocrite wants to act religious in order to impress
people, well, that is all the reward he or she can expect. People will be
impressed. God will not. It is interesting how this week’s sermon dovetails with
what I said last week about the danger of playing church. The word hypocrite
comes from the Greek theater. Originally it referred to an actor in a play who
wears a mask. You could substitute the word play-actors in our text and get a
good translation. Jesus does not want fakers and pretenders, people merely
acting the role of a disciple.
You know, a text like this one is difficult to preach precisely because it is
plain and direct. It is pretty obvious what Jesus means. Our world is vastly
different from that one, but human nature is the same, so figuring out how to do
what Jesus said is not hard either. In a case like this the preacher can (a) say
the same thing Jesus did over and over in different ways, (b) encourage,
threaten, or cajole you to do what the passage says to do, or (c) try to take
you deeper in some nuance of our effort to live out what Jesus said. I’ve done
“a” already. Now I’d like to try my hand at “c.” I do not think anyone in this
room is pretending to be a Christian. Neither, however, do I think any of us
does the things good Christians do from entirely pure motives. In other words,
our motives are never black or white, but always some shade of gray. So what is
Jesus saying to us?
I see good news right away. God accepts and rewards our honest efforts to please
him. Some people might think that if you want to please God, your motive must be
100% pure. All white without the least hint of gray, nothing less will please
God. If this were true, we would be in trouble. How could any of us hope to
please God? Even though the love of Christ has been poured into our hearts by
God’s Spirit—even though we know and love him—yet our broken, sinful nature dies
slowly. That part of us that wants its own way, not God’s way, is like a monster
in a movie. You think you finally killed it off, but then its arm reaches up
again and grabs you. They finally kill the thing, but that doesn’t prevent six
more sequels. So we have this rebellious streak in us where God is concerned. We
are not fully cured until our death. So do we have to wait until we get to
heaven to please God? Of course not!
Some people make God out to be a snobbish food critic. He strides into our
little café with his nose in the air, scowls at our menu, and declares the food
disgusting. Only the finest gourmet dinner will satisfy him, and maybe not that.
Certainly not the humble fare we, in our weakness, are able to serve. This,
fortunately, is not how Jesus describes God.
Jesus calls God “our Father.” What does a parent do when a child brings home an
art project from school or church? Does Dad criticize its artistic merit? Does
Mom complain about the child’s use of color? No. They praise the effort and
fasten the thing on the fridge with little magnets. A good parent does not ask
“What is it?” because you are supposed to know. Isn’t it obvious? A good parent
says, “Tell me about it.” And the child will.
God is like that. You believe the gospel. You trust God. You love God. You even
love your neighbors, at least most of the time, unless you have a good reason
not to. You really want to do what is right. You want to do good and make a
difference. So you try. You write encouraging cards to some sick friends. You
visit a lonely person. You volunteer to help in the church kitchen. You sing in
the choir. You give to the church and a couple of other worthy causes. You pray.
You listen to the preacher’s sermon and try to pay attention and try to make
sense of it. Plus you do more beside all this.
Now, let’s be honest. Have you done all you could possibly do? Well, probably
not. Have you done everything, always with perfect joy and love with never a
complaint? Unlikely. Have you been entirely selfless, unconcerned about whether
all this doing good will benefit you in some way, either through rewards from
God or just becoming a better person? Who could expect you to? In short, is the
good you do ever prefect? No. So what does God think of it? He is thrilled! Yes,
he may want you to do more. And yes, he may want you to learn to enjoy good
more. But like a parent with a scribbled picture, he is delighted.
John Calvin, the father of Presbyterian theology, even tried to explain how this
works. He said our puny efforts to do good cannot please God, but God chooses to
accept them for the sake of Christ. His love, not our worthiness, makes the good
we try to do acceptable and pleasing to God. [See the Institutes 3.15.3]
Not only does God delight in the good we do or attempt or intend, God also
rewards us. To anyone who says your good works cannot please God if they are
motivated by the desire for a reward, I answer with the words of Jesus in this
passage. He not only says that religious acts done to impress other people have
that reward but none from God; he also goes on to say that God rewards religious
acts done with the right heart. He is not specific. Does God reward us now? In
eternity? Both? How does God reward us? Temporal blessings, such as health or a
better job? Spiritual blessings, such as peace and joy? Who knows? The only
thing I feel safe in saying is this: Among the blessings God gives to those who
practice their religion out of love for him is himself. He delights in giving
himself to you, just as he delights in your giving yourself to him, and for the
same reason: God is love, and he loves you. This is the greatest reward of all.
God gives you himself. Next to this all other rewards imaginable become less
than nothing. That is not to say, however, that there are no other rewards, for
God is a joyful giver and delights in giving us all good things. If he even
gives sun and rain to the wicked, and Jesus has just taught this in the Sermon
on the Mount, how much more will he bless those who cherish his blessing and
give him thanks?
God himself is the greatest reward, and this is exactly what the hypocrite
misses out on. Jesus has a sense of poetic justice here. The hypocrite takes God
out of religion, doing religious things not for God but to impress others.
Therefore, God does not impose himself in the hypocrite’s religion, and it
remains empty and without further reward.
I’d better wrap thing up now. I’ll close by saying that I hope you see how this
passage, although it is a warning, is good news. On the minus side, religion can
easily be turned into something hollow and worthless. You have probably seen
this. You may have experienced it. On the plus side, you have a Father in heaven
who loves you. He sees in what you do in secret, and he rewards you. Because
this is true, religion does not have to be hollow and worthless. It can be an
exciting relationship of love in which you give yourself to your Creator and he
gives himself to you. If you try to take God out of religion, he will let you.
But if you seek him, he will find you.
What would you call someone who used another person like an object for selfish
purposes? In the case of Bucky Merrigold, we might call him immature and
ignorant. In other cases we might choose nastier titles. What would you call
someone who tried to use God that way? Jesus chose the word
hypocrite—play-actors. They are not real disciples, but pretenders. Don’t be
one. Whatever you do, do it because you love God and want to please him. Because
he has already made you his child by grace, he will be delighted with your
efforts, however humble they may be, provided your heart is in them. Amen.