28th Week OT (F): Ephesians 1.11-14 and Luke 12.1-7
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
Serra Club Mass and Church of the Incarnation
Here’s my solution to the problem of hypocrisy: let’s get rid of ideals! Get rid of standards and goals. That’s really what causes hypocrisy, right? We fail to live up to what we believe to be right and good and true and then we end up on the front page of the paper. The headlines blaring: CHRISTIAN IN SCANDAL, SOMEBODY’S GETTING SUED. You might be one of those hard cases who thinks we should try harder to live up to our professed values. That we should strive more diligently to be good example of Christian ideals. OK. Live in la-la land if you want. You idealists just make the world more difficult for us realists. Wake up and smell the failure, you glassy-eyed freaks! Standards and ideals are just ways to make us feel bad about being human, ways to create a false sense of hope that we can be better than the simple animals that we are. It’s easy, really: no standards, no failure; no goals, no let-downs. Don’t profess any values, no one can call you a hypocrite when you inevitably fail to honor those values. Easy. Too easy.
Jesus tells his friends that not even the smallest bird escapes the notice of God. He says, “Do not be afraid. You are worth more than many sparrows.” If the sparrow is worthy of God’s notice, then how much more worthy are we to stand in His presence and be noticed by our Father? And not only noticed but loved and being loved by Him capable ourselves then of loving others. That we are able to love because we are loved first by Him is the key to understanding why we do not need to be afraid of Him who has the power to cast us into Gehenna. How so? If we are able to love b/c God loved us first, and love is Who God Is, then it follows that we are able to do all the things we need to do to grow in holiness b/c God did them for us first. He forgives us, so we are able to forgive one another. He died for us, so we are able to die for one another. After all, all of our hairs are counted and we are worth more than many sparrows.
God has set the standards for our lives. He has marked the goals and defined the virtues that will bring us to Him. And He has made it possible for us to meet these standards, to reach these goals by first showing us that they can be met, can be reached. He sent His only Son, Jesus Christ, as a living benchmark, a breathing exemplar of His perfection. A human creature like one of us, flesh and temptation, he excelled in every test, hit every target. There was no hypocrisy in him because he was and is the completed union of human potential and divine act.
One way to end hypocrisy to eliminate standards. I think we’ve tried that already. Huge mess. We could also just say that everyone is a winner; everyone has met the standards. Bigger mess. Another way for us to eliminate hypocrisy is to admit up front that we will fail. And admit up front that our failure will sometimes be scandalous. This isn’t permission to fail; it’s an acknowledgement that we are not yet whole. We also have to say that despite our failures and despite the probability of scandal we do not lower the standards, shorten the goals, or create easier targets. The benchmarks of human holiness aren’t ours to revise. They belong to God. What we can do is confess that we are creatures, wholly and entirely—made, loved, redeemed, and brought to perfection as children of the Father. As Paul writes to the Ephesians, “In Christ we were also chosen…so that we might exist for the praise of his glory…”
Hypocrisy then is not the failure to live up to the standards that we profess in God’s name. Hypocrisy is the prideful refusal to admit that we will fail. It is the refusal to admit that we will fail if we will not live and love in the life and love of Christ.
Perhaps the road to Gehenna is paved with the skulls of tight-lipped realists!
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
Serra Club Mass and Church of the Incarnation
Here’s my solution to the problem of hypocrisy: let’s get rid of ideals! Get rid of standards and goals. That’s really what causes hypocrisy, right? We fail to live up to what we believe to be right and good and true and then we end up on the front page of the paper. The headlines blaring: CHRISTIAN IN SCANDAL, SOMEBODY’S GETTING SUED. You might be one of those hard cases who thinks we should try harder to live up to our professed values. That we should strive more diligently to be good example of Christian ideals. OK. Live in la-la land if you want. You idealists just make the world more difficult for us realists. Wake up and smell the failure, you glassy-eyed freaks! Standards and ideals are just ways to make us feel bad about being human, ways to create a false sense of hope that we can be better than the simple animals that we are. It’s easy, really: no standards, no failure; no goals, no let-downs. Don’t profess any values, no one can call you a hypocrite when you inevitably fail to honor those values. Easy. Too easy.
Jesus tells his friends that not even the smallest bird escapes the notice of God. He says, “Do not be afraid. You are worth more than many sparrows.” If the sparrow is worthy of God’s notice, then how much more worthy are we to stand in His presence and be noticed by our Father? And not only noticed but loved and being loved by Him capable ourselves then of loving others. That we are able to love because we are loved first by Him is the key to understanding why we do not need to be afraid of Him who has the power to cast us into Gehenna. How so? If we are able to love b/c God loved us first, and love is Who God Is, then it follows that we are able to do all the things we need to do to grow in holiness b/c God did them for us first. He forgives us, so we are able to forgive one another. He died for us, so we are able to die for one another. After all, all of our hairs are counted and we are worth more than many sparrows.
God has set the standards for our lives. He has marked the goals and defined the virtues that will bring us to Him. And He has made it possible for us to meet these standards, to reach these goals by first showing us that they can be met, can be reached. He sent His only Son, Jesus Christ, as a living benchmark, a breathing exemplar of His perfection. A human creature like one of us, flesh and temptation, he excelled in every test, hit every target. There was no hypocrisy in him because he was and is the completed union of human potential and divine act.
One way to end hypocrisy to eliminate standards. I think we’ve tried that already. Huge mess. We could also just say that everyone is a winner; everyone has met the standards. Bigger mess. Another way for us to eliminate hypocrisy is to admit up front that we will fail. And admit up front that our failure will sometimes be scandalous. This isn’t permission to fail; it’s an acknowledgement that we are not yet whole. We also have to say that despite our failures and despite the probability of scandal we do not lower the standards, shorten the goals, or create easier targets. The benchmarks of human holiness aren’t ours to revise. They belong to God. What we can do is confess that we are creatures, wholly and entirely—made, loved, redeemed, and brought to perfection as children of the Father. As Paul writes to the Ephesians, “In Christ we were also chosen…so that we might exist for the praise of his glory…”
Hypocrisy then is not the failure to live up to the standards that we profess in God’s name. Hypocrisy is the prideful refusal to admit that we will fail. It is the refusal to admit that we will fail if we will not live and love in the life and love of Christ.
Perhaps the road to Gehenna is paved with the skulls of tight-lipped realists!
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