Hypocrites & hypocrisy!

Matthew 23:23-26

Jesus said, "You're hopeless, you religion scholars and Pharisees! Hypocrites! You keep meticulous account books, tithing on every nickel and dime you get, but on the meat of God's Law, things like fairness and compassion and commitment-- the absolute basics!-- you carelessly take it or leave it. Careful bookkeeping is commendable, but the basics are required. 24 Do you have any idea how silly you look, writing a life story that's wrong from start to finish, nitpicking over commas and semicolons? 25 "You're hopeless, you religion scholars and Pharisees! Hypocrites! You burnish the surface of your cups and bowls so they sparkle in the sun, while the insides are maggoty with your greed and gluttony. 26 Stupid Pharisee! Scour the insides, and then the gleaming surface will mean something.

Food for thought!

Jesus continues from where he left off yesterday. He calls his contemporaries, the "religious people", as hypocrites. What does this word mean? Originally, hypocrite was the regular Greek word for an actor, like in plays. It used to mean something amusing. But then it came to mean an actor in the worse sense of the term, a pretender, one who acts a part, one who wears a mask to cover his true feelings, one who puts on an external show while inwardly his thoughts and feelings are very different.

To Jesus the Scribes and Pharisees were men who were religious actors. What he meant was this. For the Scribes and Pharisees religion consisted in outward observances, the wearing of elaborate garments and vestments, the meticulous observance of the rules and regulations of the Law. But in their hearts there was bitterness and envy and pride and arrogance and evil. To Jesus these Scribes and Pharisees were men who, under a mask of elaborate godliness, concealed hearts in which the most godless feelings and emotions held sway.

That accusation holds good in greater or lesser degree of anybody, including you and me, whose life is on the assumption that religion consists in external observances and external acts. Religion is an act of the heart. The laws and rules and rituals and ceremonies are intended to be manifestations of our heart. When this does not correspond to those, when that which happens in the heart is different from religious laws and rules and rituals and ceremonies, we become mere actors, we become hypocritical. In theaters and plays this kind of hypocrisy is accepted and even expected; in religion it is condemned because it is sinful. In religion, we are called to be genuine and not actors.

There are many of us who wear the right clothes to church, carefully hand in our offering to the Church, adopt the right attitude at prayer, are never absent from the celebration of the Eucharist, and yet outside the church we live irreligious lives. As we said yesterday, Church laws, rules and ceremonies are simply manifestations of what goes on inside our hearts. But unfortunately, sometimes we focus on them at the expense of our hearts. God looks more at our hearts than at our laws, rules and celebrations.