Matthew 21:28-32
NBA player Grant Hill was something of an anomaly: a professional basketball player without an attitude. You wouldn’t find him shooting off his mouth, wearing gaudy jewelry, sporting a weird hairdo, doing celebration dances on the court, or talking trash about his opponents. His basic approach was a direct result of the early influences on his life. He said once, “When I was young, I remember watching Julius Erving. The thing I liked best about Doctor J was that he carried himself with class. He never went out of his way to embarrass anybody. I feel like I come from a generation that has the wrong type of heroes. I never got to see Arthur Ashe play tennis, but I saw the way he lived his life after tennis. I always felt that was the type of person I should be looking up to because of his spirit. It’s a matter of respect.”
The way we choose to live our lives makes a kind of statement about the kind of people we are. And this is especially true of our spiritual lives. What we do, how we live, reflects what it is we believe most deeply and aspire to most passionately. If we are deeply committed to Jesus Christ and to his church, that will shine through in all that we do and say. And if we are just pretending to be disciples, if we are just talking the talk and not walking the walk, then that will also be evident from the way we live our lives. Do you realize that every member of the church is an advertisement for the Christian faith? If we practice our profession, then we will be a good advertisement. The truth of the matter is that every day our lives either attract or repel people to Christianity, based on our faithfulness or lack of faithfulness to what we say we believe.
Jesus addressed this issue one day through a brief parable that he told to a crowd of religious leaders, people who professed to be the most faithful people to Jewish faith and practice in the first century. And there were, most likely, some of the less desirable people in the crowd too, the kind of people who tended to follow Jesus wherever he went, the kind of people that Jesus chose to associate with, much to the horror of the religious establishment. Jesus tended to hang around with those the religious leaders labeled “sinners”: tax collectors, prostitutes, and anyone else who could or would not maintain all the strict requirements of being ritually clean and pure according to Jewish law. It is interesting to note which group of people Jesus praised and which group of people Jesus called to repentance.
Jesus told about a man who had two sons, neither of whom were what you would call ideal children. The father asked them to go and work in his vineyard. The first son said that he would not do it, but later he changed his mind and went out to work. The second son said that he would do it, but he did not go out to work. While both sons were a disappointment to their father, the one who obeyed in the end was better than the one who did not.
It is easy to see the comparison that Jesus had in mind. The religious leaders were the ones who said they would obey God. But they didn’t obey; they were all a bunch of hypocrites. The tax collectors and other sinners appeared to not be interested in obeying God. And yet, when they heard the gospel they changed their lives and they practiced what they now professed to be true. Therefore, according to Jesus, the tax collectors and prostitutes and other sinners would enter the kingdom of heaven before the religious leaders. That sounds offensive now, but it would have been even more shocking in first-century Jerusalem.
While the Jewish leaders had spent their lives professing their devotion to God, they had not followed through with putting their faith into practice. On the contrary, the people who had been labeled sinners had seemed as if they had turned their backs on God, but then they changed their minds and found a place in God’s kingdom. Actions speak louder than words. And words can never take the place of deeds. You can talk a good game and yet have zero commitment to practice what you preach. The earliest name for the Christian community was “The Way,” because it wasn’t a creed that set these people apart; it was the way of life that they put into practice.
Hypocrisy is not just a problem found in first-century Jerusalem. It can be a problem for 21st-century Christians, as well. How many times have you heard someone say, “The church is full of hypocrites”? One man saw a pastor at a cocktail party one night and said, “The church is full of hypocrites!” The pastor suggested, “Why don’t you join us? One more won’t make any difference!”
But we have to take this issue seriously. Yes, there are hypocrites in church. And yes, we are all guilty of hypocrisy to a certain degree. We have to look at our own hearts to see the extent to which hypocrisy has taken hold. A person whose practice doesn’t match his or her profession will do great harm to the church. It is a great handicap to the church when Christians are not living the life Jesus called us to live. We need to be good examples of the faith, believers who act on what we say we believe. One place to start is to make sure we are right with God. The early church father Athanasius wrote, “You cannot put straight in others what is warped in yourself.” So we need to look for our warped places and get them straightened out. Then we can be the kind of witnesses that Jesus needs in his church.
There is nothing more influential in a person’s life than a good role model. Andrew Murray wrote, “God has no more precious gift to a church … than a man [or woman] who lives as an embodiment of his will, and inspires those around him [or her] with the faith of what grace can do.” We do that, not only with our words, but also with our actions. Paul Gilbert wrote in this poem,
You’re writing a “gospel,”
A chapter each day,
By the deeds that you do,
By the words that you say;
Men read what you write,
Whether faithless or true;
Say, what is the “gospel”
According to you?
The early Christians set a good example in faith and practice, living lives of integrity, preaching the gospel by what they said and even more by what they did. We know that because the church continued to grow and to spread, until it eventually became the official religion of the Roman Empire. Publius Aristides, a 2nd-century philosopher who lived in Athens, wrote about the Christianity of his day: “The Christians know and believe in God, the Maker of heaven and earth. They walk in all humility and kindness, and falsehood is not found among them. They observe scrupulously the commandment of their Messiah; every morning, and at all times, on account of the goodness of God toward them, they praise and laud him, and over their meals they render him thanks. On account of them, there flows forth much beauty in the world.”
We need to be about the business of bringing forth much beauty in the world. We can do that by living out our faith. Albert Schweitzer remarked, “Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing.” How important is our example? Listen to this story told by Jay Kesler about a conversation he had with a young lady attending a church camp. She came forward after a worship service and asked to talk with someone. She was crying when she told Jay how her father had been molesting her since the time she was four years old. She felt guilty about it, as if somehow it was all her fault, and had even tried to kill herself. Jay asked her why she had not committed suicide. She said it was because of the youth pastor at her church.
The young woman told Jay that the youth pastor had just gotten married before he came to her church. He was always holding his wife’s hand and looking at her with tenderness. Maybe all men weren’t like her father. One day she was watching out the church window when the youth pastor walked his wife to the car. Even though the parking lot was empty, and nobody was looking, he walked all the way around the car to open the door for his wife, then went all the way back around to get in himself. She repeated, he even did it when he didn’t know anyone was watching. Then the young woman asked Jay, “Do you think my youth pastor is a Christian?” Jay answered, “Yes, I do.” She said, “That’s why I came here tonight. I want to be a Christian, too.” And all because of something a man did when he didn’t know anyone was looking.
I’d like to close with a prayer of John Henry Newman: “Lord, shine in me and so be in me that all with whom I come into contact may know thy presence in my soul. Let them look up and see no longer me, but only Jesus. Amen.”
