Something to Work With--September 22, 2020

 

Something to Work With--September 22, 2020

[Jesus] said to them, “Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written, ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines.’ You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.” [Mark 7:6-8]

Jesus doesn’t have a problem with failures; he has a problem with pretenders. Jesus has little patience for play-actors, actually. He just can’t do anything with them. 

That’s actually the root of the issue here, and it’s the root of the word itself that Jesus uses to describe religious pretenders. “Hypocrites,” Jesus calls them. That word has come to mean something like “a person who says one thing but does another,” but it was actually the Greek word for an actor in a play when Jesus used it. Jesus’ criticism of the religious so-and-sos of his day is that they are really “playing church” rather than seeking to listen for God’s voice. It’s like they are playing characters, just going through the motions and following their scripts in order to amuse God or entertain God, but never daring to let their real selves be seen beneath the masks and make-up. But when the show’s over, they are empty inside and have nowhere to go. 

Jesus’ real problem with these supposed religious experts is that they are fakers, not that they fail to live up to their own standards. Jesus can work with people who miss the mark. Jesus can make something of people who shoot for the moon and fall short. Jesus can bring blessing for people who have ideals and struggle to love up to them. He has room for the twelve failures we know as the twelve disciples, each of whom keep on trying to live the kingdom life, but bring shoddy faith, short tempers, and dim bulbs to the table. Jesus can work with the likes of them. 

The play-actors, however, are convinced that if they put on a good show they can fool God, fool everybody else, and therefore in the process fool themselves into believing they don’t really need any help. Sure, their hearts are fickle and their faith wavering, just like the disciples Jesus chose—but if they can focus on outward appearances and a long list of religious rules, then maybe, they think, they can keep us distracted enough from seeing their weaknesses and failings. They’re like the Wizard, telling Dorothy, the Scarecrow, and the rest not to pay any attention to the poor schlub behind the curtain. 

And that is exactly why Jesus can’t do much of anything with the likes of the religious hypocrites and pretenders of his culture. He can’t do anything with them because they won’t admit they have a problem that they cannot cure themselves. “Just keep drawing attention to how well we are following the plate-washing rules, and no one will notice the aching jealousy inside us, the fearful insecurity inside us, the petty greed and jealous lurking just under the surface again,” they think. Well, if you tell yourself a lie for long enough, you come to believe it yourself. And that’s the trouble with the folks in Jesus’ target sights in these verses here: they’ve been putting on a show for so long, trying to convince anyone who will listen that their hearts are perfect and their lives are in order that they can no longer face the truth of their own neediness. They have pretended themselves into a corner, because they are now the last people who would ever come to Jesus to help heal their weaknesses. Jesus doesn’t have patience for them because they keep insisting “The show must go on” when Jesus can see through their play-acting. A good honest failure, by contrast, at least has enough sense to come to Jesus and say, “I can’t do this on my own.” 

I have a hunch that we are often more afraid of being failures than being caught as pretenders. The loud voices around us mock anybody they think is a "loser." The talking heads are more interested in making people think you are successful, powerful, and smart--that you are "great" and that you are "winning," whether it is true or not.  They try and teach us to project confidence, to sell our “personal brands,” and to fake it til we make it, rather than ever offer up our failures to God to do something with. Offering them up means admitting them in the first place. 

We have a hard time, I suspect, hearing that Jesus can use honest failures (in fact, they’re just about the only people Jesus works with) more easily that religious play-actors. We would rather put up a good front and a good game face than come to a point of complete powerlessness and admit to ourselves (as well as to God) that we just can’t keep putting on a show anymore. What if instead, today, you and I decided to risk being honest failures rather than play-actors? What if, rather than pretending we never need God’s help because we can keep the rules just fine—and maybe add a few ourselves, just for good measure—what if we confessed the places we have fallen short today, and offered those up to God to see what God will do with them? 

I suspect, knowing what we know of Jesus, he will roll up his sleeves with a smile and say, “Now this, I can work with…” 

Lord Jesus, help us to be honest in looking at ourselves, so that we can offer ourselves completely to your transforming power.