Tuesday March 18, 2014 (Matthew 23:1-12) I remember one day in Biology class my sophomore year of college I dropped my pen in the middle of lecture and accidentally swore, “Shit.” The guy next to me, who knew me enough to know that I was Christian, said “Tsk tsk tsk. Come on Kevin, I thought you were Christian. Would Jesus have said that?” As Christians, it can feel at times like people are expecting perfection from us. The bar for Christians to strive for is admittedly high; Jesus tells his disciples “Be perfect, therefore, as your Heavenly Father is perfect”. When we fall short of that expectation, outsiders may taunt us saying “You’re not a true Christian. If you really loved Jesus you wouldn’t have made that mistake.” People find pleasure in calling out hypocrites, and who better to taunt than a group of people who are expected to strive for holiness, to strive to be “perfect”? Now in an old blog post I argued against the idea that “Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure”, but instead argued that our fear of inadequacy in God’s eyes was our deepest fear. A reader of my blog recently responded to that post, saying he couldn’t (respectfully) disagree with me more. He pointed out “I think the deepest and most universal human fear is a fear of our own power and I believe we fear success much more deeply than we fear failure…This isn’t to say people don’t fear failure, they definitely do. But the fear of success is even deeper and, if you follow that fear in a person’s life, it’ll take you far deeper into who they are than the fear of failure.” I would argue that today’s reading where Jesus points out the hypocrites who “preach, but do not practice” is something that people who wish to remain lukewarm in their faith will use for their reasoning to stay in their comfort zone. Perhaps someone who is lukewarm in their faith will read today’s reading and think “Look at those people who were preaching one thing but doing something else. I don’t want to be called out like they were, so I’ll resolve to blending in, to not preach anything and to not strive to live a life of holiness, so people can’t accuse me of being a hypocrite. If I don’t put myself out there, I can’t really fail.” Let’s re-examine the quote by Marianne Williamson, a quote which that fellow blogger’s comment made me re-consider, a quote which may resonate with one of the themes from today’s reading. What do you think? “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people wont feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. Its not just in some of us; its in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
Posted on: Tue, 18 Mar 2014 17:19:08 +0000
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