Download Ex 33:12-23 “if I have found favor in Your sight [as You say I have

Outward Appearance and Inward Reality—Mt 22:15-22
When Devon and I first arrived in Austin, Texas, as I started seminary, we
set out to find the Presbyterian congregation to which God might be calling us.
We visited several around the Austin area. Some leaned traditional and others
leaned contemporary. Some were large and others quite small. Some were very
welcoming . . . others, not so much. We were a little saddened by those
congregations that barely welcomed these two visitors, not because we were
important, but because coldness is so contrary to Christ. One church we visited
had all the proper trappings of a church: candles, cross, paraments, banners. We
sat down in a pew. A woman came over to us; I think she was a designated greeter.
I smiled at her as she approached. Her words of welcome were these: “you’re
overdressed.” She was not joking. She was signaling to me the unspoken code at
that congregation: if you want to worship here, you better not dress like that.
The friendliest Presbyterian congregation Devon and I visited during that
time was not a PC(USA) congregation at all, but an Orthodox Presbyterian
congregation. Yes, there are Presbyterians out there who aren’t PC(USA)
Presbyterians. I know, weird, isn’t it. I’ll tell you about them some time. What
especially made an impression upon me at this Orthodox Presbyterian Church,
besides the warm, generous welcome we received from many people there, was the
absence of so much I had assumed to be ordinary for any church.
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This congregation was in a new building, and it was bare. I got the
impression, though, that it was bare by intention not by circumstance. There were
no paintings, as we have. There were no banners hanging from the walls, as I have
seen at other churches. There were no candles. There were no paraments: the
pieces of cloth draped over the pulpit and the communion table. There was no
cross on the wall behind the pulpit. It was a very simple, and what seemed to me a
very bare space.
Perhaps it meant they were not concerned with outward appearances, with
making a good show. When I think of the warm, Christian greeting we received in
that bare church, and when I compare that to the cold, almost insulting greeting we
received in that building with all of the external trappings of a church, I get a sense
of what Jesus may have meant when he called the Pharisees’ disciples and the
Herodians hypocrites, people who put on a good act, who make a good outward
show, but what’s behind the mask tells another story.
Some background here may help. The Pharisees were adamantly opposed to
paying tax to the Romans; they wanted as little to do with the foreign occupiers as
possible; the Herodians, by contrast, the party that supported the secular king,
Herod, welcomed the Romans because the Romans helped to keep Herod firmly in
his throne. What we have here is a case of strange bedfellows: the anti-Roman
party and the pro-Roman party making common cause against this Jesus of
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Nazareth, who teaches with authority even though he does not have the outward
appearance of a teacher, like the priests, the scribes, and the Pharisees. They share
hostility toward Jesus, because Jesus makes them all uncomfortable. Jesus’ ways
do not fit with the world of the Pharisees and the Herodians, the world of earthly
power, where they get to set the standard.
When they put their question to Jesus, they figure there is no way out for
him. If he says yes, it is lawful to pay the tax, the Pharisees will condemn him, and
if he says, no, it is not lawful, the Herodians will condemn him. They think
they’ve gotten the measure of the man; they have him in their power.
Only they do not understand Jesus, the Law, or God, and Jesus reveals this
to them over and over. Jesus calls them hypocrites, people whose public words
and actions mask a very different set of personal priorities. He then gives them an
answer that they did not expect, an answer to which they did not know how to
respond. Their hypocrisy is not only that their flattery of Jesus is completely
insincere: we know, they say, that you’re the real deal, a genuine holy man; we
know you genuinely teach the way of God; we know that you do not take outward
appearances into account. They do not mean a word of it, yet everything they are
saying is true. They say the right things, but they don’t do anything to give
substance to what they say. The most wretched part of their hypocrisy is that they
are disconnected from what is really real, and they don’t realize it.
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They are caught up in what they think is real. But what is real to them may not be
real to God. Jesus shows them, shows us, what is real to God.
Jesus exposes their hypocrisy, their fixation upon outward appearances and
earthly power. Jesus tells them to bring him the coin used to pay the tax; they
bring him a denarius, the laborer’s daily wage. Jesus exposes their blindness, and
they are stunned. Jesus calls them to see what is real to God; and they don’t know
what to do. The Pharisees’ disciples and the Herodians are concerned with
outward appearances, with making a good show, well and good. Now by its own
outward appearance, that coin declares whose it is: the image stamped upon it and
the name it bears are caesar’s. Jesus’ questioners, putting on a holy surface, can’t
even read the surface, the outside, so how can they understand the inside, the
spiritual reality? The only way to life and blessing is through focusing upon the
spiritual reality, upon the things of God. Jesus shows them, shows us, the things of
God, what is real to God.
We seek that life by being honest about our failures to meet God’s standard
and by cultivating the kind of life that will bring forth spiritual fruit.
What Jesus is trying to teach his questioners is to be concerned with
heavenly things, with holy things, with the kingdom of God. Give to God that
which is God’s.
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Perhaps Jesus was teaching me and Devon something about the church we
visited when the first words of greeting were “you’re overdressed”: this is a
shallow church. They’re more concerned with their rules and appearances than
with what belongs to God: righteousness, grace, mercy, love, and welcome. It all
looks like church on the outside, but the inside lacks sacred substance. I know
Jesus was teaching me when, in that Orthodox Presbyterian church that seemed so
bare to me, I encountered possibly the warmest Christian welcome I’d ever
received in church up to that time. I, too, can be misled by outward appearances,
by a good outward show, but the taste of spiritual fruit is unmistakable.
Jesus’ questioners may have put on a good show, but Jesus knew the inner
reality, he knew their pretense. He says to them, live to God and give to God what
is God’s. God plants a seed in us. That seed is meant to bear spiritual fruit. The
spiritual fruit that our lives as faithful Christians produce belongs to God, because
God planted that seed. When we live as faithful disciples of Jesus Christ, we are
offering our lives to God. Our lives already belong to God, and how we go about
acknowledging and showing that spiritual reality matters. How shall we return to
God what belongs to God? We are God’s. Christians, as God’s covenant people,
bear God’s name. We bear God’s name by carrying it with us wherever we go in
whatever we do, and in whatever we do, we bare God’s name, we reveal God’s
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name, and others perceive through our lives—through what we do even more than
what we say—the God whom we worship.
This inward reality, this spiritual reality of belonging to God, is what Moses
is asking from God in our reading from Exodus this morning. Moses says to God,
“show me Your ways, so that I may know You and find favor in Your sight.”
Jesus is God’s answer to Moses’ prayer, which is just as much our prayer, for Jesus
says, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” When we behold Jesus we see
God’s way. As we see God’s way, we come to know God. When we are
following Jesus, we know that we have found favor in God’s sight; we are God’s
holy people.
Our passage in St. Matthew this morning comes at the end of a series of
parables in which Jesus condemns God’s holy people because the holy people have
failed to be holy. Oh, in their own sight they have been quite holy, quite dedicated
to God. But they got it all wrong. Without realizing it, they turned dedication to
God into a matter of outward observances, of going through the routine motions.
They thought they carried God’s name with them, but no one else could see it.
St. Paul understood very well what Jesus is saying to his questioners: if the
inward reality is not there, it does not matter what the external appearance is, what
the outward show is. St. Paul commends the Thessalonians for the good reputation
they are building in the Lord. People around them see the ways of the
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Thessalonian Christians, and so they also perceive the God of the Thessalonian
Christians. I wonder what the people around us in this town, in this area, I wonder
what they perceive when they see us here at First Presbyterian Church. How are
we carrying the name of Christ, and how are we showing others Christ whose
name we claim?
May Christ be our ever-present help along this way of life and blessing.
May Christ always be teaching us how to give to God what is God’s: the harvest of
spiritual fruit from the spiritual seed God has lovingly implanted in each of us.
May Christ show us always more fully how to give, how to live, and how to bless
abundantly.
And to Jesus Christ, who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood
and made us to be a kingdom, priests of his God and Father, to him be glory and
dominion forever and ever. Amen.
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