Matthew 23:1-12 "Our Place at the Table" Scott Hoezee

Although I am quite certain I won't be doing so anytime soon, if I ever felt inclined to write a letter to Pope John Paul II in Rome, papal etiquette would suggest that I close and sign my letter as follows: "Prostrate at the feet of Your Holiness and imploring the favor of your apostolic benediction, I have the honor to be, Very Holy Father, with the deepest veneration of Your Holiness, the most humble and most obedient servant and son, Scott." As someone has wryly noted, this may explain why the pope gets so few postcards!

Whether or not any given pope would ever insist on such a salutation, the fact is that over time, honorifics and titles of privilege and prestige have most assuredly accumulated for members of the clergy. The pope is addressed as "Very Holy Father" or "Your Holiness," cardinals and bishops are often referred to as "Your Eminence," ordinary priests are always addressed as "Father." Although the Catholic Church is a fairly obvious and large example of this kind of thing, they hardly have that market cornered.

Indeed, as I reflected on this passage this past week, I realized that following the reading of Matthew 23, I would have to stand up to preach on this text despite my being one of only two people in the room who would be wearing a clergy robe draped with a tasseled stole even as my name would be one of very few in the weekly bulletin that would have a title attached. Indeed, upon getting ordained in Fremont in 1990 when I was 26 years-old, I immediately noticed a change in people. Folks old enough to be my grandparents asked, "What should we call you?" When I replied, "Scott has always worked before," not a few of these good people responded, "No, I mean, do you want Rev. or Pastor?" Since that was my choice, I usually picked pastor, though not without affirming once more that plain old "Scott" really would be OK with me. (But the truth is that the first time I saw my name printed as "Rev. Scott Hoezee," I secretly liked that a whole lot!)

Matthew 23, however, indicates that folks like myself should not like such things too much. Because although neither "Rev." nor "Pastor" is specifically mentioned in Matthew 23, only a very wily preacher would ever suggest this indicates that those titles are exempt from Jesus' comments. So what are we to make of Jesus' words in Matthew 23? Is this sermon going to be only for Bob Koornneef and me, or is there a lesson here for us all?

We will begin with the passage in context. We are picking up right where we left off last Sunday morning and so we know that the larger setting here is one of deep conflict between Jesus and the clergy of his day. As Matthew 23 opens, it looks like Jesus has had about as much as he can take from these people, and so he cuts loose with the single-most harsh and negative speech Jesus gives anywhere in the New Testament.

Beyond the verses we read this morning, the balance of Matthew 23 presents seven hard-hitting indictments, each of which charges the clergy with hypocrisy. The Pharisees are all about false fronts, facades, public relations, prestige, and just generally getting ahead in society. And in detailing all this, the otherwise soft-spoken man from Nazareth does not spare the verbal lash: he calls them sons of hell, blind guides, stinking graves, snakes, vipers.

Yet all that fiery bluster begins quietly. Jesus even tells everyone that they must obey the words of these leaders. Probably what Jesus means is that when these ministers read from God's Word, the content of the Scriptures must be heeded. But that's where the positive part ends. "Do what they say, not what they do," Jesus says. "They don't practice what they preach, and so even though they want you take note of their lifestyles, ignore them!" He doesn't practice what he preaches. There are few indictments of a minister more wounding than that. From personal experience, I know how that accusation, whether or not it has any truth to it, cuts straight into a pastor's heart like the sharpest of scalpels.

It is hurtful because if it were true, that charge would undermine all credibility. It is not something to say lightly, and there is every indication that Jesus has given this a lot of thought. This is not how Jesus began his ministry, this was not based on a mere week's worth of observation. This had been a long time coming. But after all that time had passed, Jesus felt certain that this was the verdict. The Pharisees did not practice what they preached. They did not listen to the words of God they themselves read from the pulpit.

Instead, they focused their energy on just looking good. They strutted around trying to look ever-so-holy but only because it generated prestige. They made certain always to have their flowing robes on because when they did, they got a clergy discount on fruit in the marketplace, got upgraded to First Class when they traveled, got seated up on the dais at the head table whenever VIPs came in from out-of-town to speak at a banquet.

Like altogether too-many celebrities today, the Pharisees came to believe their own press releases. Some while back I told you about how actress Helen Hayes was always known as, introduced as, and lauded as "the first lady of American theater." Over time what most reporters forgot was that it was Helen Hayes herself who first cooked up that sobriquet and then spread it around! But that's the way it goes when image becomes a way of life. After a while, things get so weirdly inverted that it's difficult to tell what's what anymore.

The entertainment industry is an ego-driven affair populated by throngs of people who are full of themselves. As even actor Marlon Brando once observed, "The greatest love affairs I have ever witnessed took place with one actor, unassisted." Yet there is even so a kind of unspoken "code" among these people that says if you are too obvious with this self-infatuation, you will be shunned. Some years ago when actress Sally Field won her second Oscar in the span of only a few years, she famously gushed in her acceptance speech, "You like me! You really like me!" She has never been nominated again.

After F. Murray Abraham won an Oscar for his stellar performance as Salieri in the movie Amadeus, he was tapped to be an Oscar presenter at the following year's ceremony, and when he did this, he conducted himself quite pompously--in other words, he outwardly displayed the same pompous pride that inwardly filled the hearts of every actor there. But because he made the mistake of letting it show, he, too, has ever since been cast out into a kind of wilderness.

So here is a curious combination: the Academy Awards depends on self-congratulatory people all getting together to celebrate themselves, yet if a person lets this pride show, it is considered bad form. But probably what that points to is the core of hypocrisy: deception. The hypocrite is a deceiver of other people. What counts is not what you are really like but what other people think you are like. What counts is not whether you are worthy of the nice things people say about you but that they say them in the first place. What counts is doing whatever it takes to maintain your image, which often consumes so much time and energy that there is little left to nurture the genuine article in your heart.

Jesus, of course, is interested only in the inner person. If it should be that people admire you for the kind of person you genuinely are, that is fine as far as it goes, but Jesus' warning in Matthew 23 indicates that even so, those honors should not assume too high a profile in your own mind. Because Jesus also knows the seductive power of such things. If you start falling in love with your own P.R., then even if public respect for you began originally as a proper response to the kind of person you really were, eventually it may well be that your own focus will shift.

Eventually even an otherwise good person may bask in the glow of public opinion so much that he will forget how unimportant fame is compared with having a good and honest heart. When that day comes, then like many actors in Hollywood, what you react negatively to or what you worry about is not the way you really are on the inside but anything that reveals the truth about you. If the day arrives when all you want to say to the world is, "Look at me!" that may well be the same day when you yourself will stop looking at God.

The truth is that the only person to whom we should say, "Look at me!" is our God through Jesus Christ the Lord. Jesus is the one who needs to look us over, but we know that when he does that, he is going to look clean past the surfaces of life and peer right into the heart of it all. That's why Jesus tells the disciples not to get enamored of titles. The disciples would of course become teachers and leaders. Becoming that was not the problem, nor is it automatically a problem if some kind of title is given for the sake of differentiating leaders from others. The title isn't a problem so long as we realize our place.

No one of us is the master, the ruler, the lord of anyone else once we compare ourselves to Jesus. In the dark of a moonless night, a Ray-O-Vac high-beam flashlight may seem incredibly bright. But flip that same flashlight on at noon the next day when there is not a cloud in the sky, and you may struggle to tell whether or not it's even on. A good flashlight has its place and use, but next to the sun, there is no comparison.

Jesus' message in Matthew 23 seems to be that he and his Father are the sun; the best of the rest of us are high-beam flashlights. We all serve the same Jesus, we all get saved by the same grace, we all started from the same sad situation of sin, and we're all headed toward the same glory. If you forget that in favor of focusing only on your own wattage and how brightly you seem to shine, then not only do you forget how much more brightly Jesus shines, maybe the day will even come when you don't want Jesus to shine. You don't want to be shown up for the dim bulb you really are, and anyway, you're uncomfortable with Jesus' holy light illuminating certain corners of your life--nooks and crannies of your heart that would dim your reputation among other people if they ever spied those things in you.

As I said in another sermon some months ago, it is difficult to live as a child of the light if you spend most of your time trying to keep other people in the dark. As this passage closes, it also becomes clear that it is difficult to be the kind of servant Jesus wants you to be if you spend your life clutching for titles and privileges that elevate you above others. For pastors and leaders like myself, but perhaps no less for all of us, what we need are regular reminders of our proper place in the kingdom. We need regular reminders of who we are not when compared to each other but when compared to Jesus. We need regular reminders that any title of honor we may receive in this life is a mere vapor compared to the title only One has earned: King of kings and Lord of lords.

We need to be put into our proper place. The sacrament of the Lord's Supper that we celebrate now does that. Seeing all over again what Jesus did, seeing all over again the thing Jesus did that none of us could ever conceive of accomplishing ourselves, humbles us. It brings us back to our senses, back to the heart of the gospel. Each of us receives the bread and the cup this morning in the same way and for the same reason: grace. There is absolutely no difference between the how and the why of your receiving these elements than when the pope in Rome partakes of this supper; no difference between what this means for me than what it means when a president or a queen eats the bread and drinks the cup.

This meal binds us together in the unity of the one Lord Jesus, making each a sibling of all others. We are brothers and sisters. We serve each other as equals as we all come under the Lordship of the one and same Christ Jesus. The clutchings of ego may still nag us, the differences among us may still try to rise up and grab all our attention, pride may still try to cast us out into the limelight where we may be tempted to forget the far brighter light of God's Christ. But this morning we are put back into our proper place at the feet of Jesus, quietly and humbly receiving what only he can give.

This morning we take our place at Jesus' table, and if we understand what that means, then we may well find the Spirit of God gently putting us back into our proper place in the rest of life, too. Amen.