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Matthew 6:1-4 · Giving to the Needy
Are You in the Right Place?
Matthew 6:1-6
Sermon
by King Duncan
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Do you recall Ash Wednesday, 2018? Ironically, last year Ash Wednesday fell on Valentine’s Day, Feb. 14. I said at the time that it seemed to be a strange juxtaposition--Valentine’s and Ash Wednesday. But Valentine’s Day 2018 was different for another reason. It was the day when a shooting took place at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Seventeen students and staff were fatally shot and seventeen others were wounded in that shooting, surpassing the Columbine High School massacre as the worst high school shooting in the United States. It was a day of enormous heartbreak.

In an online sermon Father Michael K. Marsh, an Episcopal priest, tells about the first picture that he saw from that horrendous scene. It was a woman with her arms around another woman, two moms crying and waiting for news about their children. We’ve seen those kinds of pictures before, notes Father Marsh, too many times. This one, however, was different. The thing that caught Father Marsh’s attention was a cross. One of the women in the photo had ashes on her forehead in the shape of a cross. Evidently she had attended an Ash Wednesday service earlier in the day.

“She had been marked with a sign of mortality and the fragility of life,” writes Fr. Marsh, “the same sign with which you and I will be marked in a few moments, and she now stood among the ashes of uncertainty, fear, death, sorrow, and loss. My guess is that when those ashes were being put on her forehead earlier in the day she never thought she would be standing where she was. Probably none of us would have either. We don’t want to consider that possibility, let alone face that reality. And yet, that’s the truth Ash Wednesday holds before us. Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.” (1) It was a sobering day, a day we never hope to see repeated.

It has always seemed ironic to me that our lesson for this evening from the Gospels should begin as it does. Christ says, “Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.” We hear these words about not practicing our righteousness in front of others, then we will leave this service with a smudge on our forehead that announces to the world that we are followers of Jesus.

I thought of this when I saw another famous photo recently of former vice-president Joe Biden with a smudge on his forehead where he also had just come from an Ash Wednesday service. Biden is a devout Roman Catholic. The photo was from years ago. But I couldn’t help but think when I saw that photo, “Way to go, Joe. You’re showing whose side you’re on.” (2) But how do we reconcile the two?  On one hand we read that we are not to make a show of our righteousness, and yet we have come to an Ash Wednesday service where we are invited at the end to come forward and have this mark placed on our forehead that announces to the world that we belong to Christ. It seems to be a contradiction.

Of course, the explanation is in the wording. Notice Christ says, “Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them . . .”

In other words, if you have come to this service tonight to make a show of your piety, you do not belong here. The reason you are here is all important. Is it a show to impress others or is it an act of contrition? Notice what Jesus says in the rest of this passage:

“So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

“And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”

Jesus is saying to us that if we are here to make a show of our religion, forget it. This was Jesus’ main point of contention with many of the Pharisees. It was their sheer hypocrisy. They were righteous people . . . and they wanted everyone to know it!  They delighted in making a show of their piety. Remember in Matthew 23:5 Jesus derided them for this very thing. As he put it, “Everything they do is done for people to see: They make their phylacteries wide and the tassels on their garments long . . .”

Phylacteries were small leather boxes containing strips of parchment with passages of scripture printed on them. These boxes were worn by devout Jews who interpreted literally the instructions in the Old Testament to fasten God’s Word on their hands and forehead. The Pharisees made their phylacteries broad. They put more writing on them or made the letters larger and thus more visible, to appear more holy. 

As for the tassels, in Numbers 15:37-41 and in Deuteronomy 22:12 we read that God commanded his people to make fringes on the borders of their garments, so that when they looked on them they might remember the commandments of God. Leave it to the Pharisees to make these tassels as conspicuous as possible, not to remind themselves of God’s law but to remind others how righteous they were.

Jesus had no sympathy with such foolishness--whether it was with ostentatious dress, or loud and lengthy prayers, or flashy shows of charity. I doubt that any of us have any sympathy for such blatant hypocrisy either . . . and yet it happens.

Actually, acts of hypocrisy are usually counter-productive in the long run. Most people come off as ridiculous when they try to puff themselves up and pretend they are something they are not.

There was a British sitcom a few years back that I know some of you are familiar with. It was called, “Keeping Up Appearances.” The series ran on the BBC from 1990 to 1995. It is still being shown in reruns on Netflix and Britbox and PBS. 

The central character is an eccentric and snobbish middle class social climber named Hyacinth Bucket. Though her last name is spelled “b-u-c-k-e-t,” bucket, she insists that it is pronounced “Bouquet.” She answers her phone, “The Bouquet residence, the lady of the house speaking!”

Hyacinth’s whole purpose in life seems to be to try to impress everyone else how upper class she is. She lives her life constantly “keeping up appearances”--from the china on her table to her elegant, and much-dreaded dinner parties. She is usually hampered in her attempts to put on the ritz by her sisters and brother-in-law who are definitely uncultured. Much of the humor comes from the conflict between Hyacinth’s vision of herself, and the reality of her lower class background. In each episode, she lands in a farcical situation as she battles to project an image of herself that does not mesh with reality.

In her situation, it really is funny. But it wasn’t funny when it came to the Pharisees. They were in places of religious authority. People looked to them to give an accurate picture of what God expects out of His people. Instead, all the people saw was a caricature of the real thing.

So let me repeat: If you have come to this service tonight to make a show of your piety, you do not belong here. Jesus has enough people who claim to be his followers, but whose actions tell a different story.

It’s one thing to wear a cross around your neck or have one smudged on your forehead. It’s quite another to bear a cross in your daily life. Bearing a cross is an act of humility and service. Bearing a cross is an act of contrition and commitment. Ultimately it is an act of devotion and love. It is not noisy in announcing itself to the world. It is silent, but sincere.

It’s like a man that Pastor Bruce Lee tells about that he knew years ago in a small church that he once served. There was a senior member in the church named Bob who mostly kept to himself on Sunday morning. He didn’t serve on any church committee. He didn’t express his opinion very often--even when asked. But Pastor Lee noticed Bob’s car at the church fairly frequently and the two of them became great friends.

In Pastor Lee’s third year as pastor, Bob became ill with cancer and after a very a short time developed pneumonia and passed away. Everyone at his funeral expressed kind words. They said things about Bob like, “He never complained about anything.” “He was always faithful to be at church every time the doors were open.” And other comments about his “being a very private person who mostly stayed to himself.”

A couple of months after Bob’s passing Pastor Lee was still missing their talks and just seeing Bob around the church. Then one day, a member of the congregation approached Pastor Lee about the light on the outside church sign not shining at night. Lee called the chairman of the Trustees to inform him of the need to check the light. The chairman told him that in all his years at the church he had never known the bulb to burn out and did not even know where the key was to unlock the lid to change it.

A few weeks later the clock on the wall in the sanctuary stopped working. Pastor Lee took the clock down and it turned out to simply be that the batteries needed changing. When it was pointed out, one lady said that in all her years of coming to church she never knew the clock to stop working or the batteries to need changing.

Sometime later Pastor Lee noticed a hinge on one of the cabinet doors in the fellowship hall was loose. The pastor heard many people complain about the hinge being loose but no one took time to fix it.

After several more similar incidents occurred, it became more and more apparent that Bob was the one who fixed things and kept things going smoothly at the church. No one was aware of just how much Bob had done. The quiet old man who had kept mostly to himself was the one who kept the light bulbs changed, the batteries in the clock changed, the broken hinges repaired, and the list went on and on.

Today there is a plaque on the wall in the fellowship hall of that church that reads, “Thank you Bob Griffin for all the times your work went unnoticed. We Appreciate You.” (3)

That’s the kind of service that Christ appreciates. It’s the kind of service where a woman quietly consoles a friend who has lost a child in a school shooting. It’s the kind of service in which a neighbor inconspicuously helps out someone in the community in need. It’s the kind of service in which an adult places his hand on a young person’s shoulder and gives him much-needed encouragement.

If you are here this evening to show off your piety, you are in the wrong place. If, however, you have come to worship Christ, the one man who humbled himself as no man has ever humbled himself, and you are signifying that you want to follow in his footsteps, then this is the perfect place for you to be.

1. This photo by Joel Auerbach of The Associated Press can be found at Fr. Marsh’s website, https://interruptingthesilence.com/2018/02/17/mortality-and-the-fragility-of-life-an-ash-wednesday-sermon-on-matthew-61-6-16-21/.

2. Photo of Joe Biden at https://skyejethani.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/biden_ash1.jpg

3. Bruce Lee, https://www.sermoncentral.com/sermons/lent-from-ashes-to-alms-bruce-lee-sermon-on-blessings-in-christ-191771?ref=SermonSerps.

ChristianGlobe Networks, Inc., Dynamic Preaching First Quarter 2019 Sermons, by King Duncan