Prestige, status, honor, respect, deference—marks of power and authority.  The authority comes by virtue of the office, the position.  We tend to show respect and deference to a police officer because the person has the position, the office and authority, of a police officer.  That badge carries weight (not to mention the gun and the handcuffs).  Much as we may want to argue with our doctors and get second opinions, we still respect their position and show them some degree of deference, even if we aren’t too sure about this new prescription.

The position of power, of knowledge, of authority—in the days of Jesus, those who enjoyed such position were the teachers of the law.  Now, no, these weren’t law professors (we respect them, too).  The teachers of the law were the religious teachers, who closely studied God’s Word and taught the people the religion.  Some churches have laypeople who serve as Bible teachers; other, confessional churches with many young disciples have people who teach the basics of the faith as interpreted by that church’s confession of faith.  As Kenley Kincannon and Bo Wright were preparing for confirmation and their public profession of faith, the three of us read and talked our way through the Westminster Shorter Catechism.  Some of you, especially if you’ve come from a Catholic background, may have gone through a catechism class for your confirmation.

It’s one thing to know the teachings of your religion and another to do those teachings, as we’re well aware.  And there are some who do what God asks and requires who never have been formally, institutionally taught this.  Christianity is as much a matter of doing as of believing; indeed, the doing has always been understood as a positive indication of believing, whereas claims to believe that never seem to be affirmed by actions or, worse, claims to believe that seem constantly to be contradicted by actions, cause concerns.

Everyone lives their faith.  You don’t need any particular religion to live your faith.  Everyone lives for something—even if it’s just the next weekend or the next paycheck, the next vacation or the next relationship.  Everyone has some standard of conduct: it can be sort of rigid or wonderfully flexible.  If you want to know what matters most in a person’s life, observe how he or she lives.

Long before, God had said to Jeremiah that “those who handle the law did not know Me” (Jer 2:8).  How can one have the Bible yet not know God?  Some know as much of the Bible as they care to know, as much of the Bible as can be made to support a person’s pre-existing social and political preferences: whatever those may be.  When politics, or self, or the politics of self, direct the interpretation of Scripture, there’s a problem.  The teachers of the faith could quote Scripture up and down, and I don’t doubt they were meticulous in following the requirements of the law.  But being a law-abiding citizen does not make anyone a good person.  All that being a law-abiding citizen does is keep you out of trouble with the authorities.  For some, that’s enough.

Jesus has been taking his followers all through Judea and out into gentile territory, teaching them.  Always, Jesus puts a premium on service: serving one another with concern, caring, and compassion.  Jesus never approached serving as some burdensome chore.  Service, for Jesus, was a source of joy, fulfillment, connection, and worship, a way of knowing God better, connecting with Him at a deeper level.  Jesus has been trying to help his followers to see that they will come to a fuller, more blessed and joyful knowledge of God—indeed, they will have an experience of God’s own life—as they serve, because God serves.

Let’s pause a moment, because that’s an odd thing to say and should strike us as at least a little odd.  God serves?  I don’t mean like a waiter or a butler, though Jesus wasn’t above washing the feet of his twelve disciples.  Nothing compels God to serve.  God serves voluntarily, because it delights God to serve, to provide, to bless, to help.  God has compassionate concern for His people and for all people.  Compassionate concern communicates through serving, being there for people, doing things for people, thinking of them, helping them to understand that they really do matter.  And because they do matter, there is a way of life for them that is for their blessing.

God is looking to establish us, all of us, in His love.  God calls to all; He does not turn his back to anyone.  He makes time for everyone.  He stops for the one.  He shows us that love looks like something.  How do we know?  Because that is what we see Jesus doing, and Jesus reminds his followers on several occasions in several ways that he and the Father are one.

We love God by loving our neighbors, even when they don’t make it really easy for us to love them—God knows all about it.  We love our neighbors by living loving behavior, behavior inspired and guided by Spirit and truth: God’s Word, that is.  Love for God’s Word is evident in love for neighbor, and love for neighbor is shaped and guided by God’s Word.  Love does not love sin, neither does love excuse sin; love calls, love reminds, love hopes, love shares the truth, lovingly.

So, what was guiding the teachers of the law there at the Temple in Jerusalem?  “As he taught, Jesus said, ‘Watch out for the teachers of the law.  They like to walk around in flowing robes and be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and have the most important seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at banquets’” (12:38-39).  I wear this robe, this preaching gown on Sundays, in part as a sign of my office, in part as a reminder of Reformed heritage: this is reminiscent of the garments worn by scholars and teachers in the days of Calvin and John Knox back in the cold, drafty sixteenth century: Calvin and Knox did not come before the faithful as priests but as students and teachers of God’s Word: not teachers of the law but teachers of the faith.  I and my fellow pastors do not regulate access to God; we serve to help bring God’s Word to God’s people.

I don’t wear this robe out and about.  I couldn’t mow the lawn in it—I’d die of heatstroke!  I don’t put gas in my car in this robe.  I don’t make myself a sandwich wearing this robe.  It’s really impractical for anything other than mental labor—I’ve knocked sermon pages and cough drops clean off the pulpit with these sleeves.  The teachers of the faith in the Temple there in Jerusalem seem to have made the impracticality of their garments a badge of pride . . . in themselves.  In recent years, we’ve been hearing this term “virtue signaling”; we understand that how we dress and what we wear can also send a message.

In some parts of the world, people show respect by bowing; others may even kneel before someone, who may hold out a hand to be kissed.  When Jesus criticizes the teachers of the faith for the satisfaction they take in being “greeted with respect in the marketplaces,” I suspect it’s because the greetings they receive aren’t just a smile and a wave of the hand or a friendly “hello” in passing.  I suspect the greetings they received out in public are like the kneeling and hand kissing.  This is not part of American culture or custom: it feels foreign to us and someway not quite right.  We get that the kneeling and hand kissing are gestures of respect and deference, but it feels undemocratic, and groveling.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with taking pride in your work, provided it’s God-honoring work you’re doing, provided you do your work in the genuine desire to honor and glorify God.  The problem comes when the pride shifts from your work to yourself, when you don’t so much regard your work as commanding respect as your self.  The teachers of the faith come under criticism because Jesus observes how they seem to be more concerned with being honored than with being faithful, in receiving respect and deference rather than serving others.  This is directly contrary to the mission, the life purpose of Jesus.  God delights in humility.  God can teach the humble; the humble accept guidance, and correction, gladly.  The humble encounter others and engage them with humility.  There is great Christian dignity in humility: humility puts self after others.  The overconfidence of egotistic presumption puts others after self.

If the teachers of the law were guilty only of vanity, there might be some flabby excuse to be made: sure, they’re vain, but they do teach the law!  Jesus accuses them of more than vanity.  He accuses them of performing for praise.  There’s a great French period piece from 1996, Ridicule.  In that movie, a priest is making a dramatic oratorical proof for the existence of God before the king and his court.  All are swept up by the grandeur of his words, the nobility of his presentation.  At the conclusion, after the applause dies down, the priest continues: “This evening I proved the existence of God.  But . . . I can prove the reverse if it pleases Your Majesty!”  Just so, Jesus accuses the teachers of the law of making faith an act, a show: just look at me, here, being so “faithful”: pious and pure.  Bravo!  Encore!  Now, you be sure to crawl over and kiss my hand on my way out.

Hypocrisy is a common criticism leveled against Christians; thank God it isn’t hypocrites criticizing us!  It depends, though, upon the idea of Christianity in the mind of the one doing the criticizing: what is Christianity really about?  What’s it really supposed to be about?  As I understand it, it’s about salvation for hypocrites.  Who has never adapted his or her beliefs to the pressures of a given situation, or found convenient workarounds as the situation may suggest?  I don’t think it’s an overstatement or misrepresentation to say that we’ve all been guilty of such accommodation, such compromise, at different times in different ways.  The worst sort of hypocrite is the one who will not confess that his or her actions fail to measure up to his or her avowed principles.  This is the worst sort not because it goes undetected but because the far-gone hypocrite is no longer aware of his or her duplicity, and nothing seems to be able to alter that sorry state: such are invincibly innocent, in their own eyes.

When you’ve convinced yourself that, though not perfect, you’re not guilty, that nothing you’re doing, or saying, or thinking is contrary or even could be contrary to Christ, to Christianity, or the Word of God, what hope or help is there then?  Jesus is irritated, frustrated with the failure of the teachers of the law, but he is angriest about their apparent lack of awareness of much less concern for the destruction their way makes around them.  “They devour widows’ houses and for a show make lengthy prayers.  These men will be punished most severely” (12:40).  They put their piety on display even as they’re defrauding the most helpless, weakest among them, who have put their trust in these shepherds for help, intercession, prayer, protection, and faithful guidance.  The vulnerable seek the help of the powerful; the powerful recognize in this the opportunity to consolidate their power—that’s not just evident only in an election year.

A brother in Christ from another denomination recently shared with me his disappointment: he understood that laypeople like him strayed from the Word of God, and even pastors, but he was especially disappointed in pastors who tried to persuade the people that such straying was in fact actually being truly faithful to Christ.  Our women’s group is studying James at the moment.  James wants to be very clear in reminding all of us, and pastors particularly, that “we who teach will be judged more strictly” (James 3:1).  Kyrie, eleison!  Lord, have mercy!

Christ comes into this world with power: the power to serve.  As we apply ourselves to serving the Word, the Word will serve us, and save.  When we instead attempt to make the Word serve us, we’re only serving ourselves.  Christ serves and calls to a life of service, to be servants, who are never too proud, never too important, for any task, never too proud, never too important, to welcome and bless the transforming authority of God’s Word: “[a]nyone who wants to be first must be the very last, and the servant of all” (Mk 9:35).  That doesn’t sound very prestigious, though.  Who’s going to be able to kneel and kiss our hands, if our hands are always in the hot dishwater, folding the laundry, or unclogging the toilet, unloading boxes of food for the local food pantry, or baking bread and making soup for neighbors?