Sermon: Learning Discipleship

In his new book John Pritchard tells us that as vicar in Taunton he would often go into the church school to take assemblies dressed in ordinary clothes. One day the children came to church for a service to find him wearing a cassock.  A little girl said, ‘Mr Pritchard, are you pretending to be a vicar?'  It is he says a question that has haunted him ever since.  He is not, I want to suggest, alone in having such worries. (‘The Life and Work of Priest' SPCK pix)

True religion, true charity, true piety, is not pretending. It is not acting, not mere performance.  For that is hypocrisy.

Jesus uses the word hypocrite (actor) for those who do not trouble to interpret the signs of the times.  It is a word he uses sparingly but seriously.  In Matthew he uses it of those who judge others rather than examine themselves.  The one more interested in the faults of others than their own sins.  He also uses the word of the Pharisees and scribes who came to him with questions designed to catch him out. And as he admonishes them he turns to words of the prophet Isaiah

‘This people honours me with their lips

But their hearts are far from me'.

Hypocrisy is lip-service. It is saying but not feeling. It is ‘talking the talk' but not ‘walking the walk'.

When as a vicar I used ask the couples coming for weddings how they felt about coming to church for their wedding and what others thought about it.  Often the conversation would turn to this question of hypocrisy.  Some would worry about whether they were being hypocritical. Others would be concerned about seeming to be hypocritical. Yet others would say that people had told them that they were hypocritical.  This gave us plenty to talk about!  For it is a common worry for those who participate at any level in any public worship.

‘How can you call yourself a Christian when you (and here I will not finish the sentence but let you finish it for yourself.) What with you in church every Sunday, singing hymns, reading lessons, preaching sermons... I have never seen such hypocrisy.' 

The words may be those of an angry neighbour, a flatmate, a spouse who is about to leave, an adolescent child or even your own conscience getting on its high horse once again.

To live with ideals, to espouse high standards, to participate in public worship, to witness in whatever way to God's love is to invite a contrast between those ideas and the sad reality of your own life, your own weak resolve, your own poor morality, your own lack of holiness.

But if you think that I am saying that hypocrisy goes with the territory of being a Christian then you are not quite right.  While Christianity is often understood as a religion of high ideals which people fail to attain this is, if I might suggest so, not a particularly adequate way of thinking about it. And the problem here is a very important one, for we spend a lot of energy getting lost on our spiritual pilgrimage through precisely this error - the error of impossible ideals.

One way of exposing this is to think with Aristotle about true friendship. The point is not that true friendship is a perfect relationship. Rather true friendship is the environment in which we learn how to be friends.  As Hauerwas and Pinches have written, ‘True friendship is... not some ideal that actual friendships never achieve, but rather it is a growing relation which, as it increases... transforms ourselves and our friendship'.  (Christians Among the Virtues University of Notre Dame Press 1997 p38).

A similar logic applies to being a Christian and participating in public worship and witness.  It's not about impossible ideals but about doing it in order to do it better. We do it not as performance but as practice. As we make our efforts not in a spirit of proud achievement, as people of exemplary faith who are confident that we are living a good life. Rather we do it as a way of learning discipleship.

Last Tuesday we commemorated Maxamillian Kolbe the Franciscan friar who died in Auschwitz when he volunteered to take the place of a man singled out by the SS to die as retribution for an escape.  Earlier this summer I visited Auschwitz and walked past the cell where he starved to death.  As I did so the obvious question went through my mind. What would you have done if you were there?  Doesn't that sort of Christian courage and sacrifice make your own life, as a priest, a canon of Durham cathedral no less, seem a bit hypocritical? 

Good question.  But how am I supposed to respond to that feeling of spiritual inadequacy or failure?  How are any of us meant to live with the thought that while we would like to feel that we are authentic, true Christians we feel the guilty, anxious chill of the whispered self-accusation ‘hypocrite'.

‘Try harder' does not hit the spot.  ‘Keep going' is better.  But I think that ultimately we need to subvert the question.  And the way to do so is as follows.

Whenever someone is baptised or confirmed or ordained or installed or whatever, they should be given the Christian equivalent of an ‘L' plate.  The same goes for when people are married.  For the truth is that faith, discipleship, is something that we learn, and keep on learning; mostly by practicing, by doing, by making mistakes and recovering from them. As some of the writing about Kolbe stresses. His decision was not a one off, it was a product of many years formation as a Franciscan.  In other words many years of practice and as that word implies many years of mistakes along the way.,

So if walking past Maximillian Kolbe's death cell, or hearing stories of heroic martyrs, make us feel inadequate, that is not the point. The point is to find the events, the encouragement, the resources, and the guidance that allow us to grow in faith and to learn discipleship.  The point is to discover how to practice our Christianity in a way that allows us to make mistakes and learn form them. For the accusation of hypocrisy is not accurately made of those who try falteringly to live their faith in public; it is not the hypocrite who, in practicing their faith makes obvious and noisy errors.  It is not the hypocrite who falls short of the mark - that is the sinner, the kind of sinner we all are and who is not condemned.  The hypocrite, the actor, the mere pretender or performer, is the one who is so arrogant and complacent that they believe that they have nothing to learn, no need to practice. 

What's the difference between a sinner and a hypocrite?  A hypocrite is a sinner who either doesn't know or doesn't care. That's why Jesus shouts at them.  Hypocrisy is a failure of conscience, a spiritual blind spot, a lack of self-awareness.  If you are worried that you are being a hypocrite the chances are that you are not.  If it has never occurred to you... well maybe this is your wake up call.

Discipleship, faith, like friendship, is true as long as it is being learnt, worked at.  It is in our capacity to keep on learning that we find true Christian humility and integrity, and they are the very opposites of hypocrisy.

Stephen Cherry