Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21 February 6, 2008
“Appearances”
Human beings are both blessed and cursed with the ability to be self-conscious. We are able to watch ourselves act. We are able to split ourselves and to be both actor and observer in the same moment.
This is a blessing because we are able to learn from watching our actions. We can modify our responses by reflecting on motivations, results, desires and principles. We are able to choose our own actions and to rise above the level of instinct because of this gift.
This ability is a curse because when we observe ourselves acting we divide our energy, our attention and our focus. We are able to give only part of our energy to any given task if we are also standing back watching. It is also a curse because, as we watch, we are aware that others are watching. We see ourselves, and we imagine how others see us. And the temptation creeps in to act, not only by our own desires and principles, but in ways that are designed to please, to impress, to influence or control those who are watching.
The story is told about Sir Lawrence Olivier, that, after what some said was the greatest performance he had ever given, he was angry and upset.
“How can you be upset with yourself?” he was asked. “You just gave the greatest performance I’ve ever seen you give. You were the character.”
“Don’t you see?” Olivier responded. “That’s just it. I was so completely into my role that I don’t even know what I did. I’ll never be able to duplicate it!”
It is no accident that the slang expression for a great performance, whether in sports or music, or on the stage is, “It was incredible! He was simply unconscious.”
When an actor, a musician, any other performer, a preacher, watches herself acting, performing, speaking -- one cannot give one’s whole energy to the work at hand precisely because the rest of one’s attention is watching. The result is that what one does is diminished.
This is especially true if I let what I do and say, how I act, what I think, be governed by what I think others expect of me or how I want to affect or impress others who are watching. The modern psychological term for this is co-dependency, and the antidote is to have integrity or to be self-directed; the goal in leadership training is to be pro-active, not reactive. Whatever label we give to it in current terminology, it is what Jesus is concerned with here in the sixth chapter of Matthew.
“Beware of practicing your piety before others to be seen by them.... For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
Although I believe Jesus would prefer the term “God-directed” to “self-directed,” the intent is the same.
One of the paradoxes of Christian life is between the call to be a witness and the warning against showing off. Jesus question to us here might be an invitation to examine our motivations. Am I trying to look pious? Or is my desire to love the Lord my God with all my heart, mind, strength and soul?
One of the ways we see this struggle played out is as we see various Christian groups seek to have legislation passed in order to make other people behave. I’m not arguing against the need to good laws. But too often pieces of legislation become platforms for posturing and showing off and criticizing, and a sense of bearing witness to one’s faith is lost in the arguing.
Sometimes it seems that we simply don’t trust that giving ourselves wholly to God and letting our lives bear witness to our faith is enough. What Jesus suggests to us in no uncertain terms in Matthew 6 is that a self-conscious piety is a false piety, and results in a divided heart. His words are a call to a witness that begins in a life of integrity, a life given wholly and unreservedly, first and foremost to God.
All of us, at some time or another, have known a moment when our full attention was caught up in the life of another, whether as an infant or child wrapped in a parent’s embrace, as an adolescent consumed by a first love, as an adult in the arms of our beloved, as a parent gazing in wonder at the face of a newborn child. Or we have seen two people in the midst of a crowd, who for a moment in their own consciousness are the only two people in the world -- someone coming home from a long journey whose eyes can only see the one they have longed for, two young people on a city street or in a park who seem to think they’re the only two souls in the universe, and who we might wish were more aware of the people around them -- moments when the world seems to stop, and we know a union with another soul....
This Lent, God calls us to turn to our creator, redeemer and sustainer, to let God be our world, to give our full attention to our Lord, so that as we are caught up in God’s embrace, we might bear witness to the wondrous love God has for us and for all God’s children.
Let us pray.
Mold our lives, O God, to the shape of your heart, that we might rest in the warmth of your embrace, walk in integrity, and bear witness to life made new and full; through Jesus our Lord.