A PUBLIC FAITH John M. Buchanan

Matthew 6:1-6, 16-18 Bread Street Presbyterian Church
June 1, 1980 Columbus, Ohia

“Beware of practicing your piety before men," Jesus said...With unmistaking
clarity the New English Bible translates it..."Be careful not to make a show of your
religion..."

In Graham Greene's superb novel, The Power and the Glory, an alcholic priest is
itinerating from village to village in southern Mexico, saying Mass, hearing confessions
and baptizing children. The money he will be paid for the baptisms will be substantial.
But now he's sitting in a cantina, drinking too much brandy, calculating how many
bottles he can purchase with his baptism money. Greene writes: "It was appalling how
easily one forget and went back...The brandy was musty on the tongue with his own
corruption. God might forgive cowardice and passion, but was it possible to forgive

-— the habit of piety?... He drank the brandy down like damnation: men like the half-caste

could be saved: salvation could strike like lightning at the evil heart, but the habit
of piety excluded everything but the evening prayer and the Guild meeting and the feel

of f humble lips on your gloved hand." (The Power and the Glory, p.227-228 ).

Greene is one of many literary figures who are fascinated by the idea of corrupt
religion, dishonest piety. It is a popular subject because everyone of us, I believe,
knows about it and has, frankly, participated in it. Reformed theology, with its
interest in sin, combined with the insights of Freudian psychiatry, has revealed to
us the complexity of the human psyches to us. We know, personally, that in matters
religious, we act out of a variety of motives. We have experienced the theological
subtlety that sin is fundamentally pride and pride is sin so thoroughly that we can
feel proud about understanding it that clearly. We know, because we have witnessed it,
that religious arrogance is somehow the most offensive human arrogance and that it can
become dangerously powerful. We have felt the curious proximity between passionate
conviction and intolerance. We know, that is to say, the tremendous potential for
wrong and dishonesty in the practice of religion itself. We regard self-proclaimed
public piety with a mixture of admiration and dread. We worry that television's
"super Christians" know something we don't know and yet most of us at least entertain
the healthy skepticism that the whole thing is a highly profitable put~on.

— Ne are a very pious people. French political scientists have always sneered at
the religious overtones in our public life. And the corruption of that piety _is an
obsessio American literature. Mark Twain's essays and humorous sketches are full

° mercilessly attacked public piety, made fun of religious customs, didn't

‘Ward Beecher - the most prominent clergyman of the day - at all, and one
time said that if heaven was like the chureh services he had attended - sour hymns,

a ee and irrelevant sermons - he was rather glad to be going to hell.

Free eeete ke che Aik
Maocennrntte has written a series of novels about a fallen clergyman which
explore. the sdme terrain. But the most devastating of all was, Sinclair Lewis in his

remarkable novel, Elmer Gantry. Near the end of the book, Gantry has Climbed all the
way Mp the ecclesiastical ladder, is pastor of a wealthy, successful and growing
congregation, a member of Rotary, the Country Club and had even taken golf lessons.
After guest speaking one evening in a small town in Indiana, he is doing what he Likes
best. - regaling his host, a modest Methodist preacher by the name of Pengilly, with
story after story about the power and prestige and success of his own church...

'You see - oh, of course I give ‘em the straight old-time gospel in
my sermon ~ I'm not the least bit afraid of talking right up to ‘em
pe fa and reminding them of the awful consequences of sin and ignorance
A por: and spiritual sloth, Yes sir! No blinking the horrors of the
me’ 4

Cae?

-2-

eld-time proven Hell, not in any church I'm running! But also we
make ‘em get together, and their pastor is just one of their chums,
and we sing cheerful, comforting songs, and do they like it? Say!
It shows up in the collections!

"Mr, Gantry,’ said Andrew Pengilly, ‘why don't you believe in God?!"
(Elmer Gantry, p.367).

All of that I would offer as contemporary commentary on the question raised by
our text this morning; the question of public faith. How, after all, to express
publicly what we feel privately? How to be an honest Christian in the world? Our
culture tries to soften the question by suggesting that religious faith is a kind of

amorphous attitude of patriotism, jtidividualisii=gnd community spirit. The culture seems
‘to favor "religion in general", eorge Santay. once observed that American culture
favors religions in general but that "to tey~to be religious in general is like trying

} to speak language in general, [t cannot be done. We speak one language or another
/ and we are religious in this way of that way, not in general." (Harvey Cox, The
Seduction of the Spirit, p.317).
: Part of the dilemma of traditional Protestant churches is precisely here. We are
not distinguishable from the rest of the population. We are not different, We look
. like everybedy else. W 't talk, act or spend our money differently from the main-
dy stream of the culture. Feicon Trueblood predicts that the Roman Catholic Church will
one day regret dropping the tradition of meatless Fridays. It waS one way, at least,
ye ublicly tomake a religious gesture. In any event, there is nothing about our public

religiosity that sets us apart. Part of the reason is our suspicion of public religion,
Ci But part, also, is that we either don't know what to de, or we choose consciously not
“WG to demonstrate our religious conviction publicly. It is, I would contend, a lively

and timely question.

It emerges dramatically in a major portion of the Sermon on the Mount. “Beware of
practicing your piety before men," Jesus said, and then illustrated..."when you give
alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing...when you pray go
into your room and shut the door...when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face,
that your fasting may not be seen by men."

Jewish culture in the first century knew exactly what religious behavior was. It
rested on three fundamental practices common to all the faithful: almsgiving, praying
and fasting. None were to be done as ends in themselves: the rabbis were careful to
warn against public ostentation in religion. Jewish scholars suggest that the rabbis
of the day would have endorsed and applauded Jesus’ words about public religion.

Almsgiving...a good Jew gave one tenth of his goods, earnings, crops to the Lord -
his tithe, That's what he owed, Alms were money given in addition to the tithe. The
rabbis taught that it was the most sacred duty of all and there are stringent warnings
against demeaning and patronizing the beneficiaries of the alms. But sometimes a
wealthy man came to Synagogue in caravan, en route to business engagements elsewhere,
and sometimes his entourage was terribly conspicuous and sometimes when he dismounted
from his camel and approached the Synagogue door with a bulging pouch in his hand you
really couldn't help but conclude that alms were about to be given - significant alms -
and that a lot of poor people would eat tonight and what a magnaninous gesture it was.
And Jesus suggested that the giver was already receiving the reward he wanted; namely,
the admiration and esteem of his fellow countrymen. Jesus never said there were no
rewards for piety. He simply declared that God doesn't reward that kind.

-3-

Prayer,..In Eastern religions prayer happens at specified times during the day.
in the first century, devout Jews stopped what they were doing, faced Jerusalem and
prayed at nine, noon and three p.m, And sometimes it happened that a man was in the
Synagogue or on a busy street corner at the appointed time and had to say his prayer
under the admiring stares of his less pious fellows, And sometimes the same man was
caught on the same corner at nine a.m. so many times you had to conclude that it was not
an accident; that at least part of what was going on here was a little self-indulgence;
that he rather enjoyed his pious predicament - which is to say he was reaping the
reward he wanted from the beginning.

I don't know ahout you but I'm sensitive about this one. I retain vivid memories
of attending prayer meetings and realizing that the same people were praying aut loud
for the same things every week...and that to a young boy it felt very much like an
extended oratorical contest, Muéh Later I discovered the Boston newspaper observation
about a very prominent prayer..."It was the most eloquent prayer aver offered to a
Boston audience."' And several weeks ago I was visiting Princeton Seminary at the same
time a Conference of laypeople was using the facilities and at lunch my table mates,
upon discovering that I was not one of them, announced, "We pray before eating", and
joined hands and thanked God, rather loudly I thought, for the food and the fact that
they had the gift of the Spirit - which by inference meant that I, cbviously, did not.
And among memories I retain are painfully long prayers in church which meant enforced
silence and motionlessness and agony. Only later did I read William Barclay's
observation about eighteenth century Church of Scotland worship..."The efficacy of
prayer was measured by its ardor and its fluency and not least by its fervid lengthi-
ness..." And his candid commentary..,."There still is a kind of subconscious idea that
if we batter long enough at God's door, He will answer: that God can be talked, and
even pestered into condescension." (Daily Study Bible, Vol. I, p.195).

Jesus never said God would not reward praying. He simply warned that it ought
to be private.

Fasting - all Jews were expected to fast on the Day of Atonement. The devout
fasted frequently, sometimes twice a week, Monday and Thursday which happened also to
be market days, which means that if you had a mind to you could telegraph the fact of
your great faith to a great number of people. And in case the point was missed you
could wear your shabbiest clothes and smear ashes on your cheeks to make you look pale
which is how fasting people look anyway. A fascinating custom which began, I understand,
very early in the human story as a device to attract the attention of the Deity and to
receive His pity and therefore His kindness, From the beginning, that is to say,
fasting has, at least in part, intended to call attention to itself. Jesus assumed
people would do it. There are interesting and creative by-products + but clearly, if
it is evident to others it is useless,

We don't know much about fasting. We may have to learn. Our children may have
to learn more about it than we will ever know. The Scarsdale Diet doesn't qualify,
although one of the very few pleasures inherent in dieting is the admiration of one's
less disciplined friends, We don't fast religiously - but we do, on occasion ~ enjoy
a little feeling of persecution, if not martyrdom, Someone observed that the favorite
game of American churches is "What would we do without so and so?" "So and so" is the
person who is asked to and agrees to do everything ~ chair the committees, sing in the
choir, cook the lunches and lock up afterward. He or she, then, is entitled to play
martyr - a favorite game for Christians in every age.

Public faith is susceptible to abuse. Public piety can masquerade phoniness.
Religion can be grossly dishonest. Part of my concern is that we know that so
thoroughly that we give a very low priority to any kind of religious practice, That is

-&-

unfortunate, Jesus was not opposed to the rituals of organized religion. In fact, He
practiced them himself. We, however, have used His trenchant observation on public
faith to rationalize total abandonment. We need, I believa, to reclaim the wisdom of
the past. We are poorer, I believe, because we don't know about nor practice dis-
ciplined giving, regular praying and intentional self-sacrifice. In fact, I don't know
of a single instance when Christian men and women have read the Bible together, prayed
together, talked honestly to one another - that all did not agree that something very
important had happened to them, I believe a disciplined piety will become more and more
important in the life of the American Church.

But the point of the text, documented at so many places in the narrative is the
Gospel: the Good News that we are saved, not by the good things we do - even the
religious things, but by God's love in Jesus Christ: that religion and all its para-
phernalia is the way we respond to the love of God. Jesus was really teaching a
new approach to religion - based on two equally important emphases - personal piety,
combined with an uncompromisingly public faith. That, I think, is the Christian genius.
I would not argue with those whe contend that He simply taught good Judaism at this
point. Jesus never heard the word Christian, after all. We share a great deal with
Jewish brothers and sisters - far more than we differ,

He taught that piety - alms, praying, fasting - are, by nature, productive,
creative practices so long as they are private. When they become public, and here
is the rub, they take the place of the kinds of things His people should be doing in
public. That's the problem. Piety can be corrupt. But the real problem is that public
piety can replace public faith. We're inclined to think that prayer in the public school:
is a religious issue. [t isn't. If E'm reading the New Testament right ~ you do your
praying at home or at church, or in the back of your mind, in the closet, privately.
Fhe religious dimension in school matters has to do with equality and the quality of
education and bond issues, and the human concerns. We're inclined to think that
religious issues in public have to do with keeping 'In God We Trust" on the coins and a
majority of Christians in Congress. 200,000 Evangelicals descended on Washington recenti;
to advocate these kinds of public concerns, But if I'm reading correctly, public faith
has more te do, simply stated, with our Lord's agenda. He didn't disguise it. He cared
about the poor people. He cared about justice. He cared about the world and the quality
of Life lived in it. He cared about the barriers - religious, racial, economic and
political which people build between themselves. He was the Prince of Peace. Those
are the only religious issues He recognized as public,

"Beware of practicing your piety before men,"' He said, But in the same breath He
told His disciples: "Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good
works and give glory to your father who is in heaven."

I don't believe there is a Christian party line on the public issues which face us.
But I am sure that a faith which fails to confront those issues is fess than Christian.
Jesus Christ called His disciples to follow Him and frankly, He paid very Little
attention to the particularities of their religious practice. He calls us to follow
also, We will do that better, more intelligently, sensitively, creatively, if we
practice our piety in a disciplined fashion. But what our Lord wants are Christian
men and women who are unapologetically and uncompromisingly public in their convictions:
men and women with the strength and courage and grace to be faithful in the world,
And that - He promised - that dynamic combination of private piety and public faith will
not only be rewarded by God, it might even change the world! Amen.

Eternal God: on occasion we have played to the gallery and we regret it.
Forgive us for it. In our heart of hearts we want to be applauded by
no one but you. We know you love us and accept us. Now give us the
courage to love and serve you publicly. Through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen,