AN APPROPRIATE PIETY

May 6, 1990
8:30 and 11:00 a.m. Worship Services
John M. Buchanan
Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago

Scripture
Philippians 2:1-16
Matthew 6:1-6, 16-18

Beware of practicing your piety before men in order to be seen by
them." --John 10:i16b RSV)

“Beware of making a show of your religion" Jesus said. And that
topic, public piety, is endlessly fascinating to us. We are both attracted

t d re ad | i i it se .

o and repelled by public piety it seems . : “pve A
Religious leaders consistently end up at the top of the ten most y \

admired people in the world... and yet, William Buckley observes that the

best way not to get invited back to another dinner party in New York... is
to say “God" more than once.

There is something both compelling and repelling about it.

The late Charles Merrill Smith, a wise and witty Methodist, made all
uf us laugh with his wonderful book, How to Become a Bishop Without Being
Religious. It is satire, but like all good satire Smith's observations
were grounded in reality.

The thesis of the book was simple:

"You can expect to be a successful clergyperson without being
religious. But never forget that you cannot be a success without being
pious." [p. 4]

Smith knew that the Christian Church is not insulated from a culture
that values appearances far more than authenticity. He wrote in a time
that growing a beard and wearing hair long could result in unemployment and
family break-up.

In any event he advised ministers to discover a total life-style and
public image that exuded piety.

in clothing, always dark suits over shaggy sport coats. “Who turns
for spiritual counsel to a man in a tweed coat?"

Choice of attire, automobile, art and literature for the parsonage...

Readers Digest condensed books are safe... the Saturday Evening Post
was best. Avoid modern art, and it goes without. saying that anything
remotely resembling the human body is out.

“Living the Inhibited Life" is very important, Smith said. “Your
— pleasures should not be of a vigorous nature. [t is a pity that croquet is
no longer popular for it is the ideal recreation for clergy. No one gets
very excited about it, no one swears over a poor shat, it is inexpensive,
and it doesn't work up a sweat," [p. 13]

Public piety is fascinating... People from other countries and
cultures notice how publicly Pious we are; how we pray publicly at the drop
of a hat, at service club luncheons, football games and rodeos. Sinclair
Lewis wrote about the corruption of public piety, long before the P.T.L.
collapse, in Elmer Gantry. Near the end of that book, Gantry has finally
made it; has climbed all the way up the ecclesiastical ladder, is pastor of

le a wealthy, successful and growing congregation, a member of Rotary, the
country club and is even taking 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 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 afraid of talking right up to ‘em and
reminding them of the awful consequences of sin and ignorance and spiritual
sloth. Yes sir! No blinking the horrors of the old-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 collection!"

“Mr. Gantry," said Andrew Pengilly, “why don't you believe in God?"

Lewis did not like public religion at all and in Elmer Gantry set up
a straw man to vent his fury, but he also described fairly accurately a
dynamic which is part of our culture. Before Elmer Gantry, Mark Twain
wrote essays and humorous sketches reflecting his dislike of public piety.
Twain was merciless, made fun of religious customs, had a running feud with
Henry Ward Beecher, one of the most prominent clergy of the day, and often
said that if heaven was like the church services he had attended ~ sour
hymns, long-winded prayers, irrelevant sermons - he was rather glad he was
going to hell.

Modern literature continues the fascination. John Updike's Month of
Sundays is about a fallen minister and Graham Greene has written elegantly
about an alcoholic priest in The Power and the Glory. The priest is
itinerating from village to village in Mexico, saying mass, hear ing
confessions and baptizing babies. He will be well paid for the baptisms.
He's sitting at a bar, drinking too much, calculating how many bottles he
can buy with his baptism money. Greene writes:

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“Tl was appalling how easily one forgot and went back. The brandy
was musty on the tongue with his own corruption. God night forgive
cowardice and passion, but was it possible to forgive the habit of piety?"

And so, for a period of time, we were mesmerized by the public
revelations of a corrupt piety... as Sinclair Lewis' suspicions all came
true. In a New Yorker article entitled "Reflections: Jim and Tammy,"
the author notes that it was one of the media events of the decade, more
popular than Iran-Contra, even though the actual wrong doing was pallid by
comparison with the flawed piety: mail and wire fraud and conspiracy.
People were entranced by excesses and angry, including the judge, who
virtually said that Bakker was more guilty — because his cover was piety -
than other white collar criminals. “People seemed to be much more angry,”
the author observed, "at the Bakkers than they were with Leona Helmsley,
Ivan Boesky, and all the perpetrators of the savings and
loan scams combined." [New Yorker, 4/23/90, p. 48]

I'm not sure I understand it except that we are sensitive to the
complexity of the topic of public piety and perhaps even ambiguous about

our own feelings, which is, I conclude, about where the Bible would like us
to be.

We have ordained and installed church officers this morning and over
the years I have learned that when many Presbyterian church members are
asked to be church officers, they say, “I don't think I'm religious
enough." And when I pursue, I discover that what we're talking about is
sterotypes, publicly invisible religious behavior... piety. Likewise,
talking with couples who wish to be married, the pastor will often hear one
of them say, “I'm not religious, but I believe in God and live a good
life." "I'm not religious, but..." is a phrase you hear a lot in fact and
the assumption is that being religious means certain publicly visible
behavior. _-

Well, what does religion look like publicly? It is difficult to
resist one of my favorite stories at this point, so I won't. An airliner,
at cruise altitude suddenly lost one engine. The pilot came on the
intercom to explain the situation. One of the passengers said, “Quick!
Somebody do something religious!" And so the Baptists on board started to
pray and the Methodists sang their favorite hymns and the Catholics reached
for their resaries, and a Presbyterian stood and started to take up an
offering.

The time was that you could count on the Roman Catholics to know what
religious behavior looks like. I knew from watching the Shaughnessy
children that it meant cheese sandwiches at lunch on Friday and fish for
dinner, confession on Saturday, mass on Sunday morning, a dirty forehead on
Ash Wednesday and crossing yourself at the free-throw line. From my
Baptist friends I knew that it meant going to church a lot, twice on
Sunday, Wednesday night prayer meeting, carrying your own Bible, spending
Sunday afternoon on the porch, playing Parcheesi instead of Pinnochle, Old
Maid instead of Poker, and saying things like "Judas Priest" and "Holy
Toledo" when you clearly meant something else.

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My parenls, pood Presbyterians, took a dim view of al] of it and
reduced their wisdom on the topic to seven words which ny father said
often: “Don't wear your religion on your sleeve” — which I now know, is
not far from something Jesus said one time:

“Beware of practicing your piety before men in order toa be seen by
them."

Or, as the New English Bible.bluntly translates:
“Be careful not to make a show of your religion."

One of the things a religion ought to do for you is tel] you what
religious behavior looks like. First century Judaism knew that religious
behavior included alms giving. Jewish culture had developed a wonderful
system of public and private charity. Alms was the money a religious
person gave for the poor. Alms is the addition to the tithe, the return of
one-tenth of one's possessions to the Lord. Jesus drew a picture of a very
substantial contributor approaching the Synagogue with a bulging purse to
make a special offering. The custom of publishing the amount of
contributions goes back to the first century when names and amounts were
announced at Synagogue, and on occasion, for special alms, trumpets were
sounded. Obviously, if one was creative, one could arrange to enjoy a lot
of public admiration. Now there is a subtle dimension to this - and a
creative one. Eastern culture was not bashful about seeking public
admiration. It used public admiration as a way to encourage and reinforce
good behavior. It valued and rewarded generosity. Jesus was not
criticizing that system. What he was proposing was a radical new way of
being pious - shifting the focus of religion to the heart - where public
attention is no ionger an issue.

Judaism knew that religious behavior included prayer. As is still
the case with Islam, the devout stopped what they were doing at nine,
twelve and three, turned in the direction of the Temple and prayed. We
have much to learn about a disciplined, regular life of prayer. Rut if one
just happens to be on the corner of Michigan and Chestnut every day at
prayer time, one will be rewarded by the admiration of others. That's all
Jesus said: not that it's bad, just that it's playing to the gallery and
it will be rewarded with applause.

Religion also included fasting once a year on the Bay of Atonement
for everybody, once or twice a Weék for the really devout. I sometimes
muse over the fact that the only way apparently to lose weight is to
approach the task with a religious commitment. I imagine God laughing over
the fact that Jennie Craig and Weight Watchers have taught us something we
failed to learn from 3,000 years of religious fasting. The custom on
Atonement Day was to announce one's penitence by fasting and by rubbing
ashes on one's cheek, wearing shabby clothes. Jesus suggests that if you
are fasting for God's glory, you ought to anoint your face - as if you're
going to a party.

Religious behavior - piety - is both the way we express how we feel
to God... and it is also the way we announce to the world how we feel about

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Ged. Going lo church, therefore, is both an act of piety and a witness, a
public testimony.

Piely, 7 Jike to think, jis a way we respond to God's goodness. My
personal, private religion, the prayers I say or think or meditate are the
ways TI live in relationship with God. Sometimes that means saying “thank
you"; sometimes it means expressing a heartfelt hope, sometimes anger or
disappointment and sometimes love. Piety is a way to say “I love you" to
God.

Now humanize that dynamic for a moment. If you wish to say "I love
you" to another human being you can hire a skywriter or spray paint it on
the sidewalk... Sometimes in an outpouring of ecstatic, exuberant love we
ought to make public affirmation. But if you tell the world about your
Jove for your lover every day, he or she might wonder if your intended
audience is not actually the world.

If you play to the gallery, you will be rewarded by the gallery. We
are fascinated by corrupt piety, I think, because we know how complex our
own motives are. We know that while some may be flagrant in their abuse of
piety, the Elmer Gantrys, for instance, there is a sense in which to be
human is to be unable not to think about the social implications of one's
public behavior. Human motivations are complicated and our Reformed
Tradition has always been skeptical about the possibility, this side of
heaven, of total purity of motive.

Charles Lamb once wryly admitted: "The greatest pleasure I know is
to do a good deed by stealth and to have it found out by accident."

The trouble with public piety in Jesus' day is that it becomes a poor
substitute for authentic piety, which is private, but also a substitute for
public faithfulness, to which Jesus very specifically calls his disciples
and here's the rub.

In fact - in the same section of the Gospel According to Matthew,
Jesus says, "You are the light of the world... Let your light so shine that
the world will see your good works."

Jesus wanted private piety and public faithfulness, exactly the
opposite from our inclination. His position, someone said, is very simple.
“Show your religion when you are tempted to hide it. Hide your religion
when you are tempted to show it.”

Jesus would not understand a religion without a strong, disciplined
piety. Nor, I think, would he understand a religion that had no public and
political relevance. His uniqueness is that he insisted on both: prayer
and social action; alms and public responsibility; fasting and justice.

He would not, I think, be impressed with a moment of silence for
prayer at the beginning of the school day, mandated by law. He would care
a lot about the quality of the education happening during the rest of the
day and the public willingness to provide for it. He would not, I think,

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be much impressed with the presence of his manger at the City Hall, or his
cross on the povernment buildings. He would care a lot about conpassion
for the poor and justice for the oppressed.

The irony he taught, was that when public piety becomes a substitute
for faithfulness and responsibility, the whole enterprise of religion is
trivialized.

What he wanted, what he wants - are men and women who love him and
his Kingdom enough ta be naturally and personally grateful and devout and
publicly faithful: men and women who know and attend to their awn
spirituality, but who have the grace and courage to be uncompromisingly
public about his Kingdom, his values, his agenda for the world.

He promised that the combination of private piety and public
faithfulness will do two things -

it will change the world... perhaps not dramatically, and perhaps not
over night. But the world becomes a different place when Christ's women
and men are publicly faithful.

And it will change us; we will be rewarded by God... not by public
applause, but by the intimate, precious sense that we live in God's
presence; that even when the struggle is hard and no one either understands
or appreciates, there is one who will not let us fall - who himself never

looked or acted religious. One who says... "Well done, good and faithful
servant.”
Amen.

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