Am I a hypocrite?

 There are all sorts of provocative questions that we can ask ourselves but one of the most significant, for those inside the wire of the church, is this post’s title. It is especially significant for us who identify as church goers because one of the ongoing charges against the church is hypocrisy. I would venture to guess that every church person has heard at some point, “The church is full of hypocrites!” I’ve heard it a time or two or maybe even more and I have to say it hurts. It hurts for two reasons, first, that it is frequently true and second, because the person who says it has no examples of church going hypocrites but is repeating it as a self-evident fact; in current parlance, church going hypocrites is a meme.

We could spend all day talking about how this is unfair or inaccurate but I’d rather spend my time looking at a story in Luke where Jesus levels the charge of hypocrisy against religious folks and see if that picture has room for me in it too. So this week’s sermons are about hypocrisy and what might be the antidote to it, namely humility. One of the points I was trying to make, feel free to let me know if I made it or not, was that we need to hold on to what we believe firmly but lightly. We need to approach what we think and feel and believe with an attitude that is possible, even if unlikely, that we are wrong.

Knox Presbyterian Who would think healing is wrong?

St. Mark’s Presbyterian Who would think healing is wrong?

Blessings,