Hello and welcome to Thursday’s daily podcast! Our BIG hope is that this short thought and worship track encourages us to walk with Jesus more closely today.

Today we carry on through Matthews Gospel. You might be interested to know that we’ve been looking at parts of this book of the Bible since September and in the next few weeks we will have done the whole thing together. How great is that?

REFLECTION:

Today our passage is Matthew 23:1-22. It’s titled ‘a warning against hypocrisy’ in most Bibles.

Verse 3 really hits it home… Be careful of the teachers of the law and the Pharisees… Do not do what they do for they do not practise what they preach. 

 

The word hypocrite comes from the Greek, hypokritēs, meaning stage actor, and is commonly used when referring to people of religion who say one thing and do another. In short, they talk the talk but they don’t walk the walk.

I don’t know about you, but in my conversations with people who don’t have a faith yet, this might be one of the most common obstacles to believing in Jesus.

It certainly was something I assumed of all Christians before I got to actually know some as a teenager. I guess as a society we kind of like a “fall from grace” story. If you are going to profess goodness it becomes very memorable when they fall.

I was reading a book in the summer called “Story Bearer” by Phil Knox. We invited Phil to come and speak at the evening gathering 2 weeks ago. I definitely recommend his talk to you if you haven’t heard it yet. It was about finding hope and a home in these times of transition. In his book Phil encourages us all to match the stories of our mouth with the stories of our lives. In his own words, he says, “The challenge for us as story bearers is that we tell two stories, one with our tongues and one with our actions. We need to do our best to make them synchronise with each other.”

Over the years, people have given up on exploring Jesus because of the way those who follow him have behaved. Sadly there are more headlines about the appalling abuses of power than the good. The historic discrimination because of race, the appalling genocides and crusades, the wrong power dynamics. We could go on. If you are listening to this and things come to mind about the ways individuals or organisations have hurt you and it’s stopped you meeting with Jesus I am truly sorry. It’s an old cliche but it is true, the church is a hospital for broken people not a museum for perfect people. But that doesn’t excuse the behaviour, – so if I may, Jesus we are sorry. We repent. Would you forgive us when our actions do not match our words.

In Phil’s book he makes this point more eloquently than I across a chapter. I really do recommend it. I’ll add a link to this podcast description. I love the way he chose to end that chapter and I’m going to steal the idea and tweak it for our context and for Sheffield. But Phil gets credit for the inspiration.

He says, “…we should rightly apologise when we have got things wrong while maintaining a sense of perspective. Especially when confronted with the soundbite that “all religion does is make war”. [There is a lot to be proud of in our] past, as well as the present we have shone brightly as the city on the hill. Education and social concern have been part of the parcel of the church’s activities from the earliest days.  Between 1850 and 1900, as many as three-quarters of all voluntary charities were set up and run by evangelical Christians. From William Wilberforce, whose actions helped towards the abolition of the slave trade, to William Beveridge, who is credited with the reformation of British healthcare and the creation of the National Health Service, our story-bearing predecessors have let their light shine and we should be as proud of them as we are ashamed of those who have so badly got it wrong.