The Rev. Frank Logue
King of Peace Episcopal Church
Kingsland, Georgia
September 3, 2006

The Hypocrite and the Septic Tank
Mark 7:1-23

“I’m not going to go to church because it’s filled with hypocrites.” 

That line is one we read this week in our Wednesday study looking at the Episcopal Church through the book Those Episkopals. Having been told, “I’m not going to go to church because it’s filled with hypocrites” the author, Dennis Maynard, responds, “Where are the hypocrites supposed to go?” He goes on to write, 

The church is the perfect place for hypocrites. It’s like saying that one is not going to the hospital because it’s filled with sick people. The church is a hospital for the sick. It’s a hospital for sinners. We Anglicans [which by the way is another word used around the world for us Episcopalians, anyway, he writes…] We Anglicans do not believe that the church is a haven for saints. We do not believe that it is a club for the elite. We do not believe that it is a hideout for the saved. The church is a gathering place for wounded healers. The church exists for those people in this life who have been injured by their own sins and the sins of others. Here in the presence of Jesus we can reach out and touch one another. Here, we can touch Him, and we can be made whole. 

These words are wonderful and even true and then Jesus goes and wrecks all that talk of church being the perfect place for hypocrites by fussing with the Pharisees about being hypocrites. In our Gospel reading for this morning, Jesus says,  

“Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written, ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.’” 

The Pharisees are saying one thing while believing another in their hearts. Jesus, rightly, names as hypocrisy that pompous piety which wants everyone to see you as Holy while you go on abandoning God’s commands. Have everyone think you are a regular Charlie Church if you like, but if you don’t follow through on that with a real ongoing relationship with God, then it is all just some mask you wear. 

Wearing a mask is what it meant literally to be a hypocrite. Well literally it meant “one who speaks from under a mask.” Greek actors wore masks to portray a character. In the classical Greek of Aristophanes and Xenophon, the word hypocrite was the word for an actor. To act was to speak behind a mask. But in time, as all realized that we can wear masks figuratively as well as literally, the term hypocrite came to be used, as Jesus does here, for someone who says one thing and does another. 

To understand hypocrisy better it helps to know that one of the many reasons I never became Miss America is that I just can’t get that beauty pageant smile down pat. You know [do the big smile and hold it while talking], the Vaseline-on-the-lips perma-smile that is just as essential as having the right pageant dress and proper pageant song to belt out in the talent competition. But my gender, clothes and singing ability aside, I can’t do the smile. See [still holding the smile], when I try to do a big smile to hold on to it just looks creepy. In fact, one of my faults is that I am not so good at hiding my emotions. My feelings just come through. 

I know, it sounds like it would help with my job to be an open book. But as I shift in my day from a tough situation—counseling a couple whose marriage is on the rocks, or visiting with a family after a loved one has died—to a not so tough situation like planning a wedding or being with a family just after the birth of a child, the emotions of the hard times sometimes still lining my face. And other times, my emotions just come through on my face in a meeting when it would probably be better to contain my feelings more. 

That is why Miss America has to wear the mask of a big smile after all. The perma-smile is that never-let-them-see-you-sweat persona any pageant contestant must master. Just keep smiling and they’ll never know that you are nervous. Just keep smiling and they’ll never know that you know your voice went flat in the big finish to the song you were counting on for those all-important talent points. 

You see we all wear masks and it is not always bad. After all bank tellers and grocery store clerks and even priests don’t always need to reveal every inner thought on their faces as they work. Putting on a brave face to visit someone in the hospital for whom you have grave concerns is, for example, a good thing. And who would want a doctor whose uncertainties over a diagnosis came through. Better to put on the mask of professional confidence with a patient and then go consult books and colleagues to make sure you’ve got it right. We could draw this out, but you get the point. Wearing a mask is not all bad, not in and of itself. Perhaps it depends more on who you are trying to kid or from whom you are protecting yourself. 

After all, the mask to which Jesus takes exception in our Gospel reading is one turned toward God. And there is no sense pretending with God. God knows that you don’t have your act together quite so much as you put on for others. God knows the bad thoughts behind the pleasant persona. God knows the confused motives behind the seemingly innocent remark or gesture. God not only knows the real you, God loves the you that lives behind the mask.   

Part of our worship service each week is designed to let the mask slip before approaching the altar. It is the confession of sin. This is the time when, having already considered the you behind the mask, you offer up all your pretensions, all your bad thoughts, wrong motives, and evil desires. This is the time for letting go of some of the baggage you carry around. After all, it is that personal baggage that leads to the unhealthy use of a mask. You never could be that daughter your father wanted you to be. You never quite measured up as a son for your Mom compared to your siblings, or her ideal. You never quite got it all together the way you hoped you might, and so you wear a mask that tries to cover the real insecurities hiding just below the surface. 

Well, this is the place and now is the time to let some of that go. What would happen if your mask slipped to the floor? First and foremost you would find the path toward deeper healing. Jesus says in the Gospel, 

“Listen to me, all of you and understand.” 

That’s quite a beginning. What follows must be important. And he goes on to say, 

“There is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile. For it is from within, the human heart, that evil intentions come.” 

Jesus is turning Judaism inside out with these words. The primary concern of Moses’ Law was for a ritual purity which came from outward actions such as only eating foods we call Kosher and through other observances such as the one that comes up in our reading. I know because I do this ritual each week.  

You will see me in a little while wash my hands while setting the altar for communion. Now my hands are clean, I wash them before I vest each week being careful to use soap and warm water with plenty of hand ringing action. The washing I do at the altar is more of a ritual and it is that ritual which comes up in our reading. Jesus taught that such outward rituals are meaningless unless they correspond to what is taking place in one’s heart. Jesus taught that doing one thing outwardly while not mirroring this inwardly does not fool God. You can get the ritual down pat and still miss the whole point if it is all just an outward act with nothing inside to correspond. 

For it is what is already inside of you that is polluting your system. You are not being torn apart by the world around you so much as the world within. Jesus points to specific behaviors “fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride and folly” which he says gestate within the human heart. Murder does not take root in the mind because of external causes so much as inward ones. Likewise, adultery begins with something unfulfilled within, which if it were paid attention to sooner, would never result in an affair. All this evil starts in your own heart and the place to do housecleaning is in confession. 

I heard a Roman Catholic monk describe the confessional as God’s septic tank. There is something to that whether you opt to confess your sins before another or to God alone. The monk said we need to dump out the waste of our lives and let God deal with it. But septic tanks don’t work if you keep stirring them up. And so often we turn something over to God, some past hurt or wrong we have done. We want healing, but we don’t let go. We have to keep stirring things up. And it has about the same effect on our hearts as reaching back into a septic tank to mess with the contents.  

There is a story told[1] of a little girl who began to hear God speak to her. She told her parents, who told their priest. He spoke to the girl and found her simple faith something he could not deny. The priest spoke to his Bishop, who was about to come for an annual visit. On the day of his visit, the Bishop asked to meet the girl and her parents. When they spoke the Bishop said he would like to have a little test to confirm that it was God who spoke to the girl. The girl agreed. The Bishop said, “The next time God speaks to you, ask God to reveal everything I said when I last confessed my sins.” The Bishop left, but agreed with the parents to return when they contacted him. Within the week, the Bishop received a call and traveled back to get news of his test. He asked the girl, “Did God speak to you?” “Yes,” she replied. “Did you ask God about the sins I confessed.” “Of course,” the girl replied, but God said, “Tell the Bishop I forgot them.” 

God is not reaching back into the septic tank to stir up the contents of things you did once to see what is in there. God is concerned about your today and your tomorrows, but you keep lugging around the past. There is baggage that you carry around of which you need to let go. If you don’t clean out the junk within you are going to end up spewing all that junk of which Jesus spoke. And you can’t get at the source of the problem as long as you are still trying to hold on to the mask. There is only you and God within your heart. There is no need for a mask. It doesn’t work anyway. Because it is the hypocrisy within yourself that really rots the heart.  

There is nothing wrong with a mask from time to time so that all your emotions aren’t out front all the time. There is nothing wrong with seeming like you have your act together for the sake of another. There is something wrong with believing the lie. There is something wrong with thinking you are the only one wearing that mask. There is something wrong with not letting God in to that cesspool of old junk you carry around. There is something wrong with missing the real healing God has for you because you have to act like you’ve got your act together. 

You are not kidding God. Half the time you aren’t even kidding those around you. Mostly you are just kidding yourself if you think there is no house cleaning left to do on your insides. You are probably carrying around a bunch of old wrong messages anyway. Because the evil you face is more within than without. And no Miss America smile can hide the pain in your heart from you or God.  

Open yourself up to being real with yourself and real with God. Open yourself up to real healing from the inside out. For all these evil things come from within and they defile a person. It’s only by getting God more deeply into your heart that you can let the housecleaning begin. 

Amen.