I’m in my car, running an errand in my neighborhood. To my left I see a van moving to make a left turn into my lane. We’re not at an intersection, I have the right of way, but it’s clear they are not bothering to look before they turn. They don’t see me. We’re a second away from a collision. I slam on the brakes and blare my horn and watch as the driver doesn’t react or respond in the slightest – I can see them clearly through the window in their own little world, oblivious to what’s going on around them – as they finish the left turn into my lane ahead of me.

Then I get to drive behind them, block after block.

That’s when I notice their license plate. It’s a vanity plate that says:

BE PRESNT

Underneath that is a bumper sticker:

BREATHE

You can’t make this stuff up.

Textbook irony. Textbook hypocrisy. You’re telling me to be present and to breathe!? My actually being present saved the both of us the consequences of you not practicing what you preach.

I then caught myself on the brink of indulging in the pleasures of all kinds of judgmental fantasies about how hypocritically holier-than-thou this person must be, some kind of self-ordained faux-yoga feel-good influencer with a shiny online presence dispensing wise-sounding advise, while being too blissed out to drive responsibly in their beat-up old van…

Whoa, there, Reverend. Just breathe, man.

Really, you don’t know the story about what’s going on inside that beat-up old van. And, really, who among us is 100% consistent in practicing what we preach? Especially those of us who happen to be on the preachy side, who may even literally be preachers?

Who’s been caught in my blind-spots and actually suffered damage for it?

“Be Present;” “Breathe:” There’s nothing wrong with that advice. I wouldn’t advise putting it on a license plate and hurdling heedlessly into traffic, but it’s something we’d all benefit from trying to do better. I sincerely wish for everyone, especially this driver, to keep growing towards being more attentive and responsive to the present moment.

The whole point of a precept, after all, shouldn’t be perfection, but rather to focus our aspirations around behaving in line with our values, and to become more aware and accountable to the ways that we fall short, that we don’t consistently live out our values or principles. If it is important to be present, for example, then we precept to help us become more aware of when we’re not and why.

It all requires grace. Not judgment and condemnation, but grace.

Easier said than done.  

It seems like it’s become a national pastime to point out each-other’s hypocrisies and to be outraged by them. Judgment and condemnation abound. Now, a lot of this is because of the meanness and bitterness and mockery that the internet amplifies. And the nature of hypocrisy hunting can easily be a cynical or self-satisfied way of trying to score points off one’s opponent.

But also, some of it is truly because of the pain of getting caught in someone else’s blind spots, and folks being willing to say so. Some of it is because of the human costs of double-standards being exposed – whose lives matter to whom, and whose don’t. There’s also the human fact that it’s easier to see the double-standards of one’s opponent than it is to see one’s own.

My position on this, as a fair-to-middlingly competent interpreter of a Christian approach to life, is that I’m pretty sure everybody is a hypocrite, of one degree or another. We’re all in need of God’s grace, whether we know it or not.

The important question when it comes to hypocrisy is our sincerity or cynicism about it. Are we sincere or cynical about the ways we may not live out consistently the values we profess or the values by which we judge others.

Being sincere means that we genuinely want to have integrity do be consistent in living out our values, and we are willing to admit when we haven’t, and try to do better.

Being cynical means we’re using morality as a way of scoring points off other people, to bolster our own self-righteousness, or that we say one thing and do another as a way of asserting power and dominance. Hypocrisy is one of the many strategies of power and dominance.

Now, I think for most of us, at our very best we act with integrity, and when we are at our second best, we are sincere in our hypocrisy – we’re willing to learn and try to do better – but at our worst we can be cynical, without even realizing it. It can be a big rush to judge others as we would rather not be judged ourselves.

Jesus had a humorous and insightful way of illustrating all this.

 [Jesus said,] “Do not judge and you will not be judged. For, just as you judge others, you will be judged yourselves, and the standard that you use will be used for you. Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your friend’s eye, while you pay no attention at all to the plank of wood in yours? How will you say to your friend, ‘Let me take out the speck from your eye,’ when all the while there is a plank in your own? Hypocrite! Take out the plank from your own eye first, and then you will see clearly how to take out the speck from your friend’s.”- Matthew 7:1-5

It’s significant that the image here is about seeing clearly or not. Yes, we can easily see the faults of others before we see our own, but Jesus is showing us something more here. So often the very faults we are quick to jump on in others are the very same things that we’d rather not admit are true about ourselves. But even more than that, Jesus is saying that we easily can see the ways others are not seeing clearly, we can see their moral blind-spots, and we may be eager to point them out, when all the while we are not ourselves seeing clearly, we have our own giant blind-spots.

Another important detail in Jesus’ teaching here, which is subtle, is that he’s encouraging a spirit of friendliness about all this. The translation we used today says this is among “friends:” “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your friend’s eye …” most other translations have “neighbor” or “brother.” This is about treating others as neighbors, in the Mr. Rodger’s sense. He’s not saying, “Pull out the log from your eye and then you can be justified in condemning your enemy for the speck in their eye.” No, the goal is to have clear sight yourself and to help your neighbor, your friend, your sibling, to have clear sight as well.

This is very important in helping us to be sincere in how we approach what we see of other people’s hypocrisy and our own. Is your sincere goal that more people, including yourself, have clearer moral sight and insight so they can do better? Or is your goal to just feel like you’re better than other people, or to try to get away with bad behavior?

Now, having a spirit of sincerity and grace can be really hard when you get hurt because you got caught in someone else’s blind spot, or when you witness the horrible pain of someone else getting hit in their blind spot. And it’s even harder then when the person with the blind spot is cynical about it all and wants to blame you or blame the other victim or just deny that the whole thing happened.

 Moral outrage does have its place. And naming hypocrisy can have an important role in seeking justice due the harm from cynical abuses of morality for the sake of power.

Jesus himself called out all kinds of hypocrisy He railed against the people of his day who acted all holy while they were taking advantage of the poor and powerless. But, Jesus did let this become an excuse for his followers to get self-righteous and puffed up themselves. His teachings are a guard against what seems to be a strong human tendency.

We must be guided by our own sincerity and our experience of grace and our own willingness to be accountable for the moral blind-spots we do indeed have. Because we all do indeed have them. Big and small. And sometimes our enemies see them very clearly, even as they deny their own.

Having a spirit of sincerity and grace can help, I believe, in the fraught landscape of moral outrage and bitter accusations of hypocrisy that rage in our times.     

I’ll close with another story to illustrate.

Several years ago, at the church I served in Walla Walla, WA, we hosted a big demonstration for immigrant rights and against the family separation practices at the U.S. border with Mexico. It started in the sanctuary of the church, marched around town and ended back in the church parking lot. On the front page of the local newspaper was a picture of our church full to overflowing with people.

There were some folks in town who were not pleased about this.

We got some nasty messages – not many, nothing bad in the scheme of things.

One of them was on our Facebook page, which basically said,

“You hypocrites! How dare you make a big show about being so concerned about illegal Mexicans kids when there are so many kids who need help here in town, and veterans, and homeless people.”

Again, as far as these things go, not bad.

Still my first response was not very Christ-like. Being called a hypocrite can trigger the primitive and petty parts of the brain: “I’m not a hypocrite, you’re the hypocrite!” “I know you are but what am I?”

But I paused and prayed and talked with a church leader and some UCC colleagues who actually gets real hate mail.

I also was curious this person and checked out her Facebook page, which was not private. I could see she had various things she was angry about, but also some things she was tender about, and it was clear she has had her struggles.

All this, thanks be to God, moved me away from focusing on a fight over hypocrisy, and toward a spirit of sincerity and grace. Can I show her that we are sincere and gracious, and can I invite out her sincerity and graciousness?

So, here was my reply.

“Hi. Our Pastor would be happy to make some time to talk with you about our ministries, and to hear about what is important to you in how you serve our community. We can always use volunteers for the winter emergency warming center we host. Every Wednesday we serve a free community soup lunch, run by volunteers. You’d be most welcome joining in. If anyone in your life is looking for an addiction recovery group, we have AA, NA and other groups meeting here morning, noon, and night. Please let us know of other opportunities to serve our community that are important to you. For example, it sounds like caring for veterans is important to you. While we have several veterans in our church, the wider needs of veterans in our community is not something we have yet ministered to. We can pass on good ideas to our membership, who are proud to be part of our century-and-a-half history of being one of Walla Walla’s centers of faith and service. Blessings to you this 4th of July.”

She replied:

“I would love that!” She then shared about some major struggles in her life, and ended with “You have given me Hope!”

And was like “Thank you Jesus!” This Jesus stuff can work!

Thanks be to God.

Delivered Sunday, November 12, 2023 by Rev. Nathaniel Mahlberg, at the United Church of Christ at Valley Forge

(Image by Robert Robertson, 1916, Public Domain)