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Redford Aldersgate
United Methodist Church
Sermon
Secret Service
April 2, 2006
Matthew 6:1-6
Are you tired yet? Are you exhausted
from the calisthenics of working out in your spiritual disciplines? Or
are you having fun discovering the life you’ve always wanted. Have you
become excited about pursuing spiritual growth because it is drawing you
closer in your relationship with God?
During this Lenten season, we have been focusing on Spiritual Olympics,
looking at several spiritual disciplines with the goal of drawing closer
in our relationship with God. Our altar worship setting has reminded us
of the Olympics with its five rings but they are upside down in order to
point upward to God and the colorful material going through the hoops
remind us of the ways God works through spiritual disciplines to bring
beauty to our lives. We have looked at the specific disciplines of
Celebration, of Slowing Down, of Prayer with Confession and last week of
Scripture Meditation.
Today we come to an end of our focus on the Spiritual Olympics. In the
regular winter Olympics when it comes to an end, there are rewards
given, medals handed out, and a showy public closing ceremony. But we
have a scripture today in which Jesus warns us about rewards and showy
public displays. Hear then these words of Jesus from The gospel of
Matthew in the sixth chapter.
Scripture: Matthew 6; 1-6, 16-18
Whoa! Watch out in doing things for earthly rewards and public
attention! In fact be so secretive that no one sees what you are doing
and you are not even letting your left hand know what your right hand is
doing. Now that is secretive!
I have to confess that I have a struggle with this passage. With such an
emphasis on secrecy, this scripture bothers me. I have come to the
conclusion that it bothers me because most of the time, I would not
advocate secrecy. Secrecy usually causes more problems than it cures or
helps. Just think about it for a minute.
Secrecy is not good in terms of friendships. Keeping secrets from each
other or talking behind each others backs doesn’t do much for good
friendships. Secrecy is not good in terms of marriages. More often than
not secrets kept from each other come back to haunt
marriages.
Let me give you a personal example. One time I was helping out one of
our daughters -not just with giving her money but with cosigning for a
loan for her. ... And I didn’t tell Diana. I knew she didn’t want me to
do it. Not good! I probably thought “what she doesn’t know won’t hurt
her.” I probably didn’t think period. Not a good idea! Marriages are
built on talking things over and communicating about them. You may
disagree with each other but it needs to be open, honest communication.
I learned my lesson: No secrecy in marriage!
Secrecy is not good in terms of relationships in churches either.
Churches are healthier when there is honest, open dialogue and even
disagreement and then putting it in God’s hands. No secrets, no
petitions to oust pastors, no talking behind people’s backs, etc. Those
are not usually a helpful way to work for God’s kingdom. They usually
end up splitting churches rather than helping churches. If people have
disagreements, they need to talk it over. We are fortunate in the United
Methodist Church to have a system to deal with disagreements with
pastors. It is done through the Staff Parish Relations Committee.
Therefore, there is not a need for secrecy or petitions.
So I don’t advocate secrecy much at all, but here is Jesus encouraging
us to be so secretive that no one knows what we are doing and even our
left hand doesn’t know what our right hand is doing. What is he saying?
What is Jesus wanting us to be aware of with these words?
First,
I think he is warning us about having a Messiah complex. John Ortberg,
the author of our Lenten study book, The Life You’ve Always Wanted, says
there are a lot of people today who have a Messiah complex. The phrase
is often used for people who have a grandiose idea of themselves. A
person who wants to achieve spectacular feats in order for everyone else
to recognize how really, really special they are could be said to suffer
from this Messiah complex. It is built on pride and vanity - wanting to
be seen by others.
In the scripture, Jesus warns against this danger and says “ be careful
not to do your acts of righteousness before others, to be seen by them.”
But aren’t we called into service to do acts of righteousness? Yes we
are. But the question is “what is our motivation behind the acts?” You
see we can do all kinds of acts - and many of them can be very good acts
- but there may be a deeper problem. We may be doing the acts to show
how great we are - performing acts to boost this grandiose notion of
ourselves - expressing our Messiah complex.
In order to confront the temptation we have toward a Messiah complex,
the scripture points us to what Ortberg refers to in his book as the
ministry of the mundane. It’s about doing those seemingly insignificant
tasks without recognition. Mundane tasks like helping to move chairs or
sweep floors, taking a friend or a neighbor to a doctor’s appointment,
helping jump start a dead battery for a stranded traveler. The ministry
of the mundane means sometimes doing routine tasks even if we could have
someone else do them so that we might know that no task is beneath us.
During the American Revolution, a man in civilian clothes rode past a
group of soldiers repairing a small defensive barrier. Their leader was
shouting instructions but making no attempt to help them. A man who was
riding by asked the leader why he was yelling so loudly. The leader
retorted with great dignity, “Sir, I am a corporal and it’s my job to
TELL them what to do!” The stranger said, “Oh, I see.” Then, he
dismounted, and proceeded to help the exhausted soldiers. When the job
was finished, the stranger turned to the corporal and said, “Mr.
Corporal, next time you have a job like this and not enough men to do
it, go to your Commander-in-Chief, and I will come and help you again.”
The stranger was none other than George Washington himself.
It seemed ironic that it was the commandeer-in-chief who felt free to do
the mundane task. Yet, there is another commander-in-chief who was
completely free to do the mundane tasks. You see not only did Jesus warn
us of this temptation, he demonstrated how to fight it. Countless times
he was willing to be interrupted by requests that others felt were not
worth their time. Countless times he went off to pray by himself. And on
the most difficult night of his life, before he went to the cross, he
knelt at his disciples feet and washes their feet. The irony, writes
Ortberg in his book, is that “Every human being who has ever lived has
suffered from the Messiah complex - except one - and he was the
Messiah.”
Second, I believe Jesus is warning us about our tendency to act for
applause, our struggle for approval. All of us struggle with it - the
temptation to play to the crowd, the temptation to let what I perceive
others think of me dictate how I should respond, the temptation to get
into a never ending search for more and more praise from others. Longing
after the approval of others can be a trap that plays into our ego. And
it can lead us into a sort of addiction for approval. Many of us live
with that kind of approval addiction - we live life as though everything
we do is meant to impress some judges. Approval addiction causes us to
try to deceive others and ourselves. Ortberg writes that “our concern
for what others think about us inevitably leads us to shade the truth.”
Jesus warns us about such approval addiction. In the scripture those who
were giving for simply recognition sake received strong warning. They
were trying to deceive others into thinking they were more generous than
they truly were. In their hearts they were actually tightfisted, but
they didn’t want to look that way so they put on a show of deception.
It’s like the time a man who wanted to look good in his giving but was
actually rather cheap. One day before Christmas he went shopping and he
saw a $50 vase that was on sale for two dollars because the handle had
been broken off. A brilliant plan came to his mind. He bought the broken
vase and had the salesman ship it to the address of a person he wanted
to impress. That way he could say that he paid the $50 for the vase
which must have simply got broken while being shipped. A week after
Christmas he received a thank you note from the person. “Thank you for
the lovely vase. It was so nice of you to wrap each piece separately.”
Sometimes you get caught in deception.
Likewise we can get entrapped when we get caught up in seeking after the
approval of others. Jesus warns us against making a show of charity
because that deception can lead us away from our dependence upon God.
Notice that Jesus is not warning us against doing good deeds. Jesus says
throughout this chapter “when you give ... when you pray ... when you
fast ... Jesus is expecting us to give and pray and fast. But in order
to give with a pure motive, we are to give in such a way as to not let
your left hand know what your right hand is doing. He is advocating
anonymous giving. Jesus not only wants us to have a ministry of the
mundane. He wants us to do it secretly. Jesus is advocating for secret
service.
What a challenge! Even if most of us are not out to “blow our own horn,”
most of us do look for some recognition for every charitable act we
perform. We have a tough time giving a large anonymous donation to a
worthy cause - “but I need it for my taxes.” We have a tough time doing
small acts of service for family or friends without thinking of what we
want in return. Our Lenten study book suggest that we have a “secret
service day” in which we help others anonymously without getting
anything in return, even a thank you. That boggles our minds.
Jesus is advocating for secret service because it is God’s way. Instead
of trying to puff up our ego and serve our own selfish desires to look
good, secret service serves God’s purposes. Sometimes God’s way will pat
us on the back and give us recognition, but most of the time our ego
gets in the way and fits right into our Messiah complex or our addiction
for needing approval. So do some things in secret and let your ego get
out of the way in meeting each person’s needs. Secret service frees us
to take the focus off of ourselves and truly meet the needs of others.
For the past 2 weeks, there has been a bulletin announcement from the
Bread for the World organization asking us to do an “offering of
letters.” This is really an opportunity for secret service. Sure, we
sign our names to some letters but in the Offering of Letters, the focus
and the reward is not on us but on the needs of others. I’d like to take
just a minute to let a video from the Bread for the World organization
explain the benefits of the programs they are asking us to support.
(Video) The video goes on to explain how this woman in the Congo, along
with many of her friends are part of a program called WORTH.
This program helps these women not only with self-worth but by helping
them increase their economic worth as well. This program has three
parts. The first part has to do with literacy. It teaches the women how
to read. Second, it teaches them good business practices. And third, it
helps them to set up their own banking system by teaching them how to
save and manage their own banks. It has certainly helped them open their
eyes to a new way of life. (Video.) There are some sample letters in
Fellowship Hall. You can take a letter home and write your own letter,
or there are some letters that are ready to go. All you have to do is
sign your name and send it. Or perhaps there are other ways that you can
think of to help in this area or other areas.
Secret service lets us truly serve God. Anonymous giving actually opens
us up to many more wonderful gifts from God. It frees us to give to
people who we may not have ever noticed before. It empowers us to
befriend people we might not otherwise associate with. It releases us
from worry about what others think when we care for those who may not
seem cool enough, attractive enough, or popular enough to hang out with.
And ultimately it brings us to a place where we can experience in a real
way the very presence of Jesus with us.
There is great joy in spiritual disciplines when we are drawn into a
closer relationship with God. There is great joy and freedom that comes
when we can humbly give and do it in secret service. There is great joy
and freedom in breaking the chains of our Messiah complex and approval
addiction. It is the freedom to stop trying to be what we’re not, or
pretending to be what we’re not. In the words of Martin Luther, the
Protestant reformer, such humble action is the “decision to let God be
God.”
What joy and freedom are ours in spiritual disciplines and especially in
secret service.
We can be free to do any task no matter how mundane it may seem.
We can be free to look out for each person’s interests and not just our
own.
We can be free to give without having to receive recognition.
We can be free to see all that we have is a gift from God to benefit
others.
We can be free to serve God and respond to God’s great call to live and
serve.
We can be free to reply “Here I am Lord, send me.”
We can be free to experience in a real way the very presence of Jesus
with us.
What freedom and joy and communion with God is ours. Amen
.