Rev. Jared Buss
Pittsburgh New Church; May 19, 2024
Readings: Matthew 23:1-7, 13, 14 (children’s talk); Revelation 3:1-6; Apocalypse Revealed §154
Today we’ve been talking about the Pharisees… but anyone who has any familiarity with the New Testament at all already knows that we shouldn’t be like the Pharisees. The Pharisees are paragons of hypocrisy. “All their works they do to be seen by men” (Matt. 23:5). They cover themselves with this veil of righteousness, but all they want is power and adulation. They don’t actually care about spiritual things at all, and they are not nice people. For two thousand years, Christians have been preaching that we should not be like the Pharisees. What else is there to say?
Of course, just because the Word tells people that they shouldn’t do something doesn’t mean that they won’t do it. And while, on the one hand, it’s obvious that we shouldn’t be hypocritical, on the other hand, hypocrisy has a certain fundamental appeal. Hypocrisy is all about looking good without actually being good. Everyone wants to look good. There are always rewards that go along with looking like a morally and spiritually good person. But being good takes work. To be good, we have to soften our hearts in the presence of God. That requires humility, and repentance, and other unpleasant things. The desire to skip that stuff, and simply put on a veil of goodness, is always going to present itself to people.
And if we look at what history has to teach us, it’s pretty plain to see that lots of Christians have posed as pious people, and have nonetheless behaved selfishly. We’ve been working through a series of sermons on the seven churches from the book of Revelation, and today’s sermon is about the fifth church, called Sardis. Each of the seven churches symbolizes a different state of mind, or a different kind of person—and all of the kinds of people symbolized by the seven churches are called to the Lord’s New Church. The teachings of the New Church say that Sardis stands for people who are in lifeless worship (AR §154). Lifeless worship is worship that looks good on the outside, but doesn’t have anything spiritual within it. The people symbolized by Sardis aren’t necessarily as corrupt as the Pharisees were—they aren’t necessarily total hypocrites. But, like the Pharisees, they emphasize the external things of worship and religion, and neglect spiritual things. Here is the Lord’s letter to the church of Sardis: [Rev. 3:1-6].
The first thing the Lord says to Sardis is, “I know your works, that you have a name that you are alive, but you are dead” (v. 1). In other words, He tells the people symbolized by this church that, though they present themselves to the world as people full of spiritual life, the truth is that they are not spiritually alive (AR §157). He then tells them that He has not found their works full before God (v. 2). Their behavior looks good, but it’s empty; there is little or nothing that is true or good within their works (AR §§154, 160). In a word, these people are in a state of lifeless worship.
In the Heavenly Doctrine of the New Church, the Lord gives us a really straightforward explanation of the meaning of “lifeless worship.” That explanation will be our next reading; this passage comes from the book Apocalypse Revealed [read §154].
This passage is so clear that there isn’t much else that needs to be said. It’s just obvious that no one is saved by worship alone, or by ritual alone, when there is no faith or charity within their worship. As the reading says, worship that holds no faith or charity within it is liable to be filled with falsities and evils. Our spirits are never actually empty: when heavenly things are absent, hellish things fill the void (see AR §160e). It’s just obvious that covering up our selfishness with shows of devotion does not make us into selfless people.
Of course, these days we don’t necessary receive a lot of external rewards for our shows of devotion. It seems fair to say that the secular culture around us is pretty sick and tired of religious hypocrisy. In the Gospel the Lord tells His disciples not to be like the hypocrites, who pray on the corners of the streets, “that they may be seen by men” (Matt. 6:5). Presumably, in New Testament times, society would reward people for that sort of behavior. These days that tends not to be the case. It’s unlikely that any of us have thought of praying loudly on the street as a quick and easy way to make people admire us. To be fair, sometimes it only takes approval from a few people to make a religious performance worthwhile. A religious person might put on a show of devotion in the face of an irreligious world, in the hope that at least a few other religious people were watching—and the fact that the performer was braving the slings and arrows of the irreligious world would be part of the performance.
But on the whole, being ostentatiously religious is less rewarding than it used to be. Which is probably a good thing. But we should be aware that we can be showy about how good we are without being overtly religious—indeed, without being religious at all. Perhaps the world won’t reward us for praying on the street, but it might reward us for our heroic statements about serving the underprivileged. If we’re actually laboring to serve people who need help, that’s obviously a good thing. The point is that the person who talks a big talk about serving the needy, and censures others for failing to serve the needy, and does nothing to serve the needy themselves, is a hypocrite—just like the person who prays long prayers and never practices charity. That desire to look good without actually putting in the work it takes to be good can show up in lots of different ways.
It would seem that if we’re in a state of lifeless worship, then what we need to do to restore life to our worship is make an effort to live our faith—and a lot of the time we equate “living our faith” with “doing charitable deeds.” Of course the Lord wants us to do good deeds! But when our problem is that all of the good-looking actions that we take are empty, doing more things that look good on the outside isn’t the solution. When we’re in a state of empty worship, what we need is to look up. We need to let the Lord lift us up, so that our worship and our charity can flow from something that is actually alive. In Apocalypse Revealed we read:
For spiritual life, which properly speaking is what life is, is not simply a matter of worship, but of what is present in the worship, and present in it must be Divine truths from the Word. Then when a person lives those truths, there is life in his worship. (§157)
What the people of the church of Sardis need to do first is learn the truths of the Word. Then they need to live those truths. The truths of the Word are what show us that there’s more to life than what we do with our bodies. Without the truths of the Word, we just can’t see anything that is really alive. Life comes from above; everything in this world is merely a vessel. Our bodies are just vessels made of clay. Without the truths of the Word we can still bump into good things in the dark; we might have a vague impression that what really matters is something we can’t see. But in the light of the Word we see what it is to be alive. The Lord says, “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life” (John 6:63). In His letter to Sardis He says, “Remember … how you have received and heard; hold fast and repent” (Rev. 3:3). He tells these people to remember what they’ve heard from Him, and to hold on to that truth (cf. AR §161). In Apocalypse Revealed we’re told: “It follows then that to repent is to give life to their lifeless worship through truths from the Word and by a life in accordance with them” (§162).
One important thing to remember is that permitting the Lord to open our eyes, permitting Him to teach us through His Word, doing the work of repentance, and so on, is not supposed to replace external worship. The reading from Apocalypse Revealed gave us a long list of things that the people of the church of Sardis are good at doing: going to church, listening to sermons, partaking of the Holy Supper, and so on (§154). These actions are lifeless if there is no faith or charity within them, and if they’re lifeless then they aren’t worth very much—but that doesn’t mean that we aren’t supposed to do these things! But New Church people sometimes seem to have the idea that external worship is something we can take or leave. And this idea seems to come from the assumption that it’s either internal thing that matter, or external things. We reject the notion that external things are all it takes to worship God, because we know that internal practices—like repentance—are more important. And then we retreat to the opposite extreme, which is the notion that internal things are all that matter.
When we do that we’re missing the point: the Lord’s message throughout the Word is that internal things and external things should make one. We need both. The question isn’t whether we’re focusing on internal things or external things—the question is whether we’re separating the two or conjoining them. We’re called to love the Lord, and love is spiritual—and as the Lord said, it’s the spirit that gives life. The flesh profits nothing. But the practices of worship—such as praying and going to church—are actions that testify to our devotion to the Lord. If aren’t willing to make time for those actions, what does that say about how much we actually love Him?
Take giving someone a birthday present as an illustration. Something that people say about gifts is that “it’s the thought that counts,” and that’s true. If you try to get someone a nice gift, but it isn’t quite right—perhaps it’s too similar to something that they already have—the receiver of the gift should still recognize the thought that you put into it, and they should recognize that the gift is still a sign of your love for them. But even if it’s the thought that counts, thought clearly isn’t enough all by itself. If you tell the birthday boy or birthday girl, “I thought about getting you something really nice…” they will not feel especially loved. But putting no thought into the gift isn’t the solution—if it’s clear that giving gifts just a motion that you’re going through, the recipient of the gift will not feel especially loved. There needs to be a conjunction of thought and action, internal and external. There’s a passage from the Heavenly Doctrine that compares external worship with the breathing of the lungs, and internal worship with the beating of the heart (NJHD §125). It’s pretty clear that we need both. In the Gospel the Lord tells the Pharisees, “You pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. These you ought to have done, without leaving the others undone” (23:23).
The people represented by the church of Sardis are good at external worship. What they lack is internal worship—the internal life that comes from seeking the Lord’s justice and His mercy. In His letter to this church, the Lord says: “You have a few names even in Sardis who have not defiled their garments; and they shall walk with Me in white, for they are worthy” (Rev. 3:4). Garments—especially white garments—symbolize truths (AR §166). And to walk means to live. To walk with the Lord in white is to live as He teaches in His Word (AR §167). When we walk with the Lord, our spirits are with Him; then, and only then, do we meet Him in our acts of worship.
Amen.