Your Secret Life (or What's Happening Underground)

Matthew 6: 1 – 18

 

When I was young, my father planted a pin oak sapling in the front yard. He adored trees, and that tree was centered in front of the dining room window where he would watch it grow and become for the rest of his life.

 

I grew up with modest means. My parents raised my four siblings for many years in a 10 x 30 mobile home. By the time I came along, seven of us occupied a neat little 2-bedroom story-and-a-half Cape Cod on a corner lot in a sleepy bedroom community outside of Chicago.  Dad finished the basement so that the “big girls” had a bedroom of their own.  My brother had the second bedroom on the second floor. I slept in a crib in my parent’s room until I was about 4 – by then some of the big kids had moved out and there was room for me to move in with the sister that remained at home.

 

There were a lot of things we didn’t have.  We didn’t have big family vacations.  We didn’t have meat with every meal.  My mom made a lot of our clothes. She also bought powdered milk, reconstituted it and mixed it half and half with regular milk to lower the grocery bill for five growing kids.

 

But my dad bought a special root fertilizing attachment for our garden hose – and these pellets that went into it so that he could fertilize deeper into the ground.  He spent precious resources – time and money – nurturing that little pin oak in our front yard. He wanted it to be a living legacy, a symbol of our family’s rootedness, a symbol of strength and presence, in our home. 

 

The quality of a tree’s root system determines the strength with which the tree is anchored in the ground. Think of all the things that depend on how well-anchored a tree is – how it will weather strong wind or heavy ice, how far its branches will spread, how it will endure seasons of drought or deep cold.  How it will flourish. How it will grow, become, bear fruit.

 

This week from the gospel of Matthew, Jesus teaches about the right ways and wrong ways of practicing important disciplines like tithing, praying and fasting. Or perhaps, more correctly, he highlights the need for these disciplines to be personal rather than public displays of our piety. But this is not just a teaching from Jesus about practicing humility. It is a teaching about intention. And about a relationship with God and to God.

 

I think “piety” can feel like an old-fashioned word.  In common usage today, it generally refers to religious actions. Perhaps we hear the adjective form, pious, more often than the noun piety. And often, to call someone “pious” in our current culture is not seen as a positive thing. In fact, one definition I found actually reads that pious means “to make a hypocritical display of virtue.”  I think that definition reflects a certain cynicism in our culture today…and probably an incomplete understanding of this biblical text.

 

Amy-Jill Levine points out in her book on the Sermon on the Mount that the Greek term translated “piety” in this passage more frequently references justice or righteousness at other points in the same gospel. 

 

It’s first use in Matthew’s gospel occurs in conversation between John the baptizer and Jesus – when John suggests Jesus should instead baptize John, and Jesus insists that this is the proper way for them both to fulfill righteousness – for John to baptize and for Jesus to receive the baptism rather than assuming a more prominent or authoritative role. 

 

Levine goes on to unpack righteousness as acting as God acts rather than acting so that one is seen by others. God is the example of righteousness and we are called to seek to be more like God in our choice of actions. Jesus is the living human model of all of that, and so we seek to be more righteous and just by following in Jesus’ footsteps.

 

So…in light of all of that, I wonder if we might reclaim piety as a positive personal endeavor, one that helps us to grow closer to God? One that reflects our intention to be in relationship with God.

 

John Wesley began testing different ways of deepening faith with others because he was discouraged by the Sunday-only religiosity of Anglicans in England. 

 

He had been nurtured in a deeply spiritual family where there was an expectation that prayer happened multiple times a day, that scripture reading was a daily family practice, that conversations about what to do with scripture mattered, and that worship happened both in the sanctuary with others and at home alone and with family. His parents held their children accountable to certain practices.

 

In the language of the day, Wesley grew up in a pious household. These regular practices were part of his root system.  

 

As he and his brother Charles went out into the world to attend college in Oxford, they were confronted by more of the secular world.  And John and Charles sought to keep practicing their religion so that they didn’t lose themselves. They even sought to find a small group of peers so that they could hold one another accountable to certain practices.

 

For those cradle Methodists out there, you know that John struggled with feeling connected to God, even as he preached and prayed with others.  But he kept showing up to the basics – to prayer and fasting, to giving and service, to intentionally putting himself in the presence of God. When he was unsure about whether God even knew him, he was sure of certain rituals and traditions that mattered to him, that were part of his roots.

 

Eventually, John Wesley had the experience of FEELING God’s presence with him, FEELING God’s grace surround him, FEELING loved by God. And he witnessed the same in various people, groups and communities where people practiced their faith through acts of compassion, justice, worship and devotion.

 

He came to understand the vital importance of personal piety in one’s knowledge of and journey with God.

 

In Matthew’s gospel as read today, we hear Jesus intone three times “your Father who sees in secret will reward you.”  And in a similar formula, if we forgive those who trespass against us, “your heavenly Father will also forgive you.” There seems to be a reward system of some sort here. 

 

What is it that we are to do to receive such rewards? And what rewards might we expect? Is this works righteousness – doing right SO THAT God loves us so? 

 

If we follow Amy-Jill Levine’s line of reason around righteousness, we practice NOT to prove righteousness for some social recognition but rather to model God, to grow more like Jesus each day. Our intention is a relationship with God.

 

Perhaps then, our reward is a rich relationship with the creator God and the teacher Jesus and the accompanying Holy Spirit. John Wesley was really building a group of folks committed to doing this work to know God…he wasn’t trying to start a new denomination, he was trying to encourage others to foster a deep relationship with God.

 

What does it mean for us today to practice our piety?  

What does it actually mean to pray, tithe and fast? 

What are we doing, and perhaps most importantly, why are we doing it?

 

Listening to our scripture today, we ought not to seek public recognition – there is no classroom sticker chart for attendance and for daily prayer. There is no list of givers on the walls of our sanctuary. There is no designated garb we wear on fasting days. 

 

Why then? Why do we make space for the work? Why do we submit to these disciplines? 

 

I think sometimes we lean on this: “the Bible tells us so.” 

 

But even then, remember the scripture here also tells us that there is a reward for practicing our piety.

 

I wonder…

 

What if we are like trees?

 

What if our root systems determine our strength, our well-being, our fruitfulness?

 

What if our prayers and our tithing and our fasting and our service are nurturing our roots? Roots that are driving down into the soils of our common creation, toward sources of living water, toward the promise of life and life eternal?

 

And what happens when as a community, we become a stand or a forest of healthy trees with strong roots?

 

Drawing nutrients from deep wells, bearing fruit, contributing vital elements to the environment around us…service, resources, hands that help, voices that amplify…

 

Literally changing the landscape we occupy. Literally shaping the environment, building an eco-system that is symbiotic.  

 

Healthy, strong, fruitful.

 

The tree that my father planted more than 50 years ago now stands taller than the house. It has outlived other trees – trees that my father did not plant, trees he did not feed.  That pin oak will offer shade to another generation growing up at 2424 Hart Street. It has been fed and watered, nurtured for life.

 

May we all tend our roots so well.

Amen.