There was a pianist - not yet up to amateur standard - who was having real trouble with a piece he was trying to play. A well-meaning friend who was listening asked the obvious, "Can't you get it right?" To which the musician replied, "No. My left hand doesn't know what my right hand is doing!"
The Biblical allusion, from today's reading (v.3), wasn't given as advice for pianists - nor for organists whose feet have to co-ordinate as well! Rather, it had to do with giving to the needy - be genuine and whole-hearted, not expecting anything in return, not looking over your shoulder to see if someone is watching to applaud your generosity.
The truth is that, for too much of our lives, our major concern is: Who is looking? Who is watching my actions? Who am I impressing? In fact, there are many people and groups we strive to impress.
"Peer-pressure" is not just a young people's concern. When school Human Relationships courses address "peer pressure" and ways in which young people are to cope with it, they are hopefully preparing them for adulthood.
Probably in the past week, more times than we have realised, we have chosen to follow popular opinion, to "go with the flow" - a book we have read, a TV programme, clothes we have bought, a function we have attended, a point of view we have seriously considered… So often we don't want to appear old-fashioned or not "up-with-it". Perhaps we have impressed someone with the latest "buzz-word". We heard some politician use it on TV the other day and decided there and then to try it on a friend…
More than we realise we measure our lives by the approval or disapproval of others. At all costs, we mustn't offend the ones who matter to us - or show ourselves poorly in their opinion. Then, from time to time, we have to make a decision. We don't necessarily consider the rightness or wrongness of our choices in an ethical sense. Our worry is that we won't be able to please everybody. Not that it is any of their business really, and yet - somehow, pleasing them is part of our business - or so we see it.
Of course, there are times when our course of action is somewhat clearer - we know we are responsible to our spouse, our boss or our bank manager. In appropriate ways, they have a right to be positively impressed by our actions. So too does the policeman and the tax commissioner…
Paul wrote to the Romans that "None of us lives for himself only, none of us dies for himself only." Even the most independent person would find points of his/her life where he/she would have to agree with that! But Paul goes on to say, "If we live, it is for the Lord that we live, and if we die, it is for the Lord that we die. So whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord" (14.7-8).
Paul is saying that a Christian believer belongs to the Lord, and that all of his/her life and actions are to take place "for the Lord". We are to live before God all the time.
I am not suggesting that we should ignore public opinion, but we are not to live by it - our lives are to be lived before God. God expects that we will take care of our civic responsibilities and that we will live in a genuinely caring way towards other people. God expects marriage to be a loving life-long commitment in which, in fact, we will submit ourselves to one another.
But our basic relationship is with God himself and our basic values are to be his standards of right and wrong. Asked about the greatest commandment, Jesus said, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. The second most important commandment is like it: Love your neighbour as you love yourself. The whole Law of Moses and the teachings of the prophets depend on these two commandments" (Mt.22.37-40). The prime concern of our life is to be "with the Kingdom of God and with what he requires of you, and he will provide you with all these other things" (Mt.6.33).
So our lives are constantly to express our love of God, our trust in God and our obedience to the will of God. Just as we were asking earlier about how concerned we were about the ways in which we impress other people by what we say and do, we do well to ask ourselves the extent to which our daily lives arise from our love of God, our trust in God, our commitment to the will of God. These are vital questions - it is all too possible to have a religious faith that is unrelated to life.
Aussies have tended to be a little proud of being irreligious. This was not so in the land of Israel. The relation to the Lord was central to their understanding of national history and the expression of this faith by religious ritual and in daily life was expected of all of them.
For the Jew, there are three particular religious duties - charity (or almsgiving), prayer and fasting. Jesus refers to these three duties in expounding the general principle that all of our life is to be lived before God.
You would imagine that "religious" people would certainly do just that. Not so! Later, Jesus was to say of the teachers of the Law and the Pharisees, "they don't practise what they preach… They do everything so that people will see them. Look at the straps with scripture verses on them which they wear on their foreheads and arms, and notice how large they are! Notice also how long are the tassels on their cloaks" (Mt.23.3b-6).
We find that sort of thing hard to grasp, but this was the land of Israel. A number of years ago I heard a story of a Christian who knelt down to pray in Ann Street, Brisbane, outside the People's Palace. A drunk wandering past took a fistful of hair and lifted the person up to see if he was all right. That's more like Australia! Some people might be religious and pray, but they are a bit queer, especially if they do it in a public place! Of course, many "irreligious" people pray, but keep very quiet about it!
Even when it comes to practical helpfulness, we are noted for helping a mate, but are increasingly distancing ourselves from the unknown needy. We depend on Social Security to provide help for the poor, the unemployed, the aged… It was different back in the Great Depression, when many were dependent on the goodwill and practical help of others. Some country people have told me how their father would send wayfarers to town to buy a new pair of shoes. There was no publicity or drama about it. It just happened. Today when someone comes to the door, we wonder why. Surely all these people are now well provided for?
In Jesus' time too, provision for the needy wasn't a government responsibility - it was everyone's duty. In Deut.15.11, Moses said, "There will always be some Israelites who are poor and in need, and so I command you to be generous to them." Psalm 41.1 states, "Happy are those who are concerned for the poor; the Lord will help them when they are in trouble." With the cessation of sacrifices, almsgiving seems to have been ranked among the Jews as the first of religious duties.
Jesus doesn't in any sense say, "Don't give to the poor." Rather, "do not make a big show of it, as the hypocrites do…" (The word "hypocrite", by the way, is an interesting one. The Greek word hypocrites usually meant "play-actor". Here it refers to people whose outward life and actions bear little relation to who they really are in the core of their being.) "Do not make a big show of it, as the hypocrites do in the houses of worship and on the streets. They do it so that people will praise them. I assure you that they have already been paid in full…" They want people to take notice of them. They want to be thought generous fine people and they have succeeded. But that's all. What they have done has not built their relation to God.
"But when you help a needy person, do it in such a way that even your closest friend will not know about it (don't let your left hand know what your right hand is doing). And your Father, who sees what you do in private, will reward you". It is your relation to God that counts. Your life is to be lived before him!
It is the same with prayer. The hypocrites "love to stand up and pray in the houses of worship and on the street corners, so that everyone will see them. I assure you, they have already been paid in full…" J.B. Phillips puts it, "Believe me, they have had all the reward they are going to get."
Not so with you - "But when you pray, go to your room, close the door, and pray to your Father, who is unseen. And your Father, who sees what you do in private will reward you." We don't pray to impress others - in prayer we are approaching our heavenly Father. It is the genuineness and reality of that approach that matters. That is why we are to come with simple directness, not with a lot of meaningless words. Our heavenly Father doesn't hear us because of the length and complexity of our prayers, but because we are coming to him. He "knows what we need before we ask him". It is our relationship to him that matters - we come as his children. The Lord's prayer is a model prayer, setting out a range of praying. Jesus didn't mean it become for us a meaningless repetition, though it informs and guides our praying in private and helpfully sums up our praying together.
Notice how Jesus emphasises the importance of our willingness to forgive (vv.12,14-15). He makes it a condition of our relationship with God who always sees what is below the surface. Our life with others has to be set right because our life has to be lived before God.
Then there was fasting which gave expression to grief and penitence. It was often directed to seeking the guidance and help of God. The Day of Atonement was an annual general fast (Lev.16.29ff). In New Testament times some strict Pharisees fasted every Monday and Thursday (note Lk.18.12). By their manner of dress - plus some ash rubbed onto their forehead - they proclaimed to the whole world, "I am fasting."
Jesus assumed that his followers would fast (see Mt.9.14-15). But when they did so, the intention of what they were doing was in relation to God, not the opinion of other people. God himself would bless them.
For us too…
C.H. Spurgeon commented, "There is no reward from God to those who seek it from men." Our life is to be lived before God in the world of people. We are not called to a hermit's life, withdrawn from the world. What we do for people is important, but we are doing it before God. We are not looking over our shoulder to make sure that everybody is looking.
Ruth Harms Calkin put it this way in a poem "I Wonder",
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