The Law of Moses says that you can't condemn anyone without two or three witnesses. So if they're going to convict an innocent man, they'd better find two or three witnesses that can lie about Him! The Law says you can't put blood money in the treasury. So don't put those thirty pieces of silver in the plate; buy a field to bury the John Does in. Brothers and sisters in Christ, do you see the vast and shameful hypocrisy in Jesus being sent to His death? The religious leaders, the men who are supposedly experts in God's Word and the examples of godliness are going to send innocent Jesus to death but they have to do it in a way that appears right. They are murdering an innocent man, the Messiah even, but they're going to dot their “i”s and cross their “t”s! What hypocrites! They want to act like ungodly men while pretending to LOOK like godly men. Sounds like us. We come to church. We sing along and pray. But out there we live as if we can't get rid of God fast enough. We live as if we're holy and pious while we murder each other with our words and actions and show that we not only don't love our neighbors as ourselves, we don't love them at all. But then it's back to church in a show of piety and clean living. No wonder some people say they don't want to go to church because of all the hypocrites.
But that's the religion of the Pharisees. They go to the church of “say one thing and do another.” That's the belief of Pilate: if I “wash my hands” then I'm not really guilty. That's not our faith. Oh, we live like it is. But that's our repentance: to acknowledge that we are good at being hypocrites too, saying one thing, living another. But that's not why you are here. This church is not for those who want to look holy. This is the church in which God's Word strips away all of our pretensions to holiness. Here, there is no arguing, no doubting that we don't love God and we don't love our neighbor. God's holy Law strips away any notion that we're “good Christians” or that we're particularly religious or pious. No illusions here. I don't love God. I don't love others. I only love me. But loving me won't save me. And it won't do my neighbor any good. So we need a God who comes to love others more than Himself. A God who will take on our flesh and carry our hypocrisy and every other sin to Calvary and there love us more than Himself. In Jesus we have such a God who comes and doesn't defend Himself but allows these evil men and their self-righteous hypocrisy to condemn Him. To crucify Him. To kill Him. Here is the ultimate in the opposite of hypocrisy: the Lord speaks mercy and His actions do what His Words say: He takes our sins upon Himself and takes them away!
Now it may be that we still come here and hear God's Word and try to live it and fail out there, looking for all the world like hypocrites. But what the Lord says about us is not what the world concludes. Jesus has suffered and died for your sins. Your Baptism is God's promise that He will never regard you as a hypocrite and Pharisee but as His child, overlooking and forgetting your sins for Jesus' sake. The words of Holy Absolution are Christ's promise that all that He suffered on Calvary was for you and that it worked: your sins are forgiven. The Holy Supper of Christ' body and blood is that wonderful promise that while you may be a sinful hypocrite, it is Christ who lives in you and through you and He's no sinner or hypocrite! Most people think that the reason you go to church is to learn how to live, but when you go out and live some other way, you're just being a hypocrite. That's true if such a church is run by the Pharisees. But in Christ's church, we don't come to learn how not to be sinners. We come to learn that we are NOT sinners any longer because we are in Christ Jesus. The hypocritical clergy sent Jesus to His suffering and death. Our being hypocritical sinners sent Jesus to His death. But He went to death for just such sinners. Now He who was condemned by the false testimony of two witnesses declares you forgiven and free and not guilty by the witnesses of His death and resurrection, the water and the word and His body and blood. Christ is sacrificed! And you are free. In the Name of Jesus. Amen.
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