Milford Baptist Church    24 February 2002
Get Real!  Matthew 6.1-18

I guess you’ve been following the furore this week over Justice Fisher and his visiting certain sex sites on his computer at the Auckland High Court. It’s raised questions about whether his private life is relevant to his public role. It’s raised questions about his integrity. The dictionary defines integrity as “wholeness”. Think of integration, entirety. If someone has integrity they are whole. Their lives have no compartments, no divisions, between the public image and the private world.

In our world, a world of “reality” TV, a world where the adverts say, “image is everything”, a world where the emphasis has shifted from character to charisma, integrity is under threat. Whether it’s New Zealand judges, or Australian politicians, or French Olympic figure skating officials, you don’t have to look very hard in the paper this week to catch a whiff of double standards, double lives.

And yet I read recently that in a US business survey, 1,300 senior executives said that integrity is the human quality most necessary to business success. Integrity is important. But then isn’t that what Jesus says? Throughout his Sermon on the Mount, as he’s been explaining how to live the life that God wants for us, Jesus emphasises again and again that there should be no division between our external actions and our internal attitudes, between what we do in public and what we say and think in private. In other words, followers of Jesus need to maintain integrity. But how do we do that 

There’s a yellow road sign in our street with the picture of a mother duck with a brood of ducklings behind her. It’s a warning sign: watch out for baby ducks. As it happens, we’ve never sighted one single duckling crossing that road, and Lorraine – who has a passion for all things cute and cuddly – feels cheated. But the sign is there to warn us. And here, in this passage, Jesus points his followers to two warning signs that will help them maintain integrity.

The first sign says this: watch your motivation: “Be careful not to do your ‘acts of righteousness’ before others, to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.” (v1).

Have you ever seen buskers on the street down by the mall? They play to the passing crowd. Their performance is motivated by what they can get. Jesus says, “Be careful. As you seek to follow me and do God’s will, watch out that you don’t become a religious busker, a performer, playing to the crowd. If you do, you’re not really serving others; you’re serving yourself. You’re not really praying to God; you’re purchasing people’s praise. You’re not really practicing appetite-denying discipline to better concentrate on God; you’re producing a concert, a show, to make others focus on you. You may win a smattering of applause at the time, but that’s all the reward you’ll ever get. You certainly won’t gain the reward of seeing people drawn to the God who you pretend to serve.”

R.C. Sproul tells a story about a young Jewish boy who grew up in Germany many years ago. The lad had a profound sense of admiration for his father, who saw to it that the life of his family revolved around their faith and a weekly visit to the synagogue. But in his teen years the boy’s family was forced to move to another town in Germany. This town had no synagogue, only a Lutheran church. And the life of the community revolved around that church. All the best people belonged to it. Suddenly, the father announced to the family that they were all going to abandon their Jewish traditions and join the Lutheran church. When his stunned family asked why, he said, “It’ll be good for business.” The youngster was bewildered. And over time, his deep disappointment matured into a kind of intense bitterness that plagued him for the rest of his life. Later, when he left Germany and went to England to study, he formulated a whole new worldview. He conceived a whole new movement that denied the reality of God and described religion as “the opiate of the masses.” The boy’s name was Karl Marx, the founder of communism. All because his father lacked integrity. There was a split between his motives and his behaviour.

I need to be honest with you. We need to be honest with each other. I think often I have one eye on how I look, one eye on the crowd. I forget that the real audience is an audience of one. What about you? Are your acts of worship sometimes just an act, a performance? I like Philip Yancey’s daily prayer: “God, give me the grace to live for you alone.” Which might be translated: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name” (v9). To maintain integrity, let’s keep watch on our motivations.

But Jesus points to a second warning sign, also marked by an “if”. “For if you forgive others when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.  But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins” (vv14-15). In other words, watch your reactions.

Do you think that God petulantly says, “I won’t forgive you unless you forgive those who have wronged you?” I don’t know about that. Look at the cross. God’s forgiveness towards each one of us has no limits. And look at the prayer Jesus gives his disciples, urging them to lean on that forgiveness. I don’t think God refuses to forgive us unless we forgive others. Instead, in those circumstances, I think God can’t forgive us or, rather, we can’t open our hands to receive his forgiveness if we are keeping our fists tightly clenched against those who have wronged us.

In November 1977, in the suburb of Johnsonville just outside Wellington, a little six-year old girl called Lynley Stewart went missing from her home in the late afternoon. As evening closed in, scores of local residents, students and police mounted a massive search for the little girl. Lynley’s parents, Keith and Rangi, were Christians. In the early hours of the previous morning, Rangi woke from a terrifying dream in which she’d seen her husband holding the lifeless body of one of their children. Rangi’s dream was to come tragically true that evening as Lynley’s body was found underneath one of the classrooms at Johnsonville Primary School. She’d been strangled, and possibly sexually assaulted. The community went numb, wondering who could have done such a thing. 

The outcome of the police investigation was every bit as tragic as the discovery of what had happened to Lynley. They took a fourteen-year-old boy into custody – a young fellow who lived only a few houses from the Stewarts. The Stewarts knew him quite well. He used to pop into the little shop they ran. The boy’s explanation of what had happened was confused, but no doubt he’d been responsible for Lynley’s death. But because of his age, he could not be sentenced as an adult and was simply sent to a boy’s home where he was destined to spend the next few years.

The little community seethed with anger towards that boy. Keith Stewart was as heartbroken as any dad could be, but something quite profound happened in his heart. Something inside him said that he had to go around to the boy’s house and talk to his father. As it happens, the boy’s father had himself been so grief stricken by what his son had done, he’d taken to his bed feeling like his heart would break. The next thing he knows Keith Stewart is banging on his door. He expects Keith to be holding an axe, but he isn’t. To Keith, it looks like the poor man is only hours away from dying of grief. And strangely empowered by God, Keith extends his hand to the grieving father, gives him his unconditional forgiveness, and prays for healing.

You may remember the story. Twenty years after it all happened, it featured in the television series, Extreme Close Up. But that’s not the end of the story. The young man who’d taken Lynley’s life spent some time in a juvenile home. His life, and the lives of his family, were obviously scarred forever by what had happened. But it transpired that many years later the young man, having grown up, and no doubt remembering the grace that Keith Stewart had shown his family, turned to Jesus. When he heard Keith telling his story on the radio he rang in after the show.  A meeting was arranged. Lynley’s father and Lynley’s killer met together, shook hands, and agreed as Christian brothers that no trace of hurt and hostility should remain.

That’s integrity. Keith Stewart lived what he taught. Because of his choice to forgive, today there is a presence and calmness about him that is quite bewildering. And because of his choice to forgive, today there is another man who knows the grace of God and is now following Jesus. What about us? How can we be “whole” today? How can we maintain integrity? Two road signs: watch your motivations and watch your reactions. Do you need to extend your hand to someone else today, to give them your unconditional forgiveness, to pray for their healing, that the love and power of God might be seen in your life and theirs?