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Mitchell (obviously not his real name) was a pillar of the church I served a quarter century ago and an inspiration to many. A firmly established independent business man, he was in one of those lines of work that depended on a good name, and a high reputation, and he had both. Every year Mitchell would be among the first to turn in his pledge card making whatever adjustment in commitment the finance committee had suggested; he was similarly enthusiastic about special projects.

Back in those days when it was still unusual to do so, a church committee determined that we should add a handicap accessibility ramp to the building. Because it was the desire to have the ramp match the massive stonework of that church, it would be a costly endeavor. True to form Mitchell made the first generous pledge accompanied by a rousing endorsement; we ended up underwriting the cost of the ramp in only a couple of weeks, far ahead of anyone's expectations. Mitchell's early enthusiasm was no doubt a big factor.

There was only one fly in the ointment: Mitchell never gave any money. None; zero; nada; not the first penny. None to the annual budget; zero to special projects; nada toward the handicapped ramp. Because of the polity of that congregation, only a small handful of people were aware of the fact. And yet the truth was that in spite of the notable lack of financial support, his moral support and enthusiasm paid off. From a strictly utilitarian standpoint he probably accomplished more good than some of the widows in the congregation who pledged and gave their mite.

Now this incident from the dim recesses of my past has not exactly preyed on my mind. In fact, I hadn't thought about Mitchell for years until the other day when I was mulling today's text over in my mind. Why not? I have thought about this text frequently since it is one of the traditional readings for Ash Wednesday, is part of Matthew's introduction to the Lord's Prayer, and is just one of those often-cited passages dealing, as it does, with hypocrisy. I guess I had not made the connection because Mitchell didn't really seem to me to be the classic sinister, self-serving hypocrite; the evil, manipulative person so deserving of that epithet. I had not made the connection partly because I had not really done my homework.

While the word "hypocrite," does come to be equated with the worst of the self-serving religious leaders of Jesus' time, even later in Matthew's Gospel, that is not the basic meaning of the term. A hypocrite was, scholars tell us, an actor or interpreter who assumes a role and performs it for the audience's approval. Let me hasten to assure all the theatre majors that I don't find anything repugnant in acting -- as long as everyone knows what is going on.

Some years ago we had a theatre major, Kim, who was a very devout conservative Baptist. As a high school senior she had won a big prize from her state Baptist association for a one-woman drama she had written and performed. On Parent's Weekend of her freshman year she had a minor part in a play. Imagine my delight, knowing that her parents would be in the congregation Sunday morning to hear her sing in the choir, seeing her cast as a prostitute, complete with short skirt, garish make-up, and showing considerable cleavage. It was with some trepidation that I approached the man I assumed to be her father at the chapel coffee hour the next morning; he was holding a stereotypically large Bible. "How did you enjoy the play?" I squeaked. "I liked it a lot," her father responded, "We have never had any problem separating the daughter from the role." There it was. I was safe.

But what happens when the person and the role are confused? The problem comes in when one is not so much acting as impersonating, assuming an identity that is not one's own and pretending that it is. And that takes us back to Mitchell -- what about him? Was he playing a role hypocritically or was he just being who he was -- an enthusiastic person with an inability to follow-through, someone with good intentions and little else? When you look at it that way a lot of us are Mitchell's, taking comfort, maybe too much comfort, in Jesus' comment that "the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak."

If part of my problem with this text came from the word "hypocrite," another comes from the action involved: piety: "Beware of practicing your piety before others," or as the NIV puts it, "Be careful not to do your 'acts of righteousness' before men...." The term in the Gospel is not just a good deed, or one that has an overall positive effect. It is an act of righteousness which is in conformity with the will of God. The main problem is not doing these things in public, in fact just a little earlier in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus taught us to "let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven" (Matthew 5:16). The basic issue is not where things are done or who sees them done, but for whom the actions are performed.

This takes us far beyond simple hypocrisy, as popularly understood. In Tillichian terms, it is a question of whether we are living life horizontally or vertically, living superficially or living a life of depth. Over forty years ago the great German/American theologian Paul Tillich wrote an often-cited article in the very popular Saturday Evening Post magazine titled, "The Lost Dimension in Religion."1 (The very fact that a distinguished academician like Tillich was invited to write in this very popular magazine, for which Norman Rockwell often created idyllic cover paintings, is in itself a commentary on some trends in American society.) The lost dimension about which Tillich fretted was the dimension of depth, living life for that which is other than the immediate, loudest, most pressing concern, that world that is "too much with us," of which Auden wrote. Tillich often spoke and wrote about living life in tune with our "ultimate concern," that which is at the deepest and highest levels of our lives. If Tillich was concerned about the frenetic pace of life in 1958 distracting us from what is really important, how much more would he have to say to us today, amidst our beepers, cell phones, and hand-held fax machines.

It seems to me that all of this underscores two notions that are of particular urgency for us Americans as we begin a new millenium. First is our place in this world; and second is the question of what effects who and who effects what. I think it is safe to say that for most Christians in most places at most times, there has been a keen sense that this world is not our "native land," our permanent home. Christians have understood themselves, in the words of a song I sang as an adolescent, as "pilgrims and strangers who are tarrying here but a while." While this sense of alienation from the world has sometimes taken unfortunate forms, it has also produced magnificent art, music, liturgy, poetry, and literature. It is the sehnsucht, the longing for another home, another shore, that motivated the great fiction of C. S. Lewis.

But for many twenty-first century Americans, this world is very much our home. At Christmas, for instance, it is not the flickering candle-light or smell of incense that makes us feel most at home; it is the frenzy of the malls that lets us know the holy season has really arrived. Easter is not far behind this process of enculturation. This shows up not just in the culture at large but in our churches where there is a constant push to strip worship spaces of traditional symbols and secularize the worship services. I don't want to sound too Grinch-like, but I am not as convinced as many people that "Breakfast with Santa Claus" or an egg hunt with the Easter Bunny are really things that the church needs to sponsor. Leave those to the malls.

The truth is that within our churches as well as in society in general, we no longer have much sense that it is the vertical dimension of life -- that which reaches up to God and deep within my soul -- that really matters, but the horizontal, that which we see and touch and feel -- and control. Nothing energizes many congregations like a good remodeling or expansion project and nothing makes us so excited as the news that the numbers are up, whichever set of numbers you choose. Is that the ecclesiastical equivalent of going to the mall?

If it is true, as I have suggested, for most Christians in most places at most times, there has been a keen sense of this world not being our "native land," our permanent home, it has been accompanied by the sense that we discover our true selves beyond ourselves: in our relationship with God, in our history as a community of faith, by plumbing the depths of our soul. Today, for most of us, there is a sense that we find our true self at the horizontal level, in pop culture, and that we have it within our own power to invent and re-invent ourselves. I'm not just talking about hair transplants, liposuction, and breast implants; I am thinking about the way in which many of us try to remold our personalities, our values, who we are.

There was a time, not long ago, when going off to military service or college presented young adults with a rare, usually once in a life-time, opportunity for a new beginning, to "remake themselves," to start over again with a group of people who did not know their family, their history, their hometown. Today the increased mobility in our society, not to mention the break-up and break-down of families, means that many of us don't even know where home is. For many, life is a constant cycle of new places, new jobs, new people.

The University of Evansville is among a small number of schools to offer students an "Experiential Transcript" that authenticates their participation in various extra- and co-curricular activities. There are many positive reasons for doing this; but one not so positive reason is that many employers have become increasingly skeptical of resumés on which applicants have so "padded" and "shaped" their experiences that it amounts to one big fabrication, a total re-invention of the self. When we look in Scripture, we find the idea that we have been created by God as a unique individual for a purpose; we see the notion of becoming whole, renewed, redeemed and of living life abundantly. Nowhere is there the idea of re-inventing ourselves. It is the difference between living life both vertically and horizontally, in relationship with God and with persons; and with living life totally horizontally, with all our goals, aspirations, values, and our very identity defined by what we see around us.

So was Mitchell a hypocrite or not? I really don't think he was, in the evil, sinister, pharisaical sense. But of course he was in the original sense; he was playing a role, the role of a cheerleader, a good person, totally defined by the horizontal. And he played the role well; he accomplished positive things; almost everyone thought well of him. While his actions may have appeared to be "pious," I don't think he was performing "acts of righteousness" because I don't suppose he had the vertical dimension in life necessary really to perform acts in compliance with God's will. Living his life at the surface, horizontally, even in the church, he stands as a reminder to me of the great danger facing all of us: losing the vertical dimension of faith, the dimension that makes faith real and that makes life real.