Nobody likes a showoff

This Covid-19 “new normal” remains deeply disorienting for me; I miss attending Mass in person and regular sacramental practice.  I want to be out and about, eating in restaurants, grocery shopping, visiting my relatives, or even protesting without fear of crowd contagion.  And I grapple with the creeping realization that the “way I used to know” is permanently consigned to the dustbin of history. Our medium-term future appears to be one of public masks, social distancing, and lots of time in our “inner rooms”.   As much as I am comforted by my knowledge that “We can find Jesus anywhere!” – I find myself wanting to seek Jesus outside my living room.  

And this desire in itself is good.  Jesus isn’t calling us to consign our prayer and practice to the domestic sphere.  This would make no sense for disciples called earlier in the Sermon on the Mount to be the “salt of the earth” and the “light of the world” (Matthew 5:13-14).  Rather, the deeper challenge, as I reflect on today’s gospel (Matthew 6:1-6, 16-18) is the demand to reevaluate our motives.  Why do we pray, fast, give alms, or perform other righteous deeds?  Public affirmation?  Religious obligation?  Therapeutic sentimentalism?  Proving something to ourselves?  Communion with God?  Love of neighbor?  The only honest answer is likely a combination of these and many other factors.

Nobody likes a showoff.  But all of us, at least occasionally, enjoy being one, and that’s not surprising. We human beings hunger for recognition; we long to be noticed and, despite our protests, often like being the center of attention.  In an age of social media, the craving to be seen and celebrated—to be in the spotlight—seems stronger than ever.  But some desires are dangerous, and this is certainly one of them.  That’s why vanity, an inordinate desire for praise and recognition, is one of the seven deadly sins.  And if we let this desire get the best of us, it will deeply damage us and never give us the satisfaction and fulfillment we anticipate.

Jesus knows this, and so it’s no surprise that He warns us to “be on guard” against people who do things only to be seen.  We could call them “spiritual showoffs.”  These are people who do good things—giving alms, praying, fasting—but for the wrong reasons.  Even if their acts achieve good (such as helping the poor), they’re not genuinely good acts because with spiritual showoffs their intention is not to do good, but solely to draw attention to themselves.  That’s why Jesus dismisses them as nothing more than “hypocrites looking for applause.”  But he’s also telling us that if we strive to find happiness and meaning in our lives by seeking praise and glory for ourselves, we’ll be sorely disappointed.  With each example of spiritual hypocrisy He lists in today’s gospel, Jesus says, “they are already repaid.” He contrasts this with being repaid by God to stress the sheer emptiness and futility of a life whose dominant purpose is to make ourselves the center of attention; in other words, “they who are already repaid” end up with nothing at all.

We’re called to give glory and praise not to ourselves, but to God.  If we do so, day by day, through our thoughts, words, intentions, and actions, we’ll experience a happiness and fulfillment, an honor and glory, that we could never have given ourselves.  A good example is the prophet Elijah.  At the end of a life devoted wholly in service to God, Elijah was whisked up to heaven in a flaming chariot drawn by flaming horses (2 Kings 2:1, 6-14).  Our own life’s ending may not be so unforgettable, but we can be absolutely sure that God will glorify lives that were spent in glorifying God.  After all, that’s why we’re given life in the first place.