Canter Bridge

As the old saw used to put it, ‘Children are to be seen and not heard.’

Jesus’ teaching on righteous behavior is even more severe. Good deeds ought to be neither seen nor heart, at least not in a way that reflects creditably upon their practitioner:

Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven. So whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be praised by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms may be done in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

Jesus tackles both the horizontal and the vertical axes of piety with this potent offensive against religiosity. That horizontal sharing of resources with one’s human neighbor is to be carried out unnoticed. It’s objective is the mere application of mercy and allocation of resources where they are needed. No referendum on the actor’s stature is to figure in the equation.

Then the teacher addresses that vertical and intensely personal conversation with God that we abbreviate as ‘prayer’. Jesus here moves the matter from the personal to the private in order to fence off the self-aggrandizing motive that so often shapes the tone and texture of prayer when others are listening in. This too, Jesus teaches, holds as its objective the normal benefits of conversation to both parties who subscribe to the I-Thou energy of it all. It is not a spectator sport for the entertainment of third parties and the admiration of the athletes.

Jesus’ teaching is in a concentrated fashion this-worldly and consequential. Not for him or his earliest followers the ethereal disengagement from reality into which religion often falls.

So much more, then, does Jesus’ insistence that righteousness does not exist to burnish the reputation of its subjects. Rather, slowly and quietly, it changes the world. The righteous man or woman is merely the first to experience its transforming impetus. Even this is best achieved when no one is watching.