Real, not Fake.

This sermon was preached by Pastor Ted Carnahan for Ash Wednesday on February 18, 2026.

Grace, mercy, and peace be with all of you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

I have a friend from high school that I'm reminded of from time to time. It's one of those friendships now that — We're not in regular contact. This isn't going to rub off on me in any positive way at all, but it just happens that his aspiration, all the way back into high school, was that he wanted to become a Hollywood actor. And then he did!

He put in the hard work and the hours and the schooling, and he traveled and he scrimped and saved and did everything he had to do, paid his dues, and now he is a moderately successful actor in Los Angeles.

(So because I know him, I'm moderately famous too!)

And the reason I am reminded of him tonight is because I'm astonished: Every once in a while, we're not exchanging emails. We're not calling each other on the phone buddy-buddy every week. But I still keep in touch with him. You know how Facebook is. And I'm astonished when he posts pictures of himself—updated professional photographs taken of him to show what he looks like. And every time he does, he looks so different than the time before.

I mean, this guy, and it's a combination of hair and makeup stuff, which you'd expect. Hair and makeup can change somebody, add 15 years, subtract 15 years. It's just amazing what you can do with that stuff. But then on top of that, he has such an expressive face. And I know that that's something that he's professionally trained over the course of many years. He can look like a different person just by the facial expression he puts on. It's amazing!

You know, change your hairstyle, grow your beard, shave your beard, some makeup, good facial expressions. He is a completely different person.

The Masks We Wear

Well, tonight I want to talk about the faces that we put on to the world.

I'm reminded of my friend from high school, because Jesus' teaching tonight focuses heavily. In fact, three of the four paragraphs in the reading all contain the word "hypocrite."

And I'm not saying that my buddy is a hypocrite, except in the technical sense, because the word "hypocrite" originally in Greek was the name that was given for somebody who was a play actor. So to be an actor is to be a hypocrite. Now, nowadays, that's not what the word hypocrite means. We know that the word hypocrite means somebody who says one thing and does another.

But back then, it started off as the idea of being a play actor, of being somebody who's a dramatist, somebody who's a role player, somebody who is one thing but pretends to be something else.

That's what an actor does. You know, he's still himself, but he plays a different character, and the hair and the makeup or the masks he puts on, the way that he acts, the way he changes his voice and his inflections and his facial expressions, and he looks like a totally different person.

And that's exactly the kind of thing that Jesus is alluding to tonight as he critiques the disciples' tendency to want to be like those he calls hypocrites, actors.

Now, that word isn't just used by Jesus. It's actually found, the Greek translation of the Old Testament contains that word. It oftentimes is given the meaning that for the godless and the wicked. And it's also found in other places in the New Testament, Jesus' use. And there, it talks about the idea of being godless, wicked, fake.

And that's what I want to talk about tonight, the idea that too often we and the world we live in are fake.

Fakeness

The emphasis, especially here in Matthew chapter 6, is the idea that we ought not be dramatic actors. It's really focused on this idea of wearing a mask and pretending to be somebody that you're not.

The people that Jesus is specifically talking about tonight are the Pharisees.

Now, we sometimes talk about Pharisees in our modern world. And when we talk about Pharisees, we're talking about people who are stuck up and rude and very careful followers of rules. And that is what it is to be "Pharisaical."

But the Pharisees were a people that were around at the time of Jesus. And they were the kind of people who, it wasn't just about keeping God's law. You see, that's a good thing. For the Jewish people in that time, it was good to keep God's law.

Jesus' problem with the Pharisees is not, oh, they want to be rule followers. Their problem is that they thought that being a rule follower made them better than everybody else.

And so that's why Jesus critiques some of the things that they do. And not just here, all through the Gospels, he's got a lot of really rough and harsh things to say about these people he calls hypocrites, these Pharisees. And the biggest critique that he has, he comes back to it over and over and over again, three times in our reading tonight alone, is he talks about them play-acting their piety, play-acting their godliness, pretending to be something that they aren't.

I want to reflect on that idea tonight because I would like to note that I think that a lot of the world that you live in and the world that I live in is fake.

Hollywood is a great example. Commercials, TV, movies, people are telling fake stories and the people telling those stories are fake. It's not just because they're not literally true stories. It's fake because the stories they tell are not authentically about the real experiences of real people anymore. That's why people have stopped watching, not just over-the-air television, but now cable television is beginning to diminish. Because people, I think, instinctually are starting to realize that the stories being told are just slop. They don't correspond to anything real. They don't speak to our hearts.

Another place we see fakeness is social media. Social media compels us to act for the people around us, to pretend. And if we're not good enough at doing that on our own, my goodness, have they got some filters for you. Filters that'll make your makeup prettier or add makeup where it was or give you a second head. Whatever you need, there's a filter for it.

And when people post on social media, TikTok, Instagram, even Facebook, and they try to show the best version of their life, or sometimes they air out all their drama. But one way or another, drama ensues and pretty soon we see through it as people just being fake.

We see it in our daily lives and our interaction with people in person. It's not just about media. It's really about the way that we conduct ourselves across the board. Families will do anything and everything they can to try to appear to be good families on the outside while hiding the real struggle and the real pain, afraid to even share that something might not be going well in their lives. And of course, all of us, to one extent or another, chase trends. You don't think you chase trends? Well, let's take a look at the branding on your clothing.

Even at the end of our lives, when we go to be buried in the ground, dead and gone: The funerals we hold themselves do everything we can to paper over the reality of death and make everything seem nicer than it actually is. It's all fake.

Why We Hide Behind Fakeness

Why? Because we're afraid of what's real. We're actually really small people in a big world.

There's a lot of things that are beyond our control. There are a lot of things that you can't do anything about and it's hard for us to come to terms with that idea that somehow that the world is happening and there's not much you can do to influence it on a day-to-day basis.

Yes, you have the places where you can apply yourself, but you can't change the course of history. Most people just can't. And so in order to hide from the brutal reality of that, we just try to plaster on the fakest expression we can and try to power through and we call it persevering.

We're afraid. We're afraid to confront the reality of the lives that we actually have in front of us because we'd have to be honest about ourselves, to ourselves. And that's the scariest person to be honest to of all.

I think that's what Jesus is confronting tonight when he is instructing his disciples here in the Sermon on the Mount on how to pray.

Authentic Piety

And so he says, "When you give," and he says you should give, "don't be fake about it. Do it quietly. Keep it between you and God."

Giving solely to gain the approval of others is fake. It's not real. It's a mask you're putting on.

And the example that he gives here is the example of Pharisees who like to make sure that everybody sees them giving. You go into the synagogue and you don't just go in and drop your money in the jar and go. You go in and you ring a bell and you announce it to the room. "Hey, everybody, look at me! You know, the Lord said I'm supposed to give. I'm supposed to give 10%. And look, I've got 10% of every cent. I've got a single thing that's been grown in my land this year, all the way down to the mint and the cumin and little baggies. One-tenth of my mint, one-tenth of my cumin, one-tenth of this and one-tenth of that. And I'm going to put all of it in here and I'm going to make sure you all watch so you can see that I'm a good person and I did what I'm supposed to do."

Jesus says, "When you pray," and you should pray, "don't be fake about it. Do it quietly to keep it between you and God."

Praying for others' sake makes you fake. Which means when you are going to pray, you don't do what Jesus denounced in the scripture reading tonight. And you say, "Hey, look at me, everybody. I am a holy person and I'm praying and I want you all to see how holy I am." He says, "Pray and your Father who sees in secret will reward you."

Then he talks about something that we don't do very often. He talks about fasting. Too often nowadays, we don't even think about fasting as a spiritual discipline. Very few people actually do it and we probably should.

He's giving instructions to his disciples. He's assuming that they fast. He doesn't say "if you ever decide to fast." He says, "When you fast, you're going to fast and when you do, remember this, don't be fake about it. Do it quietly. Keep it between you and God. Wash your face. Wash your hair. Comb your hair." So you don't go around going, "Oh man, I'm really having a hard time." And then you're somebody to ask you, "Hey, why are you having a hard time?" "Oh, well, it's because I'm fasting, but I wasn't going to tell you that." Yeah, you were.

That doesn't mean that fasting is bad. It means that fasting also is a temptation to make it about us. Fasting so that other people can see how committed you are to God is fake.

The pious actions you undertake don't actually matter as much as the motive they come from.

If your heart is determined to do what's right just for the sake of following God, then whether anybody notices it or not, it doesn't matter one bit because you're just doing what you're going to do because it's the right thing to do.

The motive matters. If your motives are impure, your works are impure. If your heart is impure, your actions gain you nothing. But if your motives are humble and focused on God, then your actions do gain you something. But it's not with other people. It's not treasure that you'll find here on earth. It's what Jesus was talking about at the end of the teaching today. He says, "Store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, not on earth where moths will destroy them and rust will come and mess with it and people will come and steal it, but treasures in heaven where no one can take it away from you."

Christ's Authentic Rescue

Our Lord Jesus Christ, who teaches this, also realizes that you are captive to fake and you cannot for yourself.

And so rather than making it up to you, rather than leaving it in your hands to be good and do the best you can, he said, "I have a solution, a rescue mission. I am going to come to you. I'm going to give authentically of myself to be the reality for you that you need."

So he chose, in time, to become incarnate of his mother, the blessed Virgin Mary. Being a human being found in human form, he opened our eyes. He showed us our hypocrisy. He demonstrated to us our sin and our need for God's grace. And then to make that grace possible, he died for us on the cross to save us from our sin.

Nothing is more self-denying than willingly giving up your own life for the sake of others. That's what Jesus does for you. It is already done. It is finished.

Even as we sit at the beginning of Lent, we can look to the end and know that death is a defeated enemy and that sin has been set aside, that you are a new creation in Christ, that you can have his righteousness by simple faith and trust in Jesus.

Living a Life of Self-Denial

If you want to follow him though, if you actually want to be his disciple, if you want to be disciplined by Jesus, then your life is going to look like Jesus' life, which means you're going to start to live a life of self-denial.

You're going to put other people ahead of yourself. You're going to seek the good of everybody else around you and put yourself last.

But the good news is this. Jesus promises us the first will be last, but the last will be first. He promises us that if we follow him, not for the approval of others, not for the aesthetic of it, but out of a heart grateful for his salvation and his holy example, then he will call you to himself.

And so in this life, we do the things he called us to do. Even if our motives are sometime impure, the doing helps transform them.

Did you notice what happened there in that last passage? Let me read it to you again.

He says:

“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."

The last thing he says here is probably the most important thing he says in the whole reading. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Notice what he says and the order in which he says it. He doesn't say, "Decide what your heart desires and strive for it." He says, "Strive for what your heart ought to desire, and your heart will follow."

"For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."

• Where your money is, there your heart will follow.
• Where your time is, there your heart will follow.
• Where your devotion is, your attention is, there your heart will follow.

Not the other way around. And your treasure isn't just money. It's anything that you have to give up to follow Jesus.

• Your temptation.
• Yes, your money, but also your time.
• And also your fakeness. Your fake facade.
• Your desire to impress other people.
• Your fragile ego.
• Your own priorities.
• Your sin.

Give them up and follow the Lord Jesus Christ. Give them up to Jesus and put them in his hands.

Because especially in this season of Lent, we know that he will use that to transform us further, further conforming us to his own heart.

May you keep a holy Lent. May you be real, not fake.

And in that struggle against your flesh in this season, may the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, keep your hearts and minds strong in Christ Jesus our Lord, for life everlasting. Amen.