“Beware practicing your piety before others….” (Warning… A nuanced interpretation is coming and it’s not the most revelatory interpretation in the world.) I’ve seen a lot of posts recently lifting up this text as an awkward contradiction to the earlier portion of the Sermon on the Mount (i.e. “Be the light of the world). Is Jesus not immediately asking us to hide our light under a bushel here? To be fair to my colleagues, I believe that each of them are intentionally setting up a straw man argument that says that Jesus is telling us to not practice ritual with absent hearts and minds, but that we should lean into the meaning of the rituals and practice our piety, our alms giving, our acts of service with intentionality and with God in mind. It is a walk the walk that you talk kind of argument. And honestly, it’s a good way to go on Ash Wednesday as people uncomfortably walk around with ashes on their forehead all day and have no alternative but to identify as Christian. But my fear of approaching the text this way, is that it ultimately leads to a form of quietism. On a day when we must show that we’re Christian (Christmas Eve, Easter, Ash Wednesday, Baptisms), how do you live like a Christian? On days when you don’t feel like living up to those standards, just don’t do things that will make you look like a Christian. But here’s my nuanced take: Matthew wants us to be loud.