The Play’s the Thing Wherein We Honor the Glory of the King – Session Overview Podcast Episode

What must a nation do to regain God’s favor. That’s no a bad question for Americans to answer today, but it was also a good question for the Nation of Israel to be asking in the time of Jesus. In fact, the sages spent a great deal of time pondering this question as we note from the Jerusalem Talmud. There, in Ta’anit 2:1, we read, “Rabbi Eleazar said: Three things annul [or mitigate] a harsh decree, and they are: Prayer (Tefillah), Charity/Almsgiving (Tzedakah), and Repentance (Teshuvah).” Jesus addressed all three in Matthew 6:1-8 & 16-18. And He did so with a theatrical theme.

While setting the stage in Matthew 6:1, Jesus mentions being “seen” by men. The Greek word translated as “seen” has its roots in the Greek word for theatre – theatron. In his opening statement Jesus is already telling the people that you don’t want to be just an actor on a stage. He then goes on to describe the people who do so by their rightful name – hypocrite – which, in Greek, meant an actor or a stage player.

He presents the juxtaposition of the hypocrites and those who do their good deeds – charity, prayer, and fasting – secretly with no fanfare nor public display. He further points out that by receiving the praise of people, the hypocrites have their reward in full. That’s all they get. Meanwhile, those who do their good deeds in secret are paid back by God Himself.

“Be especially careful when you are trying to be good so that you don’t make a performance out of it. It might be good theater, but the God who made you won’t be applauding.” (Matthew 6:1 – MSG)

Transcript:

Pip: From The Back Porch, where Bob has a way of making ancient Greek theater feel like it was written specifically to embarrass your Sunday morning Instagram post.

Mara: This episode follows one extended teaching — working through Matthew 6, the theatrical language Jesus uses, and what it means to do righteous acts without an audience. Let’s start with the play itself.

The Play’s the Thing: Righteousness Without an Audience

Pip: The question framing this whole teaching is almost uncomfortably current — what does a nation, or a person, do to get back into right standing with God? And the answer turns out to run straight through the theater district.

Mara: The setup draws from the Jerusalem Talmud, Ta’anit 2:1, before landing on Jesus in Matthew 6. And the translation chosen here makes the stakes plain: “Be especially careful when you are trying to be good so that you don’t make a performance out of it. It might be good theater, but the God who made you won’t be applauding.”

Pip: So the applause you get from the crowd is the applause you get, full stop. That’s not a metaphor — the teaching is specific that the reward is paid in full, and God’s account stays at zero.

Mara: Right, and the linguistic groundwork matters here. The Greek word translated “seen” in Matthew 6:1 roots back to theatron — theater. So when Jesus calls the showboaters hypocrites, he’s using the Greek word for stage actor, the person behind the mask. The theatrical frame isn’t decorative; it’s the whole architecture of the argument.

Pip: Which means Jesus is essentially staging a three-act play about people who are staging a three-act play. There’s a certain poetry in that.

Mara: The three scenes map directly onto the Jewish “big three” for restoring God’s favor — charity, prayer, and fasting. Each scene follows the same structure: here’s how the hypocrite does it publicly, here’s what they receive, and here’s the alternative done in secret with God as the only audience.

Pip: And the word “reward” does real work in that structure. The hypocrite’s version means paid in full — total, complete, nothing remaining. The secret-keeper’s version points toward being repaid by God, which the teaching connects to “given to you, pressed down, shaken together.”

Mara: The teaching closes by borrowing from Stanislavski — “One must love art and not oneself in art” — and modifying it: in God’s kingdom, one must love God and His kingdom and not oneself in kingdom service. It’s a pointed warning against the prosperity-gospel current running through a lot of contemporary church culture.

Pip: Grandstanding with a theological justification is still grandstanding.

Mara: The thread running through all of this is integrity between the inner life and the outer act — doing the right thing when no one creditable is watching.

Pip: Next time, we’ll see where the series goes from here. The Sermon on the Mount still has a lot of stage left.