Fresco of Pharisee and tax collector, Basilika Ottobeuren
(source: wiki).

Continuing to explore the riches of Bach cantatas (most recently in Cycles and seasons), I note that it was on 8th August 1723, the 11th Sunday after Trinity, that Bach first directed Siehe zu, daß deine Gottesfurcht nicht Heuchelei sei (“See to it that your fear of God be not hypocrisy”—a fine motto) for his new congregation at Leipzig (see here, and wiki).

The text (author unknown) is laden with sonorous rebukes:

Christianity today
is in a bad way:
most Christians in the world
are lukewarm Laodiceans
and puffed-up Pharisees
who make an outward show of being pious
and like a reed bow their heads to earth […]

The appearance of false hypocrites
can be called Sodom’s apples
that are filled with filth
and from outside glisten splendidly.
Hypocrites, who are outwardly fine,
cannot stand before God […]

Wretched man that I am, wretched sinner,
I stand here before God’s face.
Ah God, ah God, be gentle
and do not enter into judgment with me!
Have mercy, have mercy,
God, my Forgiver, over me!

Just imagine the sermon (see here and here) (but don’t imagine Dudley Moore’s Psalm). The cantata might appeal to Alan Bennett, with his observations on hypocrisy as a defining trait of the English.

Here are John Eliot Gardiner and the Monteverdi Choir in a live performance during the 2000 Bach Cantata Pilgrimage, with the stellar Mark Padmore and Magdalena Kožená (singing another exquisite Erbarme dich, with two oboes da caccia; cf. Bach and the oboe), with Stephan Loges:

For more from Magdalena Kožená, see here, and here.

For a variety of posts, including more cantatas, see A Bach retrospective.