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After listening to the
Presentation of the Bibles to our third graders, I was
struck by the line the third graders said: “We are eager to
begin our adventure in faith with our Bibles, but we will
need your help. We will have many questions.” The prayer
leader responded: “We (the adults), too, are learning and
have many questions.” Which leads me to offer this
disclaimer regarding the sermon: this sermon contains many
questions left unanswered. For those of you who know me, I
have often said I will journey with you in the questions as
we struggle to discern the answers. My favorite lens for
seeking answers is the Wesleyan quadrilateral starting with
scripture as the foundational piece, but respecting
tradition, reason and experience. So let me turn to the
scriptures before getting to the questions.
Genesis 2:25: “And the man and
his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.”
1 Samuel 16:7: “But the Lord
said to Samuel, ‘Do not look on his appearance or on the
height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for the
Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward
appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.’”
1 Corinthians 13:12: “For now we
see in a mirror dimly, but then we will see face to face.
Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I
have been fully known.”
Early in salvation history, we
learn that paradise is to stand naked and not be ashamed. At
two recent weddings, the couples had selected Genesis
2:18-24 as their scripture passage, which begins: “Then the
Lord God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be
alone’”….concluding with “therefore a man leaves his father
and mother and clings to his wife, and they become one
flesh”….leaving off the 25th verse. Well, I
couldn’t pass that up, as I believe it captures the essence
of our call in relationships to be “naked and not ashamed.”
This is not just about our physical bodies, but whether we
can stand to be naked emotionally and spiritually with each
other. That is the challenge.
What does it mean to be naked?
It means to be vulnerable, to be honest, to be human, to be
authentic, to be imperfect, to be open, to be intimate, and
above all to trust that we can be accepted for who we are,
for the person God sees. The reality is that we hide behind
our masks, afraid to reveal our true selves. We wear masks
for the very reasons we don’t want to be naked. Yet God sees
through all our disguises and loves us as we are, always
encouraging us towards perfection. God takes us as we are,
yet we have so much trouble taking ourselves or others for
what they are. We are afraid to reveal our true selves.
When Halloween rolls around, we
love putting on our masks and costumes to become something
we are not or something we wish we could be—a princess, a
superhero, a Detroit Tiger, etc. We do the same thing when
we dress, buy cars, live in homes whose mortgages break the
bank—to make us something we would like others to think we
are. The question is always: who does God want us to be?
Perhaps a definition of hell for
many of us is removing the mask, because we don’t like our
naked selves. Remember the commandment to “love your
neighbor as yourself.” (Matthew 22:39) Loving yourself is
often very difficult.
In your book studies and small
groups, many of you are reading Rev. Richard C. Cheatham’s
recent book, Can You Make the Buttons Even? Lessons
Learned Along Life’s Spiritual Path. In the chapter
entitled “A Better Way to Go,” he states:
Most of us are afraid of genuine
intimacy. It makes us vulnerable. Further, before we are
genuinely able to be intimate with another person, we must
first become intimate with ourselves. This means taking off
our masks and seeing ourselves for who we are. It means
standing naked before the mirror of our souls. (p. 79)
And I would add: and not
being ashamed!
Remember the phrase “Get Real!”
Imagine God saying that to us! It is the same as saying
“Take off the mask so I can see who you are!” Let’s face it,
we all wear masks. When the mask is divorced from the
reality, then you have pathology. But we all live somewhere
in between. Dick Cheatham confesses: “I was recognized by
many, but actually known by—and knew—very few.” (p. 76) How
much do we know about ourselves, about others?
There were strong cultural
values when I was growing up called “Keeping up with the
Joneses” (Arthur “Pop” Momand, U.S. Cartoonist, title of
comic strip, 1913) and “Clothes make the man” (Cincinnati
Literary Gazette, 1825). I would prefer the mantras
“Keeping up with God” and “Values make the man”!!
We pretend we have it all
together. Our teens call this peer pressure—being like
others and then finding it difficult to be themselves. This
morning’s Detroit Free Press has an article entitled
“The Pain of Popularity” (Family Life Section, p. 4E),
subtitled “In the struggle to be cool, girls can lose the
best part of themselves.” This is the tragedy when we allow
others to put on masks for us.
Do we communicate with our
children as they transition from teendom to adulthood with
“Do as I say, not as I do”? Are we much like Samuel when we
look on the outward appearances, or can we see others as God
sees us? Kids know when we are hypocrites and when we are
wearing our masks of virtue and ethics while living a
different reality.
When we put on our masks, the
central question is: What are we ashamed of? What does it
mean to be fully known, as Paul asks? If God sees through
us, then why not remove the mask? The question we all face
is, what masks do we need to remove? Pretending that all is
well with my job? My marriage? Pretending that sex, drugs
and alcohol do not apply to my children? Why then masks?
Fear that we are not perfect? Fear that we won’t be loved?
By God? By others?
Have you ever been caught off
guard when people assume something about you that isn’t
true, but you realize that it was the mask you were wearing?
Or the mask they had placed on you? Do parents know their
teens? We teach boys to hide feelings and to tell people
what they want to hear. Early on, teens learn to wear the
masks we give them! Think about some of our masks—our homes,
our cars, our roles as doctors, lawyers, business persons,
clergy—where people immediately make assumptions about us.
Think of cocktail conversation where the first question is
usually, “What do you do?” not “Who are you?” We identify
ourselves as human “doings,” not human beings.
As I stated in my Steeple
Notes article, I am a great fan of Tennessee William’s
play, The Glass Menagerie, because all the characters
are struggling to make sense of life. The play examines, and
in the end exposes, the masks the characters (and we) all
wear—the masks the world expects us to wear or the person we
would like to be but are not. The pain comes with the
unmasking. Not only do we don our own masks, but people
place masks upon us.
The Glass Menagerie has
three main characters plus the gentleman caller, Jim. Amanda
is a single parent of two, worrying about whether her
handicapped daughter, Laura, will ever marry and have
security, and whether her son, Tom, will be able to make
money to support the family, when he pines to be a writer.
Each character is desperately
trying to conceal or repress their reality in an imagined
world. For Amanda, it is the dream of a bygone world of
gentlemen callers for her daughter. For Laura, it is a
retreat into her glass menagerie. And for Tom, it is the
fantasy world of the movies, where the women are beautiful
and the men strong and successful. And finally the gentleman
caller, Jim, whose high school resume of being a star
athlete, a good student, popular and handsome turns out not
to be his reality as he is in a dead-end job as a clerk at
the warehouse, where Tom also works. Amanda states early in
the play: “I’m just bewildered by life” (p. 13), then asks
herself the question: “What are we going to do, what is
going to become of us, what is the future?” (p. 13)
Part of the pathos of the play
is the absent father who has run away… “a telephone man who
fell in love with long distance.” (p. 64) “There is only one
respect in which I would like you to emulate your father…the
care he always took of his appearances.” (p. 38) Do we care
more for appearances than the real us? Amanda states to Tom:
“You don’t know things anywhere! You live in a dream; you
manufacture illusion!” (p. 95) What illusions do we
manufacture? It is easy to discard dreams, yet they can be
the hope and the motivator. But when the dream is an excuse
to avoid reality, we lose our identity. Oscar Wilde captures
this play and so much of our reality in the line: “One’s
real life is so often the life that one does not lead.” (p.
10, Stratford Playbill, 2006)
I always admire Jesus because
when he encounters people—the woman at the well, for
example—he takes off their masks, and does not condemn but
encourages them to sin no more. As parents, we watch our
children grow up. We watch our children struggle with what
it means to be in relationships, what it means to respect a
partner emotionally, spiritually and yes, physically. What
masks do they wear to meet our expectations? The culture’s
expectations? The peer expectations? In transitioning teens
to adulthood, what questions do we ask of our children? What
does it mean to respect someone as a friend, as
girlfriend/boyfriend? What does it mean to responsibly care
for another human being? What do we demonstrate in our own
lives?
Bottom line, masks distance us
from God by distorting who we think we are. Dick Cheatham
writes: “The need to encounter God is the common place of
daily living, in the struggles, the temptations, the
failures, the feelings of inadequacies, the moments of tiny
victories….the give and takes of relationships.” (p. 81) The
masks others want us to wear are manufactured by parents,
colleagues, customers, parishioners and parents.
Dick Cheatham again:
It is more comfortable to relate
on the surface, each player maintaining his or her mask and
role…agreeing not to peer too closely at others… We spend
time alongside of one another and are rarely with another
person. This fills our time and gives us a false sense of
connectedness. I believe our busyness addiction sometimes
stems from our reluctance to peer too deeply into our own
souls for fear of stumbling across some painful memories
that dwell therein. (p. 81)
Any journey to intimacy must
begin from within. (p. 83)
We must begin by looking behind
the masks!
A remarkable event occurred last
week at my 45th college mini-reunion where
twenty-four persons—most of whom did not know each
other—gathered for a weekend of memory and nostalgia. After
the first round of “What do you do?” introductions by the
men (remember, I went to an all-male college), it became
clear that this was an amazing group of people—agnostics,
Christians, Jews, but above all, as one classmate said, “all
children of God.” The gathering included former Peace Corps
workers, the inventor of the snugli, a federal judge,
a real estate entrepreneur, lawyers, doctors, even a clergy
person, etc. Imbedded within these stories was a far more
important story of lived lives. The wow factor at the
reunion was learning that each person had moved beyond
keeping up with the Joneses or, for that matter, caring
about whatever masks we placed upon our classmates at
graduation 45 years ago.
As the weekend unfolded—hiking
together, breaking bread together—there was a roundtable
discussion Saturday morning led by the spouses and
significant others. We men listened for two-plus hours to
the stories of the women in response to the question, “How
does one build balance into one’s life?” One of the poignant
revelations that struck home was the need for alone/away
time to regroup, to slow down, to care for ourselves and not
be engulfed by the myriad aspects of busyness that we all
face.
What transpired was truly
amazing as the women’s stories of battling cancer, stepping
out in faith, battling family tragedy, divorce, depression,
dreams foregone ended up opening a whole new level of
engagement in the conversations that followed. Yes, even the
men opened up and let their guards down—or should I say
removed their masks of having it all together—to reveal, in
many cases, lives of struggle similar to the women,
revealing their humanity—the death of a father at an early
age, cancer, business failures, relationship failures.
What occurred was a unique level
of trust that developed when the masks were removed and you
learned that your classmates were not there to see whether
you measured up to some mask, but to see that we are all
human beings and thereby hold more in common than any
financial or material success. Friends were made, and then
we returned home saying, “Wow! We really got to know many of
these people.” Why? Because we removed our masks and let
each other be who God created us to be. Our humanity
emerged.
The group stood emotionally
naked before each other and surprisingly was not ashamed.
Rather, we came together as strangers and bonded as friends.
That’s what happens when you remove the masks. Yes, it is
risky, but God isn’t surprised and who else matters! What
was revealed were authentic human beings and that was our
connection. My classmates met the challenge of Genesis 2:25
and stood emotionally naked before each other and were not
ashamed. Can we, in this community of high expectations and
facades, do likewise? Or do we want to be judged by our
cars, or clothes, our homes or our family? Or the masks
other place on us?
Herman Melville, in Moby Dick,
struck home with the line: “All visible objects, man, are
but as pasteboard masks…strike, strike through the masks!” (Moby
Dick, Chapter 36)
What happens when we remove the
masks? Our humanity shines through. Honesty trumps
hypocrisy. Trust transforms relationships. We take one small
step towards being the person God wants us to be—or as Paul
says “to be fully known,” and as God says to Samuel, to move
beyond “the outward appearance” and finally to taste
paradise where we are all naked and not ashamed. Are you
ready to remove your masks and offer them to God?
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