|
|
| Touching the Holy: What Is My True Face? Two Sundays ago I introduced a sermon series entitled, "Touching the Holy" from a book by the same title by Robert Wickes. The first message was about embracing ordinariness which is the same as holiness. The second sermon took us to the desert, to places where we can face ourselves and God. Today is the third in this series, "What Is My True Face?" The Bible tells us that we are created in the image of God. It tells us how much God loves us. Jesus even announced that the kingdom of God is within us. Despite these powerful, biblical messages many of us still don’t appreciate that God loves us as real, ordinary people. We think God loves us when we do good. We think that God loves us when we go to church. We think God loves us when we are helping others. And it’s true! God does love us when we do these things and God likes it when we do these things! But it is not the basis for God’s love for us. One of the reasons we do not face our true selves is because it means facing the ugliness, the pain, the hurt, the sin that lies there. Because we have grown up in a world where love and acceptance only matter when we succeed, it is easy for us to believe that God acts this way as well. So we don’t want to go to any desert to look at our inner lives because we know what is there is dark and we think no one, including God, could ever love our real self. The Iroquois Indians tell a fascinating story of a strange and unusual figure they call "the Peacemaker." The peacemaker came to a village where the chief was known as "The Man-Who-Kills-and-Eats-People." Now the The Man-Who-Kills-and-Eats-People, the chief, was in his wigwam. He was cooking a meal in a massive pot in the center of the wigwam. The Peacemaker climbed to the top of the wigwam and looked down through the smoke hole, and as he peered down his face was reflected in the grease on the top of the pot. And The Man-Who-Kills-and-Eats-People looked into the pot saw his reflection, and thought it to be his own face. And he said, "Look at that. That’s not the face of a man who kills his enemies and eats them. Look at the nobility. Look at the peace in that face. If that is my face, what am I doing carrying on this kind of a life." And he seized the pot, dragged it from the fire, brought it outside and poured it on the ground. He then called the people and said, "I shall never again take the life of an enemy. I shall never again destroy or consume an enemy for I have discovered my true face. I have found out who I am." And then says the story, the Peacemaker came down from the top of the wigwam and embraced him and called him "Hiawatha." What is your "true face?" What are you truly like…in your inner self? Are you going through life without your true face? Are you hiding behind a mask, pretending to be something other than your true face because you want to please others? I was never much of an actor but I was in a few plays in my childhood. I remember being in a play at church as a teenager when a fellow actor walked off the stage two pages early in the script! After a moment of shock I composed myself and "went on with the show." It was actually fun to create and improvise my lines. I enjoyed pretending to be someone I was not. One of my favorite plays is "Godspell." It was performed at a church camp one summer and I was deeply moved by the young man who played Jesus. I went to him after the play and asked him if he felt the power of the Spirit. For him this was not a religious experience, but purely an acting experience. He said, "What do you mean? I was acting." Sometimes you and I live out our real lives as if we are actors. We are pretending to be someone else. We bury our hurts deep within our hearts. To be our true selves would mean facing this pain, but it hurts too much. No, we would much rather act like we are someone other than our true self. In 1957 a group of monks from a Bangkok monastery had to relocate a clay Buddha from their temple to a new location. When the crane began to life the giant idol, the weight of it was so tremendous that it began to crack. What’s more, rain began to fall. The head monk, who was concerned about damage to the sacred Buddha, decided to lower the statue back to the ground and cover it with a large tarp to protect it from the rain. Later that evening the head monk went to check on the Buddha. He shined his flashlight under the tarp to see if the Buddha was staying dry. As the light reached the crack, he noticed a little gleam shining back and thought it strange. As he took a closer look at this gleam of light he wondered if there might be something under the clay. He went to fetch a chisel and hammer from the monastery and began to chip away at the clay. As he knocked off shards of clay the little gleam grew brighter and bigger. Many hours of labor went by before the monk stood face to face with the extraordinary solid gold Buddha. Historians believe that several hundred years before the Burmese army was about to invade Thailand, then called Siam. The Siamese monks, realizing that their country would soon be attacked, covered their precious golden Buddha with an outer covering of clay in order to keep their treasure from being looted by the Burmese. The Burmese did invade and executed all the monks and the well-kept secret of the golden Buddha remained intact until that fateful day in 1957. Underneath the clay exterior of every person lies a heart of gold. The problem is that we grow up listening to the voices of the world telling us that we are not valuable. We are not good enough. And so we engage in a huge effort to cover up our true face. We think we are covering it with layers of beauty, but it is only clay, a clay which will crack one day. Our true beauty lies underneath. And the sad thing is that for many of us our inner beauty remains a secret for much of our lives. The good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ is that we can be free to be our true selves. We can put on our "true face." Don’t you want to be real, to be your true self, the one created in the image of God? In his book, "Touching the Holy," Robert Wickes tells about a comment made by a character, Shirley Valentine, from the movie of the same name. Shirley is sitting by the seaside in Greece, reflecting on her own life and how little and unused it has been in many respects. She says, "I’ve allowed myself to lead a little life while inside me there was so much more….it’s gone unused and now it will never be. Why do we get all this life if we never use it? Why do we get all these feelings and dreams and hopes if we don’t ever use them? Dreams. They are never in the place you expect them to be." One of the reasons we live "little" lives is because we do not value our true face. But dreams and hopes are not connected with what we do on the outside, but in who we are on the inside. A novice monk said to his master, "Why is everyone here so happy except me?" The master replied, "Because they have learned to see goodness and beauty everywhere." "Why don’t I see goodness and beauty everywhere?" "Because you cannot see outside of you what you fail to see inside." Do these words speak to you? Do you have times when you cannot see the beauty in the world and in other people because you cannot see the beauty in your own true face? Do you put too much emphasis on doing rather than being? A woman in a coma was dying and suddenly had a feeling that she was taken to heaven and stood before God. A Voice said to her, "Who are you?" "I’m the wife of the mayor." she replied. "I did not ask you whose wife you are but who you are." "I’m the mother of four children." "I did not ask whose mother you are, but who you are." "I’m a school teacher." "I did not ask what your profession is but who you are." And so it went. No matter what she replied, she did not seem to give a satisfactory answer to the question, "Who are you?" "I’m a Christian." "I did not ask what your religion is but who you are." "I’m the one who went to church every day and always helped the poor and needy." "I did not ask what you did but who you are." She evidently failed the examination, for she was sent back to earth. When she recovered from her illness, she was determined to find out who she was. And that made all the difference. How much of our identity is tied up with what we do? To be sure, what we do is an important part of how we feel about ourselves, but it should never be the most important part. The most important thing is living deeply in touch with God’s feelings about us. Each religion has its way of teaching their children about God. Robert Wickes invites us to reflect upon an African catechism. The question is: Why did God make you? The answer? Well, God thought you just might like it. The most holy, awesome God of this universe is still in the process of creating you and me. Perhaps the only purpose in this act of creation was simply because we would enjoy it. Know what? I believe God enjoys us too. In the 13th chapter of 1 Corinthians we read, "When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. 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." We can continue to look at ourselves as if peering into a dirty, distorted mirror, but it doesn’t have to be this way. The good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ is that we can see ourselves for who we really are. We can look at a clean mirror and see our true face. And when we see our true face we will see the image of Almighty God. And THEN will become NOW. |
The St. John Web Site needs your input! Click here to leave feedback Copyright © 1998-2004 Jon S. Dawson. Last modified: February 01, 2009
|
September 24, 2000
