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Sermon October 22, 2023
The Rev. Dr. David Harper
The Church of the Nativity and St. Stephen’s
Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost, Year A, Track 1, Proper 24
http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearA_RCL/Pentecost/AProp24_RCL.html
Audio: /documents/Eucharist__October_22__2023
Video: https://youtu.be/8VXXafMFSb4
"Whose image is this?"
[Proper 24 A — Matthew 22:15-221
+ Gracious God, Ruler of all, clarify for us what is right and true, that we may give loyal devotion where you intend. Help us to set aside our camouflage, our masks, and our pretenses, to allow your imprint to show forth through us and within us. ... Set now, ... in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
In several places in our Christian Scriptures, it is said that "God shows no partiality." The King James would have said that "God is no respecter of persons." ... A rather strange sort of saying. ... It doesn't mean that God has no respect for people, for it was God who created them,...us. Although, I think it would be safe to say that there are any number of individuals for whom God has little or no respect, in the usual sense of that word. ... No, what it means is that God is not fooled by, not taken in by the masks that we all wear.
On Friday evening, I sang with the Sanctuary Choir at Market Square Presbyterian Church. We were part of what they call Organ Spooktacular, a Halloween-ee event highlighting the church's huge organ, with Tyler Canonico, organist, and choir director, on the bench. Less 'spooky' this year than in the past, less 'spooky,' and more of a Masquerade Ball — with an included murder mystery — we sang the dramatic piece, Masquerade, from the musical, Phantom of the Opera.
For those unfamiliar, the lyrics include the lines:
Masquerade ... paper faces on parade.
Masquerade ... hide your face so the world will never find you.
Masquerade ... every face a different shade.
Masquerade ... look around, there's another mask behind you.
At the base of our English word person is the Latin word persona, which basically means a mask—the thing through which (per) ancient actors sounded forth (sona) their lines.
I wonder, ... how many masks do we wear? Each one of us? How many images, or personalities, do we 'put on' during the course of one day in our lives?
Jesus asked the Pharisees, "Whose image is this?' That'd be a good title for a sermon. Another one would be: "Show and Tell, enough with the masks!"
I'm going to take a big risk this morning and tell you about some of my personal masks:
When I think about myself, when I meet with people or situations, I feel compelled to show my professional mask — the mask that is cheerful, encouraging, positive, focused, efficient, supportive. ... I feel compelled to do that even when I'm so disgusted with the daily news, with government and politics, with greedy, power-hungry wars and competitions, with scapegoating and finger-pointing, that I'd just as soon consign much of our world, our country and its attitudes, and the folks who hold them to a very, ... very, ... VERY ... HOT PLACE.
I feel compelled to tie on my mask of when folks talk about their favorite TV shows, and favorite 'talking heads,' and I nod to let them know I'm listening, ... while inside I am seething over the gross absurdity of so much of the American public.
I often feel obliged to maintain my leadership mask, a cheerleader's "let's get going here" face. It's the face many of us wear when we are faced with a Catch-22: like the classic one that says, "We don't have the people nor the resources to change what we're doing, or the way that we're doing it even though we know that in order to be effective, to make a difference, and as Christians ... to live into our baptisms and our mission, WE DO NEED TO MAKE SOME CHANGES." The Catch-22 with that one is that UNLESS we DO MAKE THOSE CHANGES, in our churches, in our nation, in our world, ... we'll NEVER have the people and resources. And, to that particular Catch-22, I can only say in the strongest prophetic words I can muster: if we don't somehow DO SOMETHING— and DO IT SOON—we can just sit back and watch the atrophy continue, and SOON IT WON'T MATTER AT ALL. ... In today's parlance, all our personal pronouns will simply be changed into "WAS" and "WERE." That's what I'd say if I were in my strongest prophetic mode, wearing my prophetic mask. But, as it says in Luke 4:24: "No prophet is accepted in his hometown."
So, behind my cheerleader's "let get going" mask, . . sometimes, when confronted with disinterest and negativism, and lack of commitment,...behind that mask of mine, my game face, lies the strongest urge to follow my own patron saint, the prophet Jonah, and sit down under a tree and say, "Hey, just leave me right here, OK? Do it, or don't do it, whatever! I'm tired of it and frankly, I really don't give a hoot!" [My prophetic face—the one I least appreciate wearing; to tell people what they don't want to hear, and what I'd just as soon NOT NEED to say.]
Then, there's my party mask, once again smiling, hospitable, evidently having-a-good-time—a face so easily put away after the party is over and I'm down to the clean-up.
There's my preacher's church face,...meditative, a charitable smile around the eyes, uplifted, ... yet, behind it, my nth degree introvert is struggling just to stand in front of a group of people. It's also the face that forces me to say "Gee, I'm so sorry!" to someone who has told me that they were upset by something I'd just said in my sermon; ... when in all reality, behind my mask of humbleness, acquiescence, and submission, . . . what I'd really like to say is, "I'm sorry ... if I'd known that I'd be upsetting you anyway, I'd have told you what I really thought!"— but, of course, I don't say that!
And, there's my traveling face, the expressionless one, the purposeful look which sends out the message, "Don't bother me and I won't bother you!" That is similar to the face people see, as they laugh, and they assume that I'm kidding when I say that I'd like a welcome mat that says, "GO AWAY!" . . . (Oh! Wait! I do have one of those.)
Faces...masks...facades...we—whether we admit it or not—we all have them; and we're usually pretty good at wearing them; and we work so hard so as not to allow anyone to see behind them, to see what is really there; and we become very upset when someone manages to penetrate those facades which our culture has trained us so well to put on and maintain.
The faces...the masks...the facades. We all have them. Some of us are better at them than others. God's blessings on those who manage to escape the self-imposed need to wear them! And God help those of us who so often are a mixture of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
I've met, perhaps, three people in my life who don't deal in masks, or who don't deal in them very much. Most everyone has at least a sock-drawer full of them—some others have a lot more hidden in the back of the closet, behind the more respectable things. We use them to negotiate our way through this demanding world of ours.
They are images meant to impress, to intimidate, to cajole, to insulate ourselves, and to hide our vulnerabilities that we have been so well-conditioned not to reveal to the public, not even to those we love. We use them to hide the chinks in our armor, the flaws in our characters, our like and dislikes, our true feelings about this thing or that person. We are good at using them, though some are better at it than others among us! But we all have them!
In what he says to the Pharisees, to those who have so politely hidden behind their mask of simply wanting Jesus' opinion on this coin thing, to them, Jesus is saying, "You know, I can see right through that mask. I know what you're hiding back there!" He is saying, "Listen! Why don't you come out from under all those disguises and reveal the self you really are—the weary, vulnerable self you allow yourself to become whenever you come home and lay aside all the images you present to Caesar's world all day long. Why don't you come out from behind that mask...that persona...that facade?"
That is the image God wants to see: your lovably needy, ... wounded, honest-to-your-Creator self...the only self out of which real relationships could ever possibly grow—instead of that staged, manufactured, false-fronted business you put yourself through day in and day out. It's a bit like Dorothy's trip to OZ, ... where for a brief moment, the curtain falls aside to reveal a little man pulling levers and magnifying his voice to become "0Z, THE GREAT AND POWERFUL!" ... When he says, "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain," we are with him; because that is precisely what we would like to happen: To have no one pay any attention to what we are trying to hide behind the curtain.
You know, almost always, this Gospel brings out an opportunity for preachers to delve into money matters, into things that are stewardship oriented. You may well had expected that. 'Tis the season after all. Perhaps that's OK; and perhaps I should have gone down that road today. But what the Lord laid on me this week is instead to invite us all to stop playing the mask-covered game we generally play, and to pay attention to what hides behind the masks ... the real us the honest-to-goodness you and me...the actual place where that IMAGE is stamped. If we were to allow that to happen, we'd never ever need to discuss any of that money-oriented, stewardship stuff.
When presented with the phony Pharisaic question, Jesus says " Whose image is this?" ... "Caesar's," we all reply." "Well,' says Jesus, "render to Caesar, if you must, the masks that Caesar requires of you. But remember: GOD IS NOT TAKEN IN BY ANY OF THAT."
What God cares about is the self you and I refuse to own, the one we work so hard to disguise,...the real US,...the one we struggle to cover over with a mask."
"Give...that...YOU... to God, whose image it really carries!"
+ In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
