Covenant
United Methodist Church
Sunday School 9:45 Worship 8:30 & 10:45 am
Pentecost 16- Whither Shall I Go From Thy Spirit- Psalm 139
Well Halloween is upon us and we just had a wonderful children’s sermon about masks. Great job Tylor. You know I used to like wearing a mask something like this. It could pass for the Lone Ranger or Zorro! They were some of my favorites as a child growing up. Carl Jung the great psychologist talks about masks too. It is the mask we wear in life Jung calls this mask our persona. You know what the persona looks like. It is the mask that you put on for the crowd. It is that smile we wear even when we feel sad or angry. It is the way we act in public, as opposed to behind closed doors. It is the way we conform to the world because that is what the world wants from us. We use the persona to protect us. It helps us to adapt to the world we live in.
Several weeks ago I went to the doctor’s office because of a sinus infection, in other words I was sick… As I was checking out the lady who was to take my money asked, “How are you doing today?” and I said, “Just fine!” Now the truth is that I wasn’t fine. I felt sick, I was giving her a check for my bill, I was dreading going and waiting for my prescription to get ready and giving more money away, when all I wanted to do was go home and lay down and rest… I put on my mask; I told the lady what I thought she wanted to hear. I really didn’t think she wanted to know my business… That is our persona, that part of us that dresses and looks a certain way. The false self believes that if people really know who I am they wouldn’t like me… it is a response we learn from an early age to make sure we please others… Jung thought the biggest problem that many people have is that sometimes their false self becomes dominant in their lives, and they end up believing that is who they really are…
A good illustration of the false self is in Genesis when Adam and Eve recognize they are naked and hide themselves behind leaves… They hide because they are afraid of what God will think of them. They blame so that God won’t see who they really are. It’s the woman’s fault Adam cries out, no it’s the snake’s fault Eve cries out. They blame others to try and protect themselves…
Jung contrasts the false self with that part of who we are that is under the mask. It is who we really are. The real self comes out when we recognize the different sides of our own personality, when we are able to admit that there is good and bad in us, when we admit that sometimes we are happy and sometimes sad. Our true self is about wholeness. It is about claiming who we really are… about finding our wholeness and becoming centered… It is really a scary thing to claim who you really are…so we find ways to hide, we lie; blame others, just like Adam and Eve.
In our scripture lesson today the Psalmist lets us know something very important about ourselves. We can’t hide who we really are from God!
“Whither shall I go from thy spirit or whither shall I flee from your presence. If I go up to the heavens you are there. If I make my bed in hell you are there.” Even when we go to the darkest places inside of us God is there. We can’t hide who we really are from God! And God can make those dark places light.
Now as I was working on this sermon I felt myself get really agitated… It took me awhile to realize that what bothered me was the idea that God is with me when I’m not at my best. In fact, God is with me when I am at my absolute worst. When darkness overtakes me and I don’t even like myself, God is still there and he still loves me. Paul speaks about it when he says, “neither death nor life nor angels nor principalities nor height nor depth nor anything else in all of creation can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. When I do things and say things I am later ashamed of God stays with me in those moments and still loves me.
Phil Gulley tells the story of growing up in the Catholic Church and going to a Catholic school. At the age of 6 they were required to start going to weekly confessional. Gulley couldn’t think of anything to confess, but because the priest was pretty hard of hearing he could hear what the other kids were confessing. So he confessed the first week to hitting his sister. The second week he confessed to not obeying his parents. The third week after thinking about it he realized he could confess that he had lied to the priest about his sins the first two weeks he just wouldn’t tell the priest it was him he lied to. He started to feel uneasy, when the priest told him that as penance he had to say two Hail Mary’s 2 our Fathers and go and ask forgiveness to the person he had lied to… Gulley said he ended up confessing to the picture of the Pope in the waiting room since the Pope was kinda the priest’s boss… he was greatly relieved when they joined the Quaker church because they never confessed there. In fact they pretty much acted like they never sinned, until one Sunday when one of the nicer women in the church confessed a particularly bad sin she committed. Everyone took on the sin of this person and people actually looked down on her for some time after that. Gulley surmised that he really missed that confessional, where all are equal before God.
God can take that part of ourselves that we dislike most that we hide from others eyes and make it beautiful…because God created us. We are his miracle in the world, just as we are.
The great astronomer Copernicus was lying on his death bed. They put on his chest his great works on our star system… but that wasn’t what he was thinking about. Copernicus was thinking about his life after death. On his tombstone he ordered these words. “Lord I can’t ask for the faith of Saint Paul, and I can’t expect the grace you showed Saint Peter, but I do hold that you will show me the mercy of the thief on the cross…
We can hide from each other but we can’t hide from God and we don’t have to! God’s mercy is meant for all of us, even people like the thief on the cross…