Masking Agents

Luke 12:1-21

You can't keep your true self hidden forever; before long you'll be exposed. You can't hide behind a religious mask forever; sooner or later the mask will slip and your true face will be known. Luke 12:2

Jesus offers these words of advice to his followers, specifically cautioning them against the "yeast of the Pharisees." Essentially he tells them, and us, not to fall for the lie of self-righteousness. The Pharisees try to look good in public, always standing up for what is right, but in reality they do not love God or neighbor. Jesus calls this (with help of Eugene Peterson) a "religious mask" which is worn to hide one's true self. For Jesus this is tremendously damaging. Yet, don't we all wear a mask? Don't we all hide behind pretense and image in order not to have our true feelings or selves revealed?

Very few of us live life as a completely open book. It can be too painful to open ourselves up to be judged. So, we sometimes put on what I like to call our "church face." Church face is when we pretend we are OK when we aren't. When we mask over the problems in our personal or family life in order to protect our image of ourselves. We all do it and to a certain extent it is harmless. We can't be completely emotionally vulnerable all the time. We would cease to function.

The problem comes when we no longer know we are still wearing a mask or when the mask never comes off. Sometimes the most seductive lies are the ones we tell ourselves. We can convince ourselves, justify ourselves, for any number of things. We can pretend and hide, eluding others and deluding ourselves. But God cannot be fooled. God cannot be tricked. Your mask will not work with God. And as long as we are wearing our masks God cannot get into our hearts. It is when we are open and vulnerable that God's love brings healing and restoration. When we let our guard down, God's love and grace surround us. The mask-wearer in all of us secretly believes that if we remove our mask and reveal who we really are, we will be rejected. But God's love for us is not based on what we have done or who we have been. God's love for us is a gift of grace given through Jesus Christ. We are not judged. We are not condemned. We can be ourselves and be accepted and loved by God. This is good news for us; it is liberation. We can remove our masks with God and over time learn to remove our masks with each other. We can begin to trust and believe that we can be accepted and loved by others for who we really are.