November 24, 2013 The Masks We Wear Tim DeJonge The Masks We Wear
Psalm 13
Have you ever been angry at God? Cried out to God in frustration? Maybe
you have. Or maybe you've wanted to, but you suppressed the urge. You put on a
mask that hides your feelings.
We all wear masks – it's normal. This is especially true if you don't know
someone well. If someone is meeting you for the first time, and they ask you how
you're doing, they're not really expecting you to be honest. In fact, you might scare
them off, if you reveal too much. They expect you to wear a mask that says I'm
fine. How are you?
But, what about in your relationship with God? Do you hide from God what
you're thinking and feeling? Not your positive emotions, like joy and gratitude.
But what about painful emotions? Does the life of faith – does our relationship
with God – have room for our strong emotions like anger and sadness? Can we
take off the masks that we wear and see God face to face?
Psalm 13 has some wisdom for us, as we think about these questions. This
psalm of lament is short, but it packs a profound punch. Let's begin with the first
two verses, which are a series of questions, directed at God. The psalmist asks,
“How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?” It seems as if God has
forgotten the psalmist – that, in the day of trouble, God has somehow overlooked
him. Or worse – the next question makes it sound like God has deliberately turned
away. “How long will you hide your face from me?”
The psalmist's trouble doesn't stop there. He's also struggling within himself
– “How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and every day have sorrow in my
heart?” And there's an enemy, too: an enemy who is triumphing over this
sorrowful soul. His trouble is multi-faceted and complex.
It's significant that the psalmist begins his lament with God. We don't know
the enemy, but, if the psalmist is David, we know that he had plenty of enemies
during his life. You might imagine that, in a lament, he would begin by
complaining about his enemy – that his enemy's attacks are making him feel God's
absence. But that's not the order of the complaints. The psalmist begins with God,
begins with the most important relationship. God's absence is making the psalmist
feel anxious and sorrowful. “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?” God and God's apparent absence are
at the center of his problems, and he's not afraid to say it to God's face.
You and I aren't used to this kind of prayer. We're used to prayers that are
polished, polite, and appropriate. In contrast to our normal prayers, Psalm 13
sounds bold, brash, and blasphemous. We're reluctant, perhaps even afraid, to
1 November 24, 2013 The Masks We Wear Tim DeJonge make Psalm 13 our own prayer.
Before we moved to Kingston, I worked in Michigan as a chaplain with a
hospice and palliative care organization. For a little more than a year I ministered
to a woman who fought a long battle with cancer that eventually led to her death.
I'll call her “Courtney.” While Courtney was alive, she gave me permission to tell
her story. Courtney was in her late 30s when I met her, and she had already had
cancer for years. The cancer caused her to go blind. What's more, the cancer
destroyed her optic nerves and made it impossible for her to recall her visual
memories. So, Courtney couldn't remember what her husband looked like. She
couldn't remember what her young daughter looked like. And she was facing the
reality of her impending death, thinking about making her husband a widower and
her daughter motherless.
The final time I talked to her in her home (April 19, 2012) I asked her if she
was angry. She said, “Oh, yeah.” What do you do with your anger? “I just stifle
it.” Why? “People don't want to hear it. They think I should be happy and focus
on all my blessings.” I knew that she was a member of a supportive church, so I
asked her what she thought would happen if she stood up in church and told people
that she's angry. She said, “People would say, 'Oh, don't say that.'” I asked her if
she ever talked to God about her anger and frustrations. She said, “I don't wanna
talk to God about my anger. I'm afraid of the repercussions. I don't wanna say it,
even though I know he can read my thoughts.”
We think that if we tell God we're angry, we're not being grateful for the
blessings we have. And if we dare to admit that we're angry with God, we risk
being struck by lightning on the spot. So, even though God can see through our
masks, we put on the mask that says I'm not angry.
The psalmist doesn't wear that mask. He expresses his frustration and anger
to God.
And then (vv. 3-4) he pleads with God for things to change. He says, “Look
on me and answer, O Lord my God.” Despite the psalmist's frustration with God,
he still has a sense that God cares about him. He still appeals to God to save his
life. “Give light to my eyes or I will sleep in death.”
What's powerful about this petition is one little word: my. The psalmist
prays to the Lord and says, “O Lord, my God.” God gives us the privilege, as his
people, to claim him as our own when we pray. There's an intimacy that allows us
to say, “You're my God.” And the psalmist, even in his anger and frustration,
hasn't forgotten. He still thinks of God as his God, and he knows that his life
depends on God.
There's a parallel to our human relationships. If you're angry with someone
you love, you have the option of wearing a mask – of stifling your frustration and
2 November 24, 2013 The Masks We Wear Tim DeJonge anger rather than talking about it honestly. But what happens to that relationship
when you hide things? The relationship suffers, and if there wasn't distance before,
there certainly will be, going forward. If it's your wife, and you don't talk to her
about what you're feeling, then it could be that she won't be your wife anymore.
You're pushing her away. You won't be able to appeal to her by saying, “Listen to
me, my wife, my love.”
So it's significant that the psalmist still prays to the Lord as “my God.” The
relationship is still intact, and the psalmist hasn't given up hope that God will listen
and respond.
Verse 5 seems to signal a shift in Psalm 13. The psalmist has lamented to
God, pleaded with God to listen and respond, and now he takes a more hopeful tone:
“But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation. I will sing
to the Lord, for he has been good to me.” Earlier, the psalmist had sorrow in his
heart, but now his heart is rejoicing in God's salvation. It seems like something has
changed.
It's tempting to think of this psalm as a progression: from angry complaint to
desperate petition, to joyful trust. Some theologians have seen it this way,
explaining the change from verse 4 to verse 5 as an answer to prayer. Or
explaining that this psalm was used in worship, and that the priest interrupted the
lament with the hopeful tone of the final verses. But I like what Martin Luther said
about Psalm 13. He saw it less as a progression and more as a connected whole.
Luther called the mood of the prayer the “state in which hope despairs, and yet
despair hopes at the same time; and all that lives is 'the groaning that can be
uttered,' wherewith the Holy Spirit makes intercession for us, brooding over the
waters shrouded in darkness.” Hope despairs, and yet despair hopes at the same
time. This psalm is a snapshot of our honest faith.
We'd like to think that we can move from beginning to end, that we can
progress from despair to hope without ever returning to the former. We'd like to
think that faith in God would mean that our trials are over.
But why would we think that? The life of faith is more complex than that.
And even the lives of the saints show us that this isn't how our walk with God goes.
The prophets of old were not spared trouble – Jeremiah followed God's calling and
his life was so full of persecution and trials that scholars have called him the
“weeping prophet.” The apostles didn't lead easy lives – Paul was shipwrecked,
imprisoned, beaten and left for dead. And even our Lord Jesus Christ was not
spared suffering – we only need to picture him in the Garden of Gethsemane,
pleading with God to find another way to bring the salvation of the world. Hope
despairs, and yet despair hopes at the same time.
In your life and mine, we have extremes. We have high highs and low lows.
3 November 24, 2013 The Masks We Wear Tim DeJonge We fall in love, celebrate birth, and experience forgiveness. But we also suffer
pain, see the death of loved ones, struggle with infertility, experience loneliness,
and sometimes wonder what God's plan is.
Our communication with God should honestly reflect the thoughts and
feelings that we have – should mirror the high highs and the low lows of our lives.
This will include, at times, crying out to God, lamenting, and even telling God that
we're angry with him when it seems that he's absent. Expressing our despair and
anger is part of our life of faith. We can express both our trust and our anger in the
same prayer.
I know that this sounds risky. It's risky to take off our masks when we talk to
the Creator God. It's risky to say: “How long will you hide your face from me?”
Scholar James Mays said this: “It is risky to think of human deprivation in terms of
God's forgetting and turning away, to involve God in our imagined and real
hostilities. It borders on arrogance and self-centeredness.” But what's the
alternative? Mays goes on: “But it is more dangerous for faith to yield to isolation,
to imagine that the experience of loneliness cannot be phrased in the language of
devotion.” (The Lord Reigns, pg. 57)
It feels risky to be honest with God, to take off the masks that we wear. But
the real risk is thinking that God can't see through our masks. The real risk is
refusing to bring our despair and anger to God. The real risk is yielding to isolation
and walking away from God.
Let me tell you about two angry sisters that I met. I met them as a hospice
chaplain in the facility where their mother was dying. I had a long conversation
with the older sister, who I'll call Mary. Mary told me that their father died in an
accident a decade earlier, and now these two sisters (both younger than I am) were
facing the prospect of being parentless. Mary told me that she and her sister were
both very angry following their father's death. They were angry at the world and
angry at God. Mary didn't know what to do, or where to go with her anger.
The turning point came when someone gave Mary permission to admit what
she had been denying. She said, “My epiphany came when someone told me that it
was okay to be angry with God.” That was what Mary needed. From that point on
she was more honest, telling God that she was angry for allowing her father to die.
Mary worked through her anger, and she got to a healthier place emotionally, and
her faith is still strong.
Mary told me that she's concerned for her sister, who used to be so active in
youth group and at church. “My sister is still angry, and mom's death isn't going to
make things any better. I'm concerned that her anger is keeping her away from
God.”
As risky as it sounds to tell God that we're angry with him, the alternative is
4 November 24, 2013 The Masks We Wear Tim DeJonge an even greater risk. The alternative is to keep wearing a mask, thinking we can
hide our thoughts and feelings from God.
Let's take our cues from the psalmist, and even from Jesus. Jesus never wore
masks. Jesus never hid his true self from people around him or from his Heavenly
Father. Jesus rejoiced at the healing of the sick, furrowed his brow at the Pharisees,
smiled warmly at the little children, looked with pity on the crowds, lashed out at
the money-changers, and wept at the death of Lazarus. He pleaded with God the
Father in the garden, and cried out in pain on the cross. Jesus used the words of a
lament as he died, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Jesus didn't
wear masks. Jesus didn't hide his emotions.
One more story for you. I met a woman who I'll call “Jane.” Jane has had a
couple of significant losses in her life. Eight or nine years ago her son died when
he was in his 40s. Because Jane's husband was already sick at the time, she
avoided her grief, thinking she was staying strong for him. When Jane's husband
died on Christmas day of 2010, she found herself grieving both of those deaths at
the same time. Her grief was dark and overwhelming.
Jane was doing better by the time I met her. She had participated in a grief
support group, and she kept a journal about her grief. She still wrestles with God
regularly and admits that she's angry that her son died so young. Jane told me that
she wears a lot of masks every day. She wrote about her masks, and gave me
permission to share this journal entry with you.
She writes about her I can do this mask, and her I'm busy mask, and her life
as usual mask. And then she writes this:
“In my attempts to truly see myself, I find I hide behind the mask of
religiosity when it seems appropriate. In my heart and in my grief I wonder where
God is, and then wearing the mask of religiosity says He's in control. Though my
head knows it's true, my heart knows it's another cover-up. The answer to the big
question of 'why?' lies between God and me, but my handy mask [hides my]
uncertainty.
“At the end of my day's masquerade, my tears wash away the masks and I
[put on] my night time wear – a true I cannot do this alone face. Though my heart
still questions where God might be in all my brokenness, there is nothing that
conceals his love and care for me. Only through his grace will I find a way to be
truly who I am and dance . . . without the masquerade.”
Don't be afraid to be honest with God. God understands our emotions. Jesus
knows. When we take up Psalm 13 as our own prayer, it helps us to take off our
masks. And we learn something about ourselves as people of faith. Hope despairs,
and yet despair hopes. Anger and adoration hang together. Questions and trust coexist. And in this glorious mess, we know that our life depends on God. We cling
5 November 24, 2013 The Masks We Wear Tim DeJonge to him, even when we're angry. May we all be honest enough to take off our masks,
and be blessed to see God face to face.
Amen.
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