Psalm 130; Ephesians 4:25-5:2
August 9, 2009
In the Sound of Music, Maria wisely sings, “Let’s start at the very beginning; a very good place to start”. But even though the first words Char read were, “So then, putting away falsehood, let all of us speak truth to our neighbor,” that really isn’t the beginning. The tip off is that it starts with the words, “so then”. That’s the clue that we are entering this conversation between Paul and the church in mid thought, not at the beginning. “So then” is a conclusion that follows from given conditions. I was cold, so then I put on my coat. The equation is because X is true, Y follows. To know what is being said here, we need to know what Paul’s Xs were. And so we need to start by backing up, with all due respect to Julie Andrews.
The verses immediately preceding our passage read, “You were taught to put away your former way of life, your old self… and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to clothe yourselves with the new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.” There are two things assumed by Paul before he begins the instructions in our passage:
The first is that he is addressing the church as a whole, not just individuals. Paul assumes the people who read this letter will know it is written to a community. This passage is written entirely in the plural. Be renewed in the spirit of your minds…clothe yourselves. Every “you” in English is the plural “you” in Greek. He was writing to Christian churches in Ephesus and the whole letter is a description of what the ideal Christian community looks like.
The second assumption is that when one is “in Christ”, they are completely transformed into a new person. New things are possible that weren’t possible before. And Paul knew he was writing to people who were already Christians. These Christians were already changed and were ready for what comes next.
With those Xs established, Paul then moves on. You are together in community and have been changed by Christ – so then put away falsehood and speak truth to your neighbor.
I think there is a reason that the very first thing that is possible once we are changed in Christ and together in community, is that we can “put away all falsehood.” It’s first because, if done, everything else will follow. If we put away falsehood, we will speak truth, we will not neglect the poor, we will be kind and tenderhearted, and most of all we will be imitators of God.
For Paul, putting away falsehood is about more than not telling lies – although surely that is included. This isn’t just about telling lies, this is about living a lie. The definition for the Greek word “falsehood” is “whatever is not what it seems to be.” The word is pseudos. As in pseudonym – writing under an assumed identity that is not yours so that people don’t know who you are. And Paul challenges the Ephesians – and us – asking if we are living under an identity that is not really ours. Are we living a false life? If so, Paul says put it away. Or better/more helpful to me, is to think about it as “peeling away” whatever is false. Peeling away our pseudo-self; the self we use so that people don’t know who we really are.
I think we create two-dimensional, pseudo selves and then affix them to our true selves. It is a layer of identity that we apply like wallpaper. And the purpose of this pseudo self is to protect us as we relate to the rest of the world. Somewhere we got the idea that if we peel off the wallpaper others wouldn’t want to relate to us anymore. We are afraid of how others will react to our true selves.
So we use these pseudo-selves to interact with the world, and that changes what we do and how we interact. For some it means we become compliant and submissive; sometimes it means we become rebellious and uncaring; but I suspect that for most of us, we simply become the person others expect us to be.
When I went to seminary, I can remember in those first few weeks being so excited about what lay ahead for me. When I got there, I was already very versed in thinking and talking about religion… College prepared me well for this. I was able to write good papers and critique what I read and wrap my head around systematic theology. But it was all head, thinking, talking, writing. And I knew this was not enough for being a pastor. One needed to be noticeably “spiritual”.
So the reason I was excited was because I figured after four years of seminary I would become a deeply spiritual person who had that aura about them. You know the aura I’m talking about; it shows in someone who just walks and talks and looks like they are more spiritual than the rest of us. This is how a pastor is supposed to be. So obviously they would teach me that in seminary. In short, I figured by the time I finished seminary I would be like the Buddha.
As time went on, I noticed that this change was not happening and I got nervous. So, I started imitating what I thought spiritual people looked like and talked like and walked like. I had failed, and if I wanted to be a pastor, I couldn’t let anyone know that. I started carefully constructing my pseudo-self and applying it to my true self like wallpaper. And pretty soon, I felt like I was living two lives – the pseudo one and the one I didn’t want anyone to see.
But I found out there is a cost when we put up this wallpaper. It hurts us and it hurts the communities of which we are a part. For the individual, there is a growing sense of shame about what lies beneath our wallpaper. The selves we construct for the world seem effective. Most of the time we can convince others that our pseudo-self is our true self, and that that’s who people want us to be. But if others are only relating to the false outer veneer, we start to believe that no one would want to know what lies beneath. So we start to hate those parts we’ve covered up. And if anyone does happen to see beneath the outer layer, we’re ashamed.
That feeling gets stronger and stronger and we become more and more attached to the outer, pseudo-self. And so we are lonely because people don’t really know who we are. The cost is that a real community, where we are known and loved for who we are, will always be just beyond our grasp.
There is also a cost to the communities of which we are a part. Too often we bring these false selves to church. We come thinking a Christian looks a certain way. And it’s understandable. There is much in Christianity which leads people to believe that being Christian is about being “nice”, hiding anger and hurts, pushing down any thought or action that wouldn’t be accepted in a good Christian community. But the cost is again enormous. If we don’t peel away the false selves, we can’t speak truth to our neighbors – because we can’t live honestly with each other. We can’t be that real community we all long for.
After seminary, when living two lives became unbearable and unsustainable, I began to peel off the layer I had constructed. I admitted that some things about me just are what they are. No matter how much seminary I have, I am just not the Buddha type. But when I really looked at myself, I realized that wasn’t all bad and that I didn’t need to exude some ethereal aura to be a pastor. Peeling back this layer of false self, I have come to realize that spirituality happens quite differently for different people. There are ways I can and should continue to stretch myself, but there is great value in who I already am – both value for me and value for the communities of which I am a part. I bring something to the spiritual endeavor that the community needs. Just as you all do.
So Paul says “peel them away, these false selves”, and we ask “how?” It just seems too risky to be that vulnerable with one another. We’re afraid to show those less-than-perfect parts to others…it’s just too scarey. In order to have the courage to be our true selves, we need to remember three important things.
Our Psalm helps us with the first thing we must remember: We can lay our lives completely bare before God and know that we are surrounded by God’s forgiveness, and because of this we are loved in every moment – every single part of us. The Psalmist cries to God “out of the depths.” The truth is, we don’t like hanging out in the depths much. We spend a lot of energy avoiding those dark places in ourselves, the kind of depths the Psalmist is experiencing. Except for most of us they are there, whether we like it or not. What the Psalmist shows us that no matter how deep the depths, our voices reach God, and nothing is hidden from God’s forgiveness.
We all feel like the Psalmist from time to time: If God were a God who marks our iniquities – keeps track of our sins and our wounds and all those things that cause us shame – then we surely couldn’t bring ourselves to even stand upright. The weight of guilt would be too much. We would cower before God. But then we are reminded that there is forgiveness with God, and that forgiveness has the power to redeem us. Assured of this, we can start to peel that layer off.
The second thing we need to remember is we are created in God’s image, or as Paul writes, “We were created according to the likeness of God”. That truth is assumed for Paul when he tells the people to put away their false selves. When talking about our true self, we must never forget that at our core we are stamped with the image of God. (that’s why Paul can be so incredibly bold as to suggest we can actually imitate God.) We have to know that any part in ourselves that we believe is bad and should never see the light of day is not the core of who we are. It is just one part of us. It doesn’t define us. And when we all them to be seen, and we are met not with judgment but only love, these parts start to melt away and what’s left is the image of God. That’s what defines us.
And finally we have to remember that we can only do this in community: A community that believes this is all possible. Don’t try this alone. Really…find community – maybe just one other person, but hopefully the church – that is willing to peel away the false selves in order to love the true selves beneath. We can be our true selves here because we are all doing this and all coming as we really are, and all practicing the radical forgiveness we experience over and over from God. As Paul says, be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.
If we can start to peel off our pseudo-selves here in this community, then any false veneer on the church begins to peel away as well – and don’t worry, this kind of peeling doesn’t require a capital campaign to fix. We take that risk, we peel away that false layer, and then we experience what the Psalmist promises – that God loves us completely. Then, because that is such a powerful experience, we can go out and offer that to others. The truth we speak to one another will be, “I know you…the real you, and you are loved completely. People will see that in the church you don’t need to be a certain way to be a part of our church, or to be Christian. You don’t need to bring your false selves to our community.
And look at what is possible then! Paul says, we will become a community that shows healthy anger, does not neglect the needy, we will be kind and tenderhearted. And then we can be the grace filled community for others to see – and more importantly for others to join and experience. That’s the community we want to build. We are a community where falseness is peeled away and the truth of love is spoken and lived here. Amen.
