We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes –
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.
Why should the world be over-wise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
We wear the mask.
We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream otherwise,
We wear the mask!
Paul Laurence Dunbar spoke for generations who had been
made to play roles. They were expected to act like fools, to
grin and lie, to mumble “Yassuh”, to play the parts assigned
by racist America. They wore the mask to stay out of
trouble. But when you wear the mask too long, you not only
hide from others; you also hide from yourself. You begin to
lose your real self. And your only recourse when you lose
your real self is to cry out to a great Christ that He might
make you real again.
We are not real. We are not real, we are imitations, we are
phonies, we are mere shadows of what God intended us to
be. We take on roles, we play parts, we wear masks, we are
not real.
It starts when we are tiny children. Little girls slather on
makeup, trying to look like grown-up glamorous women,
when in truth there could be nothing more beautiful than a
little girl, just as God made her. If you want proof, let me
show you pictures of my granddaughters! Little boys put on
athletic shoes that just about swallow them up to the knees,
so that they can look like Michael Jordan or Shaquille
O’Neal, when in truth there is nothing more appealing than a
nine-year-old lean, mean, running machine. But we start
wearing masks early. We are not real.
It goes on during the teenage years. Teenagers are
absolutely unreal. Hey, don’t get on my case! I heard it from
your parents! They said you guys were unreal! That your
study habits, typing on the computer while you are talking on
the phone while you are watching a video while you are
eating a snack – that’s unreal. That your room, clothes
hanging out of every drawer, posters festooning every wall,
CD’s scattered across the floor, but you seem to know where
everything is – they said that’s unreal. I heard it from your
folks. You are unreal.
We wear the mask, all of us. We play the roles that people
expect of us. I’m the pastor, and so I am supposed to smile
soothingly and serve up sweet slumbering sermons to satisfy
your shattered soul. If I do that long enough, I forget who I
really am. You are the parishioners, and you are supposed
to pray, pay, plant yourselves in the pews, and applaud what
the pastor says. And if you do that long enough, let me tell
you, you will forget who you really are. We wear the masks.
We are not real.
And when we die, then they plump up our faces, put makeup
on our cheeks, manicure our nails, and dress our hair, so
that we look more alive than we did when we were alive, and
everybody will say, “Doesn’t she look ... real?” We have
forgotten what it is to be real. When you wear the mask too
long, you not only hide from others; you also hide from
yourself. You begin to lose your real self. And your only
recourse when you lose your real self is to cry out to a great
Christ that He might make you real again.
Jesus had real encounters with people. Jesus was so real
Himself, He made those others real. They may have started
out playing roles and wearing masks, but Jesus made them
real.
I
For example, Jesus was so real that He could be with people
who were playing very negative roles, and not be threatened.
Jesus was so real that it didn’t matter if you were the lowest
of the low and you had been told to stay in your place and
get out of my face, He was comfortable with you and more
than that, He made you real.
Jesus was in the house of Simon the leper. Simon the what?
The leper. Total outcast. The one nobody wants at their
parties, nobody wants in their living room, nobody wants to
sit next to at church. Lepers were totally disgusting. In fact,
if you had this terrible disease, you were supposed to live
outside of town, and if you went out on the road for a walk,
you were supposed to trudge along moaning, “unclean,
unclean”, so that no one would brush against you. If you
were a leper, you wore a mask – literally; something to keep
the rest of us from seeing your face. You were not real. We
didn’t want you to be real. And I would guess that if you
were a leper, hiding behind a veil and groaning, “unclean”,
you soon forgot who you really were. Leper, that’s all. Not
real.
But Jesus went to the home of Simon the leper and dined
there. Sat at the table and accepted the food they brought.
Plopped Himself down and whiled away the day with Simon
the outcast, the nobody, the unreal.
You see, it was because Jesus knew so completely who He
was that He could sit there and not be threatened. It was
because Jesus was so totally real, so utterly Himself, that He
could be with somebody like Simon and not lose Himself.
Who threatens you? With whom are you uncomfortable?
Who gets to you so that you cannot stay around them, and
why does that happen? Isn’t it possible that we are
threatened because we are unsure of who we really are?
We are afraid we’ll fall into something we cannot control.
Some of us are threatened by poor people. Poor people
make us feel vulnerable. Maybe you remember when you
were barely off the farm and didn’t have two nickels to rub
together. You don’t like being around poor people because it
reminds you that even today you are only one paycheck from
disaster, even though you manage to wear good clothes and
drive a nice car and put on the mask of prosperity. But it
isn’t real. Being around poor people threatens us.
Some are threatened by young people. Children and youth
make us feel old and out of touch. But more than that, they
don’t seem to know their roles. They aren’t playing the
respect parts we’ve assigned them. They don’t smile and
call us Mister and run to do our bidding. They have a
language all their own and snicker at us, and we feel
threatened by young people. Is that because maybe we
aren’t real? Because maybe we don’t have it together
ourselves and don’t have all the answers? We aren’t as
mature as we pretend to be, and so young people threaten
us.
And, on the other side of the ledger, some are threatened by
older people. Guys, what bothers you about older people?
You say they are so set in their ways. Doesn’t that mean
that you are threatened by people who actually know
something, because you know, down deep, that you don’t
know? Oh, you say they are so out of date, they don’t have
a clue about what’s happening now. Maybe so, but why
should that threaten you? Why should their cluelessness –
correction, OUR cluelessness, I almost forgot I became a
senior citizen last month – why should our cluelessness
bother you, unless it is that you feel that the world you are
making is not working? Older people threaten us – and not
least because they remind us that it is appointed that one
day we shall die. We’d love to forget about that. But that’s
real. That’s really real.
Some are threatened by people of other races. Some are
threatened by those who disagree politically or
philosophically. Being threatened is all about how unreal we
are. We wear the masks. We are not real if we are
threatened by others.
But Jesus can come and make us real. As He came into the
house of Simon the leper and sat down to eat, so He will
enter our lives, He will abide there, He will accept us as we
are, and then will show us what God intended us to be .. and
we will be made real. Jesus was so real that he could sit
right down with us, with all of our fears and insecurities, and
can make us real.
II
But now once the evening wore on, there at the home of
Simon the leper, Jesus showed again how real He was and
how He could make others real. As they sat at the table, a
woman came with an alabaster jar of a very costly ointment;
she broke open the jar, and poured the ointment on Jesus’
head. One of those impulsive actions, one of those spur-of-
the-moment things that nobody expected. It was off the wall.
Way out of the norm. And when somebody does something
way out of the norm, the reactions are predictable.
Amazement, shock, surprise, but most of all: anger. Anger!
When somebody takes us by surprise, we get angry.
“Some who were there said to one another in anger, ‘Why was the
ointment wasted in this way?...’ And they scolded her.”
Yes, they scolded her, but Jesus broke in. Jesus stopped
them. Jesus was so real, so comfortable in His own skin,
Jesus so totally knew who He was that He could deal with
conflict and heal it. He could see anger, and touch it gently
and cure it. Jesus was so authentic, so real, that He could
deal with those who were off the mark, and help them but not
destroy them.
Ah, this is a tough one. This is not easy. We get crossways
of one another. We are not very ready to listen, nor are we
prepared to be gentle. When we hear somebody say
something wrong, we want to jump in and put them down.
When we see somebody doing something we dislike, we
want to demonize them and write them off. But look at
Jesus, who knows how to disagree with you and make you
like it! Who knows how to reprimand you and make you ask
for more!
To those who were angry at the woman’s spontaneous gift,
Jesus put things in a positive perspective. She didn’t waste
this ointment, He said; she did something generous and
noble. To those who said that something else could have
been done with her gift, Jesus pointed them to the
possibilities that were always there. “The poor you will
always have.” You can do something for them. Go ahead.
That’s a good thing. Do that. But Jesus, knowing who He
was, works to make us real by pushing us to deal with
conflict in a positive way, not a destructive way.
I wish, don’t you, that some of our national leaders could
hear Jesus on this, and could become real? Politicians have
a way of listening to what their opponents say, and pouncing
on it as if it were fresh red meat. But it’s a mask; it’s not real.
It’s just a desire to win, and if you have to destroy in order to
win, that’s what you do. It’s not real.
I wish some of our Baptist leaders could hear Jesus on this,
and could become real! We are connected to a
denominational body which for several years has been
gripped by a power-hungry clique, and, if you don’t say
things their way, they will write preach sermons against you
and shut you out of participation in the convention. I wish
some of our Southern Baptist leaders could see how unreal
they have become, and could hear Jesus’ gentle voice urging
them to leave the rest of us alone, for we too have performed
a good service for Him.
I wish that some of us here in this congregation could sit at
Jesus’ feet and hear His rebuke, for we need it too. We
need it here at Takoma Park. Sometimes one of us wants to
do something unusual, but others snap and snarl.
Sometimes one of us wants to use resources for something
new, but others will count the pennies and say those pennies
ought to have been spent over here, not over there.
Sometimes we are very suspicious of one another, just as
these men were suspicious of this woman. And so we miss
it. We miss what God wants to do. We miss the joy that
comes through seeing others give. And most of all, we miss
being real. We become like those T. S. Eliot spoke of:
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw.
But, oh, Jesus! Jesus, You are so real and so genuine that
you accept our hollowness and tell us in a gracious spirit
what we can become! Oh, Jesus, gentle Jesus! You are so
authentic, you so much know who you are that even when
we sail off into an emotional stratosphere, your feet remain
on the ground and anchor us! You are so real that even
when you rebuke us, it does not hurt, but it heals; it does not
sting, but it supports; it does not press down, but it lifts up!
Thank you, Jesus! You are real and You make us real.
III
And, in fact, Jesus is so real that not only is He able to sit
down with threatening people and not be threatened; and not
only is He able to deal with hostile people with a gentle
touch, but also He is so real that He can perceive what is in
a heart and can receive anyone, anyone at all. Jesus is so
real, He so knows Himself, He is so comfortable in His own
skin that He is able to take what we give Him, He is able to
receive what we offer Him, He knows what is in our hearts.
When the woman poured the costly ointment out, and they
protested, Jesus stopped them. “Leave her alone.” Don’t
mess with her feelings. Don’t dabble with her motives. “She
has performed a good service, she has done what she
could.” This is hers to do, hers to give. This is her being
real. Jesus receives it.
Some interpreters identify this woman with Mary Magdalene,
of ill repute, less than sterling character. That may or may
not be true, but suppose this was a woman who had done
many sinful things. After all, who hasn’t? Who isn’t a
sinner? Just suppose .. this woman, this notorious sinner,
this harlot of the streets – steps up and offers a sacrifice of
pure love? This is real! This is genuine! This is a real self,
an honest heart, a soul on display!
How did she get that way? How did she become real?
Where did she get the courage to be herself? One place.
One source. From being in the presence of Jesus. From
watching Jesus, listening to Jesus, following Jesus. Here is
the good news for us who are unreal: that in His presence
we can be made real. Here is the good news for those of us
who feel threatened: that Christ receives us, just as we are,
without one plea. Here is the good news for hollow men: that
under His rebuke we can be filled up. Here is the good
news: that He can make us real. He can make us what God
intended us to be. He can save us – save us from
ourselves, save us from self-condemnation, save us from the
hell of self-pity, save us from the morass of anxiety. Jesus
can save us.
“Now my heart condemns me not; pure before the law I stand. He
who cleansed me from all spot, Satisfied its last demand. Sing it
o’er and o’er again; Christ receiveth sinful men; make the message
clear and plain; Christ receiveth sinful men.”
Do you remember the children’s story, Pinocchio? Do you
recall how old Gepetto, the woodcarver, could only make
puppets? But he longed for a real boy. Every night he
wished for somebody real, somebody flesh and blood, to
love. One night his wish was granted, and his puppet
Pinocchio took on life and became a real boy. But then one
day Pinocchio is tempted by two con artists, who persuade
him to follow them. They promise to make him a great actor,
wearing the mask of drama. What a scam, what a folly, that
was! Soon someone snatches the boy and turns him into a
long-eared, loud-braying donkey, who can only utter sounds
of complaint? Do you remember? The puppet become boy
has become a mask-wearing, loud-braying jackass. Sound
familiar? Unreal? So are we! So are we! But don’t miss it –
when Pinocchio, chastened and broken, comes home, he
learns that Gepetto, his maker, is searching for his little lost
boy, and has even entered the belly of a great whale to find
him and bring him home. So great is the father’s love for the
little wooden one he had made into a real boy.
And so great is our father’s love for us that He will go to any
length to find us and receive us. He will go to the house of
Simon the leper and expose Himself to danger, for He is real,
and wants to make you real. He will rebuke your enemies
and correct your critics, for He is real, and wants to make
you real. He will go to the belly of the whale, He will go to
the cross of Calvary and there He will die for you, to receive
you, for He is real, and wants to make you real. He will
make you real.
If you are confused, He will instruct you. If you are hungry,
He will feed you. If you are thirsty, He will refresh you. If you
are weary, He will give you rest. If you are blind, He will
make you see. If you are sick, He will make you well. If you
are stained, He will make you clean. Yes, if you are dead,
He will give you life.
And – if you are inflated, He will deflate you. If you are
power-mad, He will make you humble. If you are threatened,
He will comfort you. If you are insecure, He will command
them, “Leave her alone.”
Indeed – if you are a mask, if you are unreal, He will make
you real.
