The emotional underbelly
Thumbnail photo: C Jill Reed, used under license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/
Clare L. Hickman
St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Ferndale
September 15, 2019—Proper 19C
Exodus 32:7-14; 1 Timothy 1:12-17; Luke 15:1-10
That’s Veruca Salt on the bulletin, from the Willie Wonka movie, famously screaming, “I want it NOW!” She’s pitching a fit, as most of the children in the movie do. Roald Dahl, the writer, had very strong feelings about the behavior of children.
Me, I think it’s dangerous to confine this concern to children. Or, if not dangerous, then definitely naïve. Because adults are just as capable of behaving badly. Maybe not quite so loudly, but with arguably more devastating effects. We are unreasonable; we are demanding; we are self-indulgent; we will lie to get our way or to escape punishment.
And we are capable of turning a blind eye to every one of these deficits.
Which is why the Bible is such a marvelous mirror to hold up before humanity. For while it does indeed show us the ways of God’s kingdom; the people of God are constantly shown as the very flawed works in progress that we know ourselves to be.
Works in progress. We know it. That does not mean we want to admit it.
Nonetheless, isn’t there something in us that recognizes these characters when we see them? Doesn’t just a little something inside you … ping? When the Hebrew children, as the song calls them, ask the God who brought them out of slavery in Egypt: “What have you done for us lately???” When things get a little hard, and they get petulant, and demanding; when the memory of all that God has done for them seems far away, and they become decidedly ungrateful. Maybe because they are childish and immature, but definitely because they are scared. Out there in the wilderness, where food is scarce and the destination is unclear, the monsters begin to circle the camp: what if God deserts them? What if God has already deserted them? They are plagued by distrust; overwhelmed by their own vulnerability. No wonder they stop believing in God; that is to say, they stop putting their full trust in God. No wonder they are tempted to walk away, to go look for someone better.
Does anything in you recognize that behavior?
Or when God faces this scared and insecure people, and sees how they stray, sees how they can’t let themselves trust Him, believe in Him? And He gets angry. He gets fed up: feeling unappreciated, untrusted, and unloved. He too is tempted to just give up. He too starts to wonder whether he should break covenant with this crowd, and just start again with someone new.
Does that ring any bells for you?
And if so, was there a Moses there for you? Someone who advised you, someone whose deep wisdom and abiding faith recommended that instead of walking away, that you should walk further in? Walk into the hard parts; walk towards your own failure, or that of those around you; walk into the brokenness and weakness, and see what might become.
How does this story reflect our very real lives?
Looking to the Gospel, how about those local religious authorities: so judgy that Jesus is spending time on these losers, these tax collectors and other varieties of undesirables and sinners? They are disdainful about his willingness to pollute himself, to lower his social status. But maybe also a little jealous? Jesus has a certain glamor and following, after all. So maybe they also resent and begrudge that these low-status people are being offered/being given what they think should be theirs. They are afraid that they will have less of the spiritual, chosen-people pie if all the riffraff are offered a piece. Their privileged status has been threatened, and they don’t like it at all.
Can we recognize that, even a little?
And okay, what about those tax collectors and sinners? We can’t be sure, because their voice isn’t heard here. So it’s possible that they always feel grateful, redeemed, and transformed. But sometimes perhaps, they doubt themselves. Doubt Jesus. Wonder why he wants them around. Wonder if they’re really good enough. And so they’re afraid that they will someday be found out. And cast out.
We are sometimes afraid that we will someday be found out, and cast out.
We are all these things. Which means we are also the sheep, who went searching for greener pastures, like the Hebrew children and God himself. And we are the sheep, who actually heard the shepherd’s voice, but were too scared to move towards it, for one reason or another.
We are, at one time or another, to one degree or another, all of these. Caught by emotions that we can scarcely admit, and have a hard time escaping. And SO afraid of these emotions—of our jealousy, our insecurity, our anger, resentment and fear—that we almost miss it when we encounter them in the biblical story. When we are offered the chance to see them as part of the salvation story, part of a continuing life with God. If we can just recognize, claim, and be willing to walk into them, rather than run away.
In her book, Learning to Walk in the Dark, Barbara Brown Taylor cites the work of Ken Wilbur (in his book One Taste), who describes two functions of religion. One of these is translation, which offers people a new way of understanding the world around us, so that our lives take on more meaning.
The other, less popular, aspect is transformation, which exists not to comfort the self, but to dismantle it. This function knows that the salvation of the psyche begins with its own demise. Salvation, then, invites us to let go. To lose the self. To find the wisdom and growth that can be ours once we stop trying to fill the hole inside us, and instead enter into it. Enter into it by acknowledging our greed, our fear, our resentment, our inability to trust. Enter into it, to discover that this too is holy ground. That all those emotions are part of the sacred story; that they are not somehow the opposite of sacred story. That God is there, in that scary empty howling space inside us, that place we are afraid to admit. And if we can go there, if we can go further in and BE there with God, then we have no idea what transformation, what salvation will come of it!
It doesn’t matter how much we prefer the picture of ourselves without these messy emotions. Ignoring them or running from them isn’t soul work; it’s ego-defense, and what God desires is for us to loosen the hold of our egos. By being brave enough to walk into the dark. To hear these stories and recognize ourselves in them. To choose to walk further in, rather than run away. And there, to find God has walked in alongside us and is inviting us to risk salvation. May it be so. Amen.