What's in the way of God?
Clare L. Hickman
St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Ferndale
February 18, 2024—Lent 1B
Genesis 9:8-17; Psalm 25:1-9; Mark 1:9-15
Does it bring you joy? That’s the guiding principle of the Marie Kondo method, as I understand it. It’s the question the uncluttering guru suggests that you ask of every single object in your home.
It seems a lot to ask of my vacuum cleaner, but I’m sure my grasp of her rules is limited. The point is really that much of the stuff we have in our houses is unnecessary. We don’t use it. We might not even like it! But we keep it because it’s a lot of work to rehome things, and it feels wasteful to throw it away. We keep it because even things we don’t particularly need can still feel like a layer of prosperity and security. And some things we keep, because our sense of self is deeply invested in the idea that we will someday use that souffle pan, read that book, or wear that size again.
Giving it away can feel like giving up. But Kondo gently points out that carting it around for years and years doesn’t actually make you into the person you believe yourself to be. And it’s possible that these niggling reminders of what you aren’t will just make you sadder, and less likely to grow into the person you actually are.
They might be in the way, is what she’s saying. And what Lent is saying too. In both cases, the emphasis is actually less on whether the things in your life are bringing you joy, than the reality that the clutter of your life might well be obscuring the joy that could be discovered when you clear it away.
It’s about clearing space, and it is holy work.
Sam Wells, vicar of St. Martin in the Fields in London, invites us to imagine it this way. If you and I can’t see each other, there are three possible ways to change that: 1. You could move; 2. I could move; and 3. We could move whatever it is that’s between us, blocking the view.[i]
The same holds true in your life with God. If your relationship with God has become tenuous, distant, or (to use the old Facebook language) “It’s complicated,” there are three basic things that could change that. God could move. You could move. You could move the things that are in the way.
The first one is a done deal. That’s the theological truth at the heart of the Christmas story: that God has already moved. God moved heaven and earth (or one might say, moved heaven TO earth) because God was so desperate to be known, desperate for us to see God more clearly. So God revealed Godself to us in Jesus.
God has already moved.
Which leaves the proverbial ball in our court. We might need to move. And/or we might need to figure out how to get the things that are in the way, out of the way.
When it comes to moving ourselves, that is in general the work of repentance. Until we repent, we cannot turn towards God. Not because God can’t stand to look at us, in our broken and sinful state (Scripture is chock full of stories about God’s great love for sinners and misfits and bumbling fools), but because we cannot bear for God to see us that way.
We are fragile things, we humans. Faced with a God who gave up all the privileges of divinity in order to know and be known by us, a God who took on the wounds and weakness of human existence, we still can’t seem to shake the need to try to look impressive before God. Given the choice, I prefer to have my act together, before I turn my face towards the Almighty.
This, of course, misses the whole point of seeing and being seen, knowing and being known, loving and being loved. The invitation to Lent that we hear from the prophet Joel on Ash Wednesday lays it out bare: “Yet even now, says the Lord, return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; rend your hearts and not your clothing. Return to the LORD, your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love” (Joel 2). Return to the Lord your God, as Nadia Bolz-Weber points out, not once you’ve gotten yourself together, but right now, bringing nothing but the broken pieces of your heart, all the scraps you can gather up after giving your heart to so many things that are not God in this world.[ii]
There is so much to give your heart and your attention to in this world. Some of those things are stupid and harmless (like TikTok or your Netflix queue); some of them are stupid and harmful (like substance abuse); and some of them are truly valuable and worthy occupations. What turns any of them into the kind of clutter that gets in between you and God is when you use them to avoid the call to bring your whole, broken self to God.
For my part, I can fritter away hours on this and that. And honestly, the show or the book might not even be that interesting, but the chatter and the story are just distracting enough to protect me from the silence, from being caught unawares, with no time to tidy away all those things about me and my life that I’d rather not admit, and would definitely prefer that God not see. The silence is what gets me.
Others might use activity, successes, even good works, to protect themselves from such moments of naked truth. It’s worth noting that performative righteousness and virtue are the kinds of things Jesus calls out ALL THE TIME in the gospel. They are clutter. They can, in fact, get in the way of your relationship with God, because they make such a lovely facade.
If none of those options sound like what you use to protect yourself from God, try asking: What self would you want to present to God? How would you say it’s going?
The answer to those questions will likely reveal what you’re hiding behind, when it comes to you and God. This Lent, I join with the prophet Joel to invite you into the quiet, vulnerable, honesty that the Love of God makes possible. Set aside the clutter, whatever yours might be, and just bring the battered and broken parts of your life. Lay it all out there. Perhaps with weeping and mourning, as the prophet suggests. But I’m guessing an embarrassed shrug and a bit of a sheepish look will work as well. Perhaps hysterical laughter? That part doesn’t matter. What matters is the truth of it. The messiness of it (because human lives are always messy).
Bring it all. Stop waiting until you get your act together. Just surrender your whole self into God’s hands, and see what the Creator, the Source of all Being, the Mender of Souls, might do with you. Amen.
[i] The Rev. Sam Wells, Sermon Workshop video on Facebook, Feb. 13, 2024, https://fb.watch/qfg8TDRhUG/
[ii] “Take another little piece of my heart now, baby,” an Ash Wednesday essay for subscribers
Nadia Bolz-Weber, March 1, 2022