On Thursday and Friday
night, the grade five and six students at our Day School performed a musical
rendition of the Emperor’s New Clothes. It was actually called the Empress’
New Clothes, but it had the same theme as the Hans Christian Anderson folk
tale. For those who don’t remember it, it is about a vain monarch who is so
selfish that the needs of the realm (and its people) are forgotten in lieu of
extravagant clothing and other fineries. Some traveling salesmen, who put
Harold Hill to shame, realize an opportunity to profit from the empress’
excessive self-absorption. They promise to make an outfit out of the finest
fabric in the world, a fabric, they explain, that can be seen only by those who
are worthy.
It is a swindle, of
course, but one that the self-centered monarch doesn’t realize. Even though
there is not an outfit, she parades around thinking there is, because to admit
that she can’t see it would be admitting that she is not worthy of her position
(which she considers impossible). Only when a young child points it out does she
finally realize the hoax.
As I watched many of our
parishioners act out the scenes of this age-old fable, I reflected on the
different ways that we project an image of ourselves that is just that, an
image. Our clothes, our property, our professions, our education, and our
language, all of these things hide who we are deep down in our soul. The
promise of imaginary clothes might not trick us, but we deceive those we
encounter every day with many other things that conceal who we are.
Whether it is the late
night television product that will reduce fine lines and wrinkles for three
easy payments of $19.99, or a membership to an exclusive club, we fly under the
radar in hope that we won’t be discovered for who we really are. Thankfully, this
doesn’t apply to those of us here today, but you know the type, don’t you?
Coming clean about who
we are and being authentic to that person is one of the most difficult
spiritual challenges. It is hard letting go of the false images and allowing
our community to see who we are, deep down. It is a challenge to admit that we
don’t know something or that we need the help of someone else. When people
expect something from us, it is hard to admit that we can’t deliver. It is even
harder to admit that we made a mistake, and that we just might need to
apologize. When our heroes (or those who hope to be heroic) are revealed for
who they really are, we scorn them rather than realizing that they are just
like us. We are all flawed beings, none of us chooses perfectly and the only
difference is if we care. Do we continue to delude ourselves into projecting an
image of perfection, or do we come clean in the reality of who we are?
Jesus spoke of these
challenges in today’s Gospel lesson. It is good to know the context of this
passage. It is a speech, delivered by Jesus to his disciples, after the last
supper, after he washed his disciples’ feet, the night before he was crucified.
He had already let his disciples know what was going to happen to him and the
passage we heard today is a portion of his instructions to them about how to
live after he was no longer physically present. His instructions revolved
around love. Not the romantic kind of love, but the parent to child kind of
love. How appropriate on this day that we are expected to celebrate our mothers
and those who mother us (not that we shouldn’t celebrate our mothers everyday)
that we hear Jesus describe the love of God in the terms of a parent and child.
Jesus’ prescription to
love like he did for them and the Father did for him is a great challenge. I
actually think that this kind of love is dangerous in today’s culture. It’s
dangerous because we have a tendency to think of this in terms of a personal
goal rather than a community one. When we do that, it leads to sacrificing
everything in order to be seen by others as being great at love. That kind of
extreme giving is not about loving God and loving each other, it is about
putting on imaginary clothing. It is about building a façade around who we
really are so that we look good in the eyes of others. Granted: we know how to
do that, it might even seem natural, but that is not what Jesus prescribed for
his disciples and therefore for us.
My understanding of
Jesus’ prescription is that we are to love together. He wasn’t giving one
disciple advice. He taught the entire community of disciples an understanding
about how to live together. Jesus washed the disciples feet, like a servant
might have done, but then moments later he said that they weren’t servants or
masters, but friends.
To apply this passage to
our lives, we have to understand what it means to be friends. We throw around
the word quite freely. We say friends are those who like to do the same things
that we like to do. You might have your bowling friends, or your knitting
friends, or golf friends, or church friends. You might remember your college
friends or the friends that grew up on the same block. But, Jesus saw friends
differently. Jesus said that friends were those who knew everything about you
and vice versa. Friends, for Jesus, are those who know our deepest secrets, our
motives, and still love us. In other words, friendship is unconditional to who
we are.
Jesus described love in
the terms of this kind of friendship. This was his vision for how his disciples
would live together. He painted a picture for them of something extraordinarily
challenging, and he left his disciples to live into it. We, as I mentioned
earlier, cloud this vision with our own personal baggage. We hear it as how we can
lay down our physical and personal lives for those we love instead of laying down
communal life, our façades, so that we can be known by everyone as friends,
rather than servants.
We hear this passage of
scripture as the one in control, not as the one who needs to let go of what is
holding us back. Jesus envisioned a spiritual journey that would lead his
disciples to be mature enough to share themselves and open enough to the needs
of others that they could love each other unconditionally. Jesus called this
being friends.
Well, we have had 2000
years to make progress along this path. This passage of scripture is read often
enough and is known by nearly all Christians as a piece of the foundation of
the religion, and yet we continue to judge others for who they are. We look
down our noses at those who are of different segments of society. We make sure
that we appear to fit with those we call friends. How are we doing living into
Jesus’ mission of love?
We have a long way to
go. Are we willing to be friends to others? (most of us would say yes) Are we
willing to open ourselves to be friends? (maybe that is harder to do)
We live in a world where
it is easy to say we are friends. Facebook makes it easy to stretch our web of
friends across any boundary. I have over 800 friends on that social network and
I know each and every one of those 800 some people. Only a few would be
considered friends by Jesus.
We have a long way to go
to love as Jesus loved us. We have to open our hearts to the community, we have
to be fearless in the face of being disliked, and we have to stand up for those
who are marginalized (even if that means we might be hated by others). We have
to learn to be friends to the greater community. We have to share ourselves in
ways that make us uncomfortable, realizing that true friends will never let us
go.
The words sound easy.
Love, give, bear fruit! But they are far from that, we need to seek together a
deeper understanding of what it means to be a community. It means keeping doors
open even when we have been hurt or betrayed. It means inviting into our midst
those who seem different. It is coming to the realization that in God everyone
is equal.
Start small. Let
yourself be known to each other. Feel the freedom that entails and come to know
what it truly means to be friend and to be loved.
When the empress
discovered that she was without clothes, she told her people that she had
failed and that she could no longer serve them. The people already knew that,
but they said, “Yes, you can.” We know, now, who you are and you can know who
we are. Be our friend and by being so, be our leader. The empress came to know
the love of others, the love of being accepted. She only discovered that love
when she revealed herself. I am not advocating losing our clothes, but we will
discover the compassion and love of our friends, when we are willing to open
up, to reveal what is truly within our heart, to admit that to find ourselves,
we need others.
That is why we gather
for church. It is not just to land at a certain spot every week. Church is
about being a loving community. We aren’t perfect, but our goal is to be open
to all, to become friends, and to spread God’s mission, God’s love, together,
into the greater world. We have much more to do, but I trust that, together, we
can continue walking the path.
May 13, 2012
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