MASKMAKING
My wife has taught middle school art for almost thirty years. She is among those in the teaching profession that love working with middle school kids—a love I have never acquired! She delights in watching timid sixth graders, new to the school, grow into confident eight graders, ready to take on the challenge of high school studies. Every year, her eighth grade program ends with a very special project that has students buzzing already the year before. Every spring, seventh graders will say to her, "Mrs. Heerspink, next year do we get to make masks?" Her unfailing answer: "You do."
Why do her eight graders love this project? Maybe it’s the sense of daring. After all, students’ masks are cast from their own faces. There is this sense of risk, since you can’t make a cast of your own face. You need to trust your partner on this project to get it right, and at least keep open enough spaces in your mask for you to draw your breath!
But the real sense of daring comes after the white plaster mask is formed. For then comes the job of decoration. What should your mask SAY? My wife encourages students to create a mask that displays on the outside what they feel on the inside. What are you feeling inside, she asks? What emotions might you hide that you really want to put on display? What are your commitments, your values? How might your mask express those? What would make the mask express the real you?
Now, THIS is where the real courage lies! It takes a lot of guts for an eighth grader honestly to express what’s inside their heart, inside their soul. I’ve seen the work these students have produced. Much of it is amazing! Many of these students have done amazing jobs of giving expression to their fears, their hopes, and their dreams.
THE MASKS WE WEAR
In fact, when I’ve looked through their work, I’ve often concluded that these eighth grade students do a better job of showing what’s on the inside than many of us who are adults. Frankly, many of us adults wear a large assortment of masks. And we didn’t create them in middle school art class. We’ve built them up through the years as we’ve found ourselves dealing with different people who have different expectations of us. Instead of masks that reveal our true self, these masks hide our real selves. In fact, some of us are so good at wearing masks that we don’t know who we really are any more. Our identity is an ever—changing kaleidoscope of false facades—disguises for the ‘real me.’
But let me tell you something about masks. They quickly grow uncomfortable. Those students who are forming masks in my wife’s art class are happy to take off their mask after it sufficiently hardens to keep its shape. They will spend more time displaying their mask than wearing it. Because a mask isn’t comfortable. Ask any child who has worn a mask to a costume party. They will tell you they are happy to get home and take their mask off.
It’s the same with our facades. It takes a lot of emotional energy to pretend to be something you’re not. It’s emotionally draining to present a false picture of yourself. So why do we wear masks at all?
For a number of reasons, I suppose. We wear masks because we think people don’t care enough about us to want to know the truth. When people ask, "How are you?" do they really expect an honest answer? Often, when we’ve told people what we really think, how we’re really doing, we could tell our listener couldn’t care less. So out comes the mask. Be something that you aren’t in order to get along with other people.
Moreover, we think people wouldn’t love us if they knew what we are really like. Some of us grew up in homes where we were loved even when we weren’t perfect. We grew up understanding that we didn’t need to be faultless to have other people’s love and respect. But for others of us, things were very different. We were loved if we were good, and we weren’t loved if we were bad. We learned early on to hide those parts of our real selves that aren’t so attractive. We decided that people wouldn’t really love us if they new our real selves.
And there is one more reason we wear masks. It seems that everyone is wearing one. In fact, sometimes it seems life is a big masquerade party. No one is really being truthful about their lives. Everyone is posturing, letting you believe that they have their lives together! How dare we be the only one at the party without a mask! What will people think of us when they discover that we don’t have life together? Honesty would make us too vulnerable. So we go into hiding. We project serenity when inside we’re a jumble of anxieties. We give the impression of being on course when we don’t have a clue which direction life should head.
WHEN THE MASQUERADE COMES TO CHURCH
Sadly, the one place where the masks should come off is the one place where many find them needed most. It’s when we go to church—when we are around other Christians. If there is one complaint I’ve heard about the church throughout my years in ministry, it’s that the church is full of hypocrites. Now, a hypocrite is very literally a ‘mask—wearer.’ The word hypocrite means an actor on the stage, and in the ancient world of Greek theatre, that meant wearing a mask to portray the necessary emotions of the character you were representing. Since then, a hypocrite means being something you are not. Pretending to hold to values that don’t really shape your life. Pretending to have a certain set of standards that you easily betray.
Now, maybe this is just your problem with Christians and the Christian faith. It may be that you have a certain fascination with Jesus, but when you check out the faith that bears his name, you can’t get past what you see as the hypocrisy of his followers. Maybe you work for a boss who goes to church on Sunday and speaks glowingly of teaching Church School to a class of fourth graders, yet on Monday he uses profanity to intimidate his staff and shows little grace when honest mistakes are made. Maybe you’ve had some business dealings with someone who has a reputation as a pillar of the Christian community, yet in those dealings you found yourself defrauded. Maybe you lived next to a neighbor who offered you a listening ear in the name of being a Christian. Yet after you shared your deepest hurts, you found that you had become an object of gossip in the neighborhood. The times you’ve walked into a church service, you’ve felt yourself tightening up inside because you felt so vulnerable in the presence of people whose lives seem altogether and yet, aren’t necessarily so. You see Christians as hypocrites.
Sadly, there are a lot of masks on the shelves of those who profess themselves followers of Jesus Christ. But when the masks come on—when Christians aren’t honest about their lives, their struggles, their pains—are they really following Jesus? How was Jesus wired? Did Jesus wear masks?
FACE TO FACE WITH JESUS
You know, it’s odd that followers of Christ think they need to wear masks, because Jesus was the most honest person that ever lived. There was a remarkable transparency about Jesus. It was a transparency that you see already when he was a twelve year old child, teaching in temple. His parents, Mary and Joseph, finally find him after a desperate three—day search. And Jesus says to them very simply: "Did you not know I have to be about my heavenly Father’s business?"
It was a transparency that was to be displayed throughout his ministry. You see it when he frankly confronted his disciple Peter when Peter tried to derail him from his mission. "Get behind me, Satan!" Jesus tells his disobedient disciple. It is a transparency you see at the grave of his good friend Lazarus, when Jesus breaks down and weeps. It is a transparency that will eventually be put on display on Calvary itself. When Jesus, in a moment of utter honesty, shouts out for the entire crowd to hear: "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?"
Jesus never played games. Jesus never wore masks. Jesus was simply himself. Always.
JOHN THE BAPTIST
But what about those who follow Jesus? What about their honesty? Well, consider a case study in discipleship. John the Baptist. You might correctly call John the first follower of Jesus. He was following Jesus before Jesus even called his band of twelve disciples around himself. For John was appointed by God as a living, walking loud speaker of Jesus’ identity. John is the voice in the wilderness, calling his hearers to prepare for the biggest spiritual event ever to be witnessed. It’s the coming of the Lord himself, in his Son, Jesus Christ. John is to announce that the promises of Scripture and the hopes of Israel have all come to fulfillment in this young man who has emerged from out of a carpenter shop in Nazareth.
Now, if there was anyone who didn’t wear a mask, it was John the Baptist. When it came to John, what you see is what you get. His camel hair suit, his diet of locust and honey, all declared his individuality. This was one guy who didn’t feel the need to blend into the crowd.
Nor was he tempted to shape his message to meet your expectations. He pulled no punches. He knew what he had been commissioned by God to proclaim—and he delivered the straight goods. He told the crowds that their spiritual condition was beyond ugly. They were morally bankrupt. Spiritually dead. And if they didn’t make a U—turn, and quickly, they were headed for hell. Their only hope was to take seriously the man who came after John. This was a man who would set the world ablaze in judgment. Who would bring down every tree that bore bad fruit.
This was hardly a message that met the standards of political correctness for the day. John felt no need to wear a mask that would meet the approval of the religious authorities. Jesus was coming. And evil would get its due. Goodness would triumph. God’s reign of justice has begun.
BUT THEN . . .
But then, the bottom fell out of John’s ministry. No fires of judgment. No falling timbers. Jesus shows up, and begins to preach, but Jesus doesn’t end up on King Herod’s throne. Instead, John ends up in King Herod’s prison. In fact, if you know the rest of the story, you know John ends up with his head upon a platter, served up as a gruesome centerpiece at one of Herod’s dinner parties. But at this point of the story, John is still in prison sitting on death row, and as he sits, he begins to doubt.
Now, if he were like a lot of people, he would have put on the mask. He would have told his own cadre of disciples, it’s all OK. John could have faked it. He could have said that John had seen this all in the plan from the beginning. But John didn’t see this as part of God’s plan. And faking it isn’t John’s style. John tells it like it is. He allows us to penetrate to his heart. And his heart is crying out in pain. He confronts the brutal reality of his doubt: Is this Jesus really the Savior, or should we look for another?
Now, I don’t know what you do with your doubt, but often the last person we would go with such doubt is to Jesus himself. After all, what if he gets offended? Ticked off at us? So the mask goes back on! But that isn’t John’s style, as you know. He himself grabs one of his disciples as his spokesperson and tells him to go ask his question of Jesus. "Are you the one or have I, John, made the biggest blunder of my life?"
John the Baptist was honest with Jesus about his doubts! He would not wear a mask—even with Jesus!
I wonder if we allow ourselves—and others—to do the same, to practice the same honesty! It strikes me that Christians often expect those who are exploring the Christian faith to make remarkably fast progress in their spiritual lives. Christians often give people perhaps a matter of weeks—sometimes days—to work through their doubts before they commit their life to Christ. Christians read the four spiritual laws and say—make a decision, right here on the spot. But that approach doesn’t respect the way most people come to faith in Christ. Refusing to allow people to face their doubts, work through their doubts, only encourages people to bail on their spiritual journey, or to put on the mask of unreal faith.
A WORD FROM JESUS
Jesus is remarkably kind about John’s doubt. That’s because Jesus best understands what doubt is. Jesus understands that doubt is not the same as unbelief. Too often we think we have to slap on a mask because we think that if we doubt, we don’t believe. Jesus is kind toward his cousin John in his doubt. And we would do well to emulate that kindness.
What does Jesus do? He doesn’t scold John. He doesn’t shun John because John has suddenly become rattled in his faith. Jesus just points to the evidence of his own ministry. Jesus says: "Go back and report to John what you see and hear. The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those with leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor." All these things are what are predicted of the coming Messiah, the Savior, in the Old Testament Scriptures.
You see, the Messiah would come with both grace and judgment. John, in calling people to prepare for the Christ, had focused on the later. He had focused on the Messiah’s judgments. But Jesus reminds John to look at the other side of the coin. The grace of the Messiah’s coming. That’s what Jesus is putting on display in his ministry now. In fact, this grace is what Jesus is extending to John himself, as he sits in prison wrestling with doubt. The grace that pervades Jesus’ ministry allows John to remove the mask and ask his tough questions of Jesus.
Jesus invites John to move his focus from judgment to grace. He sets out a list of miracles that put grace on display. That list of miracles ends in what Jesus considers the most amazing miracle of all—good news is preached to the poor. This is what Jesus offers to John himself, sitting in a Palestinian prison. He offers good news, gracious news—news of the coming of the Kingdom of God.
And then Jesus adds a final word: "Blessed is the man who doesn’t fall away on account of me." Right there Jesus admits that the nature of his work is complicated. John isn’t the only person who has a hard time ‘getting it.’ Jesus understands that coming to a deep trust in him involves a demanding journey that is empowered only by his grace. Jesus tells us that it just isn’t only temptation and trial that might cause potential disciples to fall away from him, to turn away. The very nature of his person, the very way he conducts his ministry, will be offensive to many people. But Jesus invites us to experience the blessing of continuing on the journey, to face up to our doubts and uncertainties, and find our confidence in him.
TAKING OFF OUR MASKS
God calls us to be a community of people that can be honest about our doubts and struggles, to be honest about our real selves. How can that happen? Well, for one thing, we will have to follow the example of John. We’ll need to have the honesty and openness to speak about the spiritual and emotional struggles we face. We’ll need to have the courage to speak honestly and truly listen to each other.
I led a conference this past summer in Cyprus for Arabic—speaking Christian church leaders on Biblical perspectives on Christian leadership. I had prepared my lectures and handouts. I knew what I was going to say. But just sharing that information wasn’t enough for me to consider the conference a success. I needed to hear what these fellow leaders would say. I didn’t want to offer five days of monologue. I wanted to dialogue with these leaders.
And I will tell you why. Because these Christians gathered from Egypt, Syria, Palestine, and Kuwait. There was no way I could walk into that conference, understanding the world of the Middle East, the pressures and yes, even persecutions under which these believers lived. They didn’t merely need to hear from me. I needed to hear from them.
So, I invited questions and dialogue from the very start. But it wasn’t until half way through the second session that one of those in the group overcame their timidity and commented on what I said. That one honest comment opened the floodgates. There was a river of observations and questions. People were open with each other, frank about their challenges in ministry. We had some remarkable dialogue over the next several days. We learned from each other. And when I left that conference, I knew that what we had discussed could make a lasting difference in the lives of these leaders. Because in our conversations, the masks had come off. We had lived that week in integrity with one another. When we are open ourselves, we encourage others to be open. When we listen we encourage others to listen.
THE GRACE BEHIND IT ALL
But there is one more thing that will be necessary if we are to be honest with each other. We’ll need to emulate not just John. We’ll need to emulate Jesus. For we will need to demonstrate the same grace to others that Jesus showed to John—and shows to us. We’ll need to be communities that build trust and care. Communities that demonstrate true patience and understanding. In so doing, we encourage all of us to take off the masks—to be real with each other—to be real with God. We do so, knowing this: that the grace of God accepts us with all our failures and blemishes. God receives us—just as we are.
Robert Heerspink
Rev. Robert Heerspink is a native of west Michigan. He completed his undergraduate studies at Calvin College and holds the degrees of Master of Divinity and Master of Theology from Calvin Theological Seminary. He has also received a Doctor of Ministry degree from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. Bob was ordained a minister of the Word in the Christian Reformed Church of North America in 1979, and has 26 years of parish experience, having served four churches throughout west Michigan. He was appointed the Director of The Back to God Hour in 2006. Bob has written several resources related to congregational stewardship, including the book, Becoming a Firstfruits Congregation. He is a regular contributor to TODAY, the monthly devotional of The Back to God Hour. Bob is married to Edith (Miedema) and they have three children. His hobbies include reading fictional and historical works, watersports, and occassional golfing.
More >>
