PAUL - Masks

About this time last year I was preparing a message on fear because I was the youth pastor of a church in Parker and we were going to have a special youth-led Halloween service… and we wonder why I’m not a youth pastor anymore. I promise we didn’t have enough goats for the ritual sacrifice (just kidding). Actually Halloween has an interesting past and relationship to the history of the church. Halloween began as a celebration to the Celtic new year Samhain, which is the end of the harvest and a time associated with death. Druids and pagans believed that wearing masks would prevent the evil spirits of the dead from entering you, because that way they couldn’t tell if you were human or not. So in a very odd way masks had a sort of spiritual power. Time passed and Rome conquered much of the Celtic lands and by the 800’s Pope Bonifice IV declared November 1st “All Saint’s Day”, a time to honor saints and martyrs. It is widely believed today that the pope was attempting to replace the Celtic festival of the dead with a related but church-sanctioned holiday. The night before it, became “All-Hallows Eve” which later shortened to “Halloween” and was celebrated by bonfires, costumes and most of all …masks.

Of course masks were around long before Halloween. Egyptians used masks in worship ceremonies and sacrifices. In ancient Greece, the first actors wore different masks to represent different people or emotions. The name Hypo-crities was developed to described these actors. It means “one who speaks from behind a mask.” The idea behind this was that a person’s true nature was hidden so you could not discern their real feelings… it was really hard to get the truth from a person in a mask. This is where we get our English word “hypocrite”. Hmmmm.

We all know that you don’t have to be an actor to wear a mask. We all wear masks…we’ve been wearing them so long sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between the mask and our own face. The truth be told, masks are rather comfortable and they make other people comfortable, too. Without our masks we are exposed, vulnerable, un-guarded, open to attack…and that’s frightening, terrifying.

Seeing someone else without their mask can be pretty disturbing, too. Because people without masks can appear horribly disfigured, ugly… you can see their scars… or open wounds… inside you wished they never shared that part of themselves. You know what I mean, it’s happened at The Refuge hasn’t it? One of those “whoa” moments when you think to yourself, “I just have to act like that was perfectly normal” and then make sure not to make eye contact because you have this panicky “is-my mask-still-on?” feeling.

The truth about masks is that they have always had a sort of spiritual power. The reason we put them on in the first place is out of fear, and fear has always been a matter of faith. Life without masks is scary, terrifying really. I like it better when mine is on. It feels much more protected, safe. But the truth is with my mask I always stay afraid. Afraid to be known. 1 John 4:18 tells us that God is love and that perfect love casts out all fear of condemnation. Someone once told me that fear was “faith in the wrong thing”. When I put on my mask I am afraid and my faith is in the wrong thing—it is in what people think of me, what I think of myself, the false things I believe God thinks about me, too. The perfect love of Jesus that casts out all fear of condemnation is nowhere to be found.

I believe Jesus is extending an invitation to all of us to take off our masks even when everything thing in us screams “Condemnation!” “Exposure!” “Judgement!” Lately I keep hearing Him tell me, “Paul, masks are a waste of time. Take it off. Let me, let others, see your real face.”