Good masks make good Christians

I once had a pastor at a small church[1] that gave a sermon on taking off your mask. He believed we were something different down deep and should reveal that in church. He was quite insistent on this point.[2]

I felt he was talking directly to me. The church was small enough and the rest of the congregation sufficiently transparent that he certainly could have been.

That sermon has bothered me for years. Here are my thoughts:

1. He may or may not have been talking directly to me; it may have been an old sermon he dug out of his files, there may have been someone else near me that he was addressing, who knows.

2. Folks from the tradition I come out of might say I was being convicted by the Holy Spirit. Well, I was responding to aural and visual queues; in any other context, there'd be no question what the body language and verbal language were intimating.

3. Outside of places where certain behaviors are practical considerations (office, court room, bedroom), it's my prerogative to be who I want or need to be when I want or need to be. That is not someone else's decision, and it's presumptuous under most pretenses (especially religious or social) to expect one to behave the way we want them to behave because it suits us.

4. Except, of course, when the religious context is the only context, ie, when church is the core and extent and boundary of our social world and validates our relationships; then the rules are just as important inside the church as they are outside.

5. In fact, church is as much a socio-political dance as any other human activity, perhaps even more so, and perhaps why there is such a keen recognition that our dance partners are wearing masks.

6. I don't want to know what's behind every mask in church. I like masks. They are like hats and ties and shiny shoes. We have an assortment that appeal to us and to others.

[1]
I don't remember the name, it may have been Faith Baptist at the time; it was located at 4915 Eastern Ave, SE Grand Rapids, MI 49508; it's now called South Eastern Bible Church. The pastor I'm recalling is from a previous series of pastors and has no relation to South Eastern Bible Church. This pastor was not named Bob or Jerry.

[2]
I don't care for insistent pastors, pastors that pound the pulpit, or shout at unexpected moments in their delivery, or claim to have special insight, or pastors that put their mouth up close to the microphone so you can hear their lips closing and parting while they lower their voice and say things like "Now, I'm gonna get serious with you, brother, and you better listen, this is God talking, not me," etc.

Don't tell me you care. Show me you care. Embrace the people your congregants won't tolerate: homosexuals, alcoholics, the dirty and smelly and toothless indigents, adulterers and lusters and fornicators and average people that think just like the rest of us, the misguided and wayward and sinful and helpless. Take a stand for what's right and those that need you. They're the reason you're there. Let God take care of the enrollment and the budget and your reputation and career. Grow some fire-and-brimstone cojones and show some good old-fashioned Jesus indignation.

Take off your mask.