Rhythm 5: Self-Examination

We’re continuing our series on sacred rhythms, these spiritual disciplines that form us in the way of Jesus. Last week, we talked about our beautiful, God-blessed bodies. We talked of honoring the body, taking care of the body, remember that our bodies are the vessel in which Christ lives and moves in the world today. We saw the Christ in one another, looking into each others’ faces and recognizing that God dwells in us.

Beautiful.

And this week, we make a logical next step — we look inward, knowing that we are more than bodies, but souls, spirit, psychological, thinking, being things. To say we are only a body is to avoid looking into the depths of the inner world.

If we are quick to dismiss our bodies or neglect them, are we even more apt to avoid self-examination, looking inward?

French philosopher and Christian thinker, Blaise Pascal, is quoted, saying “All of humanity’s problems stem from our inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”

We have to sit with that, right?

How about an updated version of this, which I read in an Instagram meme recently:

“THANK YOU FOR BRINGING YOUR BLUETOOTH SPEAKER TO THE BEACH I DIDN’T WANT TO HEAR THE SOUND OF THE WAVES AND BIRDS AND WIND I WANTED TO HEAR THE SPOTIFY PLAYLIST YOU LISTEN TO EVERYWHERE ELSE BECAUSE YOU HATE TO BE ALONE WITH YOUR THOUGHTS FOR EVEN 1 MINUTE THANK YOU.”

We can all get a laugh out of that…but it rings so true, doesn’t it?

If we want to grow deeper in faith and relationship with God, we have to face these challenges. Looking inward can feel scary and like something we’d rather avoid.

But when we begin, in prayer and meditation, to seek God’s presence in our hearts, we enter a world of great depth and insight. It takes faithful work, honest work. But this work is worthwhile, in that we come to know ourselves more and therefore know how we can love God and love our neighbors more fully, as we deal with and heal from all that we have locked up inside.

It is helpful to know that we are not the first people to struggle with this inward journey or with attempting to hide from ourselves or from God. Let’s hear our second Scripture reading, a harsh warning about this propensity to hide from our inner world.

At the end of his ministry, as Jesus criticizes the religious leaders of the day, he says…

Matthew 23:25–28 NRSV

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and of the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup, so that the outside also may become clean. “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful, but inside they are full of the bones of the dead and of all kinds of filth. So you also on the outside look righteous to others, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.

Ouch.

We can soften the blow a little bit, but before we do, let’s hold these words of Jesus. Woe to you, Scribes and Pharisees.

Two very clear images in this condemnation. First, the clean cup and plate. You can picture this, cleaning the facade, the outside, while ignoring the real things that fester and grow putrid on the inside. Polishing the outside makes everything look ok, but when we take a closer look, the cup is caked with stains and sour milk.

I think of my Grandfather, not for the sake of criticism, no, but because of the way he washed dishes. It was a hard and fast rule in his house that you DO NOT STACK the dishes. Period. What seemed, from an outsider’s perspective, to be a ridiculously inefficient way to buss a table, my grandfather was adamant that we were not to stack the dishes. His reason…at least I think his reason…was to avoid dirtying the bottoms of the dishes. Non-stacked dishes only need real attention on the top side, because, all things being equal and according to plan, no one was getting food on the bottom of their plate while eating and therefor why risk getting food stuck there in the clean up process. I think that was the reason.

Anyway, here Jesus is critiquing the “putting on a fresh face” while harboring greed or self-indulgence on the inside. We get this. We might call it a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Disingenuous. Two-faced. Say one thing to make people happy, but believe and act another way. Duplicitous.

To take the journey inward, to nurture the self and the inner landscape where we know God’s presence, we cannot pretend that if we keep things clean on the surface, the inner things won’t be seen and won’t matter. It just doesn’t work like that. We all know this. When we hold disparate beliefs in and project something else out, we become malformed, twisted, hurt.

The second image, the white washed tombs, is more striking, I think, because it gets at the real death that occurs in us when we are not one, not congruent inwardly and outwardly.

I know we can think of this as yet a more brutal or stark way of restating the first criticism, but I think there’s a deeper layer to it. Take the harsh critique of the Pharisees aside, for a moment, and consider: how does it feel to hide who you are? How does it feel to push down those parts of you that are unaccepted or perhaps you are afraid to show?

In my experience, it’s a small death.

If we put this in positive terms, we know that there are beautiful, tender, good parts of ourselves that we don’t always know how to show in the world, so we bury them. And how painful this can be, because it means a critical part of us does not have space to be, to show up, to be seen. This is heartbreaking. And we know it. Often, this kind of burying or hiding does lead to a death, a pain so deep that it takes such careful, diligent, kind work to restore and let it be seen.

Can we mourn that parts of ourselves that we have let die? Not even let die because we wanted to move beyond them, but parts that are good and yet unpronounced or unseen because we fear what others might say.

It’s not too much of a stretch to link this fear or caution with Pride month and celebrations going on around us. For how long of folks had to wrestle with not being congruent with their public image and their inner understanding of sexual and gender identities? Bury it, hide it. This is so sad and so harmful.

What we long for, as the people of Jesus, is that we can help each other find that inner and outer congruence.

I had a conversation awhile back with a gay friend of mine about how, we believe, Jesus would accept and love transfolks as part of the kingdom of God. Without getting directly into this Scripture text, we discussed how the scribes and pharisees would look at the outer appearance and judge others, not knowing what the inner life was like. And we pondered this idea that perhaps salvation, the making whole of the self that we discover in Jesus, might lead us to some sense of inner and outer unity. That by supporting transfolks in their self-discovery and expression, we can participate in the saving work of God. That by expressing oneself outwardly in a way that is congruent with who we know ourselves to be outwardly, this might actually be the picture of true redemption and healing.

Doesn’t that sound like Jesus? Leading us to inner and outer congruency?

Don’t you want that? I know I do.

This is where the spiritual discipline and sacred rhythm of self-examination can lead us — to inner and outer healing and congruency. To salvation.

Before I close with some ideas about how we can work towards this depth of self-examination, I want to also make it very clear: this passage of condemnation and woe should make us uncomfortable. It should challenge us to consider what we hide and what we show and how to bring those into proper relationship. The reality is, not everything on the inside is going to need to be shown on the outside. There are private, delicate parts of us that we keep safe. But the inner journey with Jesus invites us to even bear to God our most delicate parts.

I remember a modern parable from my childhood, about how we each are like houses, with lots of rooms, and how we invite God into the front of the house, the presentable living space that we have made look nice. But the real transformation, according to the parable, begins when we invite Jesus into the messier places. The bedroom, the closet, the bathroom even. And in the process of inviting Jesus to come in, further, we participate with Christ in the renovation of our house, a healing and restoration unto what it was always meant to look like and be.

How do we begin this process? How do we go inward and examine our hearts? Here are a few ideas.

First, we get comfortable with being alone and silent. We talked about solitude at the beginning of this series and here it is again: we need to be able to sit with ourselves. Find our breath. Listen for the still voice of our hearts, the voice that Jesus speaks to. This is hard to do. We are inundated with stimulus, everywhere. So maybe we need to find spaces where we can be silent and still. Perhaps you decide to come sit here in the sanctuary during the week, when it’s unoccupied. Great. Or maybe it’s out on a walk, without headphones, without a phone, but just in nature, listening. We get comfortable with the inner voices and learn to pray into them, knowing that not all are going to be comfortable, but they can teach us and we can train them to soften, to slow, to simply be.

Second, to examine ourselves, we can pursue deep friendships and purposeful relationships. In the Celtic world, there is the notion of finding an Anam Cara, or Soul Friend. An anam cara is a person who we can share our soul with and truly be known, as much as we are able to share. I had a mentor use a very graphic image of this to describe the idea. He called it “open kimono.” You get it? A person you can bear your whole self to.

Now, friendships aren’t always easy to come by or deepen in this way, so we have to recognize it will take work. But perhaps there’s a person here today that you desire to connect with more in this way. Would you take the risk to speak to them of this? I offer, my door is open to talk and connect and explore this kind of depth of relationship, perhaps helping you identify a soul friend and learning to be with them.

Lastly, I have found that the practice of writing is a great way to do this inner examination work. Writing frees up lots of words and emotions in me. Writing breaks the ice in my heart. And honest writing can be a healing balm, where words can be released. Have you ever written something and then years later, read it back and been surprised by your ideas or your feelings? I know I have. And this kind of review can bring clarity to our inner world, our emotions, how our spirit is or was.

As beloved people of God, do not hear condemnation today, but rather, hear this strong invitation to journey into your heart with Christ. Let your heart and inner life be congruent with your outer world. We will be blessed by that, as you be you and show us your beloved self.

Christ goes with us in this work. May we walk towards Christ. Amen.