Church, Know Thyself Acts 17:27-28a (NLT) “His purpose was for the nations to seek after God and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him — though he is not far from any one of us. For in him we live and move and exist.” If we want to know more fully who God is, we need to dig deeper into understanding ourselves. As the French Reformation-era theologian John Calvin put it: “Without knowledge of self, there is no knowledge of God. Our wisdom, insofar as it ought to be deemed true and solid wisdom, consists almost entirely of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves. But as these are connected by many ties, it is not easy to determine which of the two precedes and gives birth to the other.” We need not be afraid to do the work of growing in understanding ourselves. To ignore this important work may lead to missing out on more fully knowing the very One in whom we live and move and have our being.
The tradition of Holy Week, beginning with Palm/Passion Sunday on March 24, and concluding with the Three Days of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday, is all about naming the pain. It’s about being honest about the atrocities humans have thought up, remembering the command to love, waiting for redemption and holding the tension of our own participation in all of it. It is an invitation to know ourselves and God more deeply. One of the greatest lies the world tells us is that we are separate from God. The Franciscan, father Richard Rohr, has said many times in various ways that we think we are human beings trying to become spiritual, when in fact — and this is what the Incarnation of Jesus reveals — we are spiritual beings learning to become human, fully human in the way that Jesus was. The language that scripture gives is that we are in Christ — therefore, in no way can we ever be separate from God. This is a complete gift, there is no earning it. Likewise, there is no losing it.
There’s no need to pretend, to try to be better than we actually are, to wear masks so that people will think we’re good enough. It is a gift to let go of pretending to be someone other than who we really are. It is a gift to take off the masks we wear so that others might truly see us. It is a gift to be vulnerable and not mocked, to be welcomed without shame. This gift is meant for individuals and for those who come together as the church. The church is meant to be a group of people who recognize and embody this gift and then nurture it in one another. We are at our best when we acknowledge struggles openly and honestly and work together for healing and reconciliation. In this way, more healing (that is, salvation) is released into the world.
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