(15) The Mask

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for The Mask, originally shared on May 18, 2020. It was the fifteenth video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   [take off mask] Did you recognize me? Today, we’ll be talking about the importance of using masks for one another, and their utter futility before God.

   When I was a kid, I imagined what it would be like to be a grown-up, wearing masks. Of course I was thinking more like the ones worn by the Lone Ranger, or Zorro, that only covered the eyes.

   The Phantom of the Opera wore a ¾ mask.

   Full face masks were worn by the Power Rangers, Lucha Libre wrestlers, Ghostface in the Scream movies, Spiderman and a lot of people at Comicon.

    Today, masks are becoming more and more common as a means of protecting others from us if we are possibly carrying the Coronavirus. In many areas, wearing them has become a requirement if we are away from home. 

   All of this hasn’t gone unnoticed by marketers. We are seeing more and more masks that use designs that have corporate logos on them, sports teams logos, national flags, funny designs, and so on.  GQ and Vogue have masks in production, as do many fashion designers.

    The origin of wearing masks to contain diseases is really interesting. I’ve included a link to an article on the origin of the M95 mask, and I guarantee that if you don’t already know its history, you will never look at a face mask in the same way again.

https://www.fastcompany.com/90479846/the-untold-origin-story-of-the-n95-mask

    And yet, we when we had to go to the post office last week, we were shocked at how few people we saw on our way there and back who were wearing masks.

   One of our Dr. friends passed on to us the observation, “Can everyone please just follow the government instructions so we can knock out this coronavirus and be done?! I feel like a kindergartner who keeps losing more recess time because one or two kids can’t follow directions.”

   Do you know what the origin of the word Hypocrite is? It’s an actor, one who wears a mask.

   Certainly, we are all hypocrites in one way or another. When I was serving a local church and people would say something like, “I don’t go to church. They’re nothing but a bunch of hypocrites,” I would say, “Well come on by. There’s always room for one more.”

   We are all hypocrites in one way or another. We never live completely as we believe or want to. Even Paul, who wrote much of the New Testament, said that the good he would do he does not do, and that which he would do, he does not, but thanks be to God in Jesus Christ!

   When I used to explain sin to confirmation students I would ask how many of them would be willing to have a tv/monitor on head that showed what they were thinking all day? Would you? Probably not.

   The good news is that we don’t have to wear a mask before God. I certainly would not be working if we tried.

*Matthew 6:5-6

    Masks are of little use before God.

   We all do care what people think about us. Our reputation is our credibility. This becomes a problem when we care more about what people think of us than who we really are.

   Who we are is that we are both saint and sinner.

 *Proverbs 21:2.

    I once had a philosophy professor who, when he finished his lesson plan, would go off into these wild thought riffs, and get into these mind-blowing ideas. One I remember most clearly was the observation that most of the world’s evil, and perhaps all of the world’s most horrendous evil, is committed by people who in their heart of hearts believe that they are doing good. “All deeds are right in the sight of the doer, but the LORD weighs the heart.”

    When we repent of our sin and ask God to forgive us, we need hold nothing back. God already knows.

   God is the nourishing and transforming living water that never ends.

   God is the living water that wears down mountains in an instant.

   This is the time to let God use our time inside to form our interior selves, our living relationship with the living God, like washing the inside of a cup to make the outside clean. To shape us into a new creation, someone in whom God dwell and who God empowers to be the people God can use.

   We need wear no masks before God.