189 Removing Our Masks

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Removing Our Masks”, originally shared on February 10, 2022. It was the 189^th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.) 

   People have been making, wearing, and removing masks for as long as there have been people. Today were going to look at why, and how Christians can respond.

   The State of California is planning to remove the mandate for indoor mask-wearing next Wednesday, February 16^th. L.A. County will not until remove the mask mandate until we meet “post-surge” requirements that will probably not be met until the end of April, depending on the timing of vaccine availability for young children, unless there is another variant breakthrough.

   We are currently averaging about 9,500 cases a day, but rates are falling quickly, and we could meet the requirements by around mid-March.

   It seems like we have been wearing masks for a long time and we have.

   Human beings have made masks to take on characters as in cosplay, religious and cultural festivals, and theatre. We’ve made them to disguise ourselves as robbers do, and like the Lone Ranger and Zorro, and Lucha Libre wrestlers. And we’ve made them for practical reasons such as to sleep better, to stay warm, and to hydrate the skin.

   And we’ve made them to protect others and ourselves from viruses. 

   Our first masks at the start of this current pandemic were the standard for the time: cloth. They were handmade-to-order with Green Bay Packer fabric by one of our son’s colleagues.

   I remember talking in a video/blog/podcast back then about how I thought that corporations would soon be making them with their logos on them.  It was kind of a joke, but that definitely happened.

   Then we went to double layer masks, masks with an inside pocket for a coffee filter, surgical masks, then after not using them because there was a shortage in hospitals, basic white N95 masks became plentiful and we wore them. Now they come in more than just white and are provided free by the government. (You can find a really interesting article on the history of the N95 mask at https://www.fastcompany.com/90479846/the-untold-origin-story-of-the-n95-mask.) Then we wore the civilian version, the KN95. Then, some wore two masks.

   My cardiologist wears an N95 over a surgical mask. He calls it an “N96”.

   The most common mask, however, is the kind that is not visible. These are the masks people wear to disguise their real selves.

   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. We all fail to live up to our standards. We all sin. That’s why we need a Savior.

   People sometimes think, and even say, “I don’t go to church. They’re nothing but a bunch of hypocrites.” I think that a good response is, “Well come on by. There’s always room for one more.”

   I used to explain sin to confirmation students by asking how many of them would be willing to have a tv/monitor on their head that showed what they were thinking all day? Would you? Would it show the “you” that most people think you are? Probably not.

   The good news is that we don’t have to wear a mask before God. In fact, it’s not recommended, as Jesus said in Matthew 6:5-6

⁵ “And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. ⁶ But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

   Masks are of little use before God. Jesus suffered and died for us so that our masks can be removed by God.

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

   The good news is that we don’t need to. Jesus came to bring us new life and salvation, freedom from fear and forgiveness of sin. We are born again through a living relationship with the one true living God. We who were no people are now God’s people.

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

   We see this at work in the anointing of a little shepherd boy named David to be king. In 1 Samuel 16:7, God speaks to the prophet Samuel when a more suitable-seeming candidate is brought before him,

⁷ But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”

   When I was in seminary in Berkeley a pastor named Floyd Shaffer came and did a workshop on clown ministry. Then we were invited to go into San Francisco and, well, clown around.

   He said that clown make-up only hides our appearance. Because we are unrecognizable, however, our true self can emerge. 

   Hypocrisy is when we present an appearance to others that does not match our inner self. Actors in ancient Greece didn’t wear makeup, they wore masks. The Greek word for actor, therefore, is the root of the English word, “hypocrite”.

   Integrity is when both our mask and who we are, are the same.

   We may not know when, but we know that someday, maybe soon, we will no longer be required to wear physical masks. But just because we no long have to wear those masks doesn’t mean that we should stop wearing them. We will still be called to protect the vulnerable, and that will be up to each person’s character when it is no longer a requirement.

   Who knows how people will behave when they are at the upcoming Super Bowl LVI at SoFi Stadium this Sunday. Tickets are currently running $6,600 for the cheap seats up to $75,000 for the VIP sections. Some parking is going to cost more than some of the cheap seats! Do you think that people are going to be willing to stay home if they don’t feel well after they’ve spent that kind of money to go to the game? Will the Super Bowl be a “Super Spreader” event?

   But, someday, hopefully soon, we’ll see one another’s unfamiliar faces, face-to-face, without masks, and we still won’t know one another.

   God has seen us all along without our identity masks. He knows that we are both saints and sinners. That’s not the issue. The issue is our true identity.

   Paul writes in Romans 14:7-9,

⁷ We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. ⁸ If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s. ⁹ For to this end Christ died and lived again, so that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living.

   We are the Lord’s. That is our identity. We wear visible masks because we love one another and care for one another in the face of a deadly virus.

   We need no identity masks before God. God removed them at the cross and in their place has given us new life in our true selves.

   Our call is to proclaim freedom from the masks of identity that we make for ourselves and invite people instead to take the freedom of new life in Jesus Christ that is ours as a gift from God.