The eCrozier

Henry Ward Beecher, the great 19^th Century Protestant preacher was about to deliver a lecture series on preaching at Yale, but was unsure of what to say. Maybe the erupting scandal in his personal life was giving him writer’s (preacher’s?) block? In his hotel room on the morning of the lecture, his life came crashing down. He was confronted, looking in the mirror, with the shame, vanity, and hypocrisy of his life. Frederick Buechner describes the scene this way:

When he stood there looking into the hotel mirror with soap on his face and a razor in his hand, part of what he saw was his own shame and horror, the sight of his own folly, the judgment one can imagine he found even harder to bear than God’s, which was his own judgment on himself, because whereas God is merciful, we are none of us very good at showing mercy on ourselves.

Buechner’s insight is searing. Such awareness of our own self-judgment is necessary for a truthful and faithful relationship with God as revealed in Jesus. My seminary chaplain, the Reverend Churchill Gibson, was full of wit and wisdom. He always preached the same sermon, entitled: “God Loves You!” About halfway through the sermon right before he’d get to the Gospel medicine that cures us, he inevitably offered the following words: “Well, sin being what sin is…” That was his way of getting to an admission of our lives as they truly are.

The Prayer of Manasseh tells us the truth: “I have sinned, O Lord, I have sinned, and I know my wickedness only too well” (BCP p. 91). OK, I get it. While I need reminding (daily) of my sin, I also need reminding (hourly) of God’s mercy given in Jesus. My self-judgment, which can be harsher than anything or anyone, can become a real roadblock to my discipleship. It can lead me to become a person who is hard and rigid, unforgiving and merciless to myself. And that, of course, leads me to share that “gift” with others.

I know people who appear to me as merciless. Maybe they’re not that way always, but it is how they show themselves to me. They seem angry all the time. They seem to have contempt for other people’s sins and believe that those bad people just get what they deserve. My hunch is that such merciless people are full of self-contempt. They seem unable to love their neighbors, or to show mercy to them, because they’re unable to love or show mercy to their closest neighbor, themselves. Their merciless judgment on others comes from their own merciless judgment on themselves. They have little compassion for others because they have little compassion for themselves.

The Good News of Jesus begins with the truth that I’m a sinner; that, as the Bible says, I’m “evil in the imagination of my heart.” Or as Buechner writes: When I look in the mirror what I see is at least in part “a chicken, a phony, and a slob.” But the Good News of Jesus is also, to be sure, that I am “loved anyway, cherished, forgiven, bleeding to be sure, but also bled for.” That’s the whole truth and without it we will never be people of love, compassion, and mercy.

+Scott