“A mask may reveal as much as it conceals.”
~ Unknown
This a version of this sermon was originally preached at the First Universalist Church in Yarmouth, Maine in 2005. This version was offered at the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church Unitarian Universalist in Charlottesville, VA on Sunday, January 11, 2015. A podcast will be posted here so that you can listen if you prefer.
Our Opening Words are from the Gospel of Quentine Tarrentino, Kill Bill, Vol. 2. Bill speaks:
“An essential characteristic of the superhero mythology
is, there's the superhero, and there's the alter ego. Batman is actually Bruce
Wayne, Spider-Man is actually Peter Parker. When he wakes up in the morning,
he's Peter Parker. He has to put on a costume to become Spider-Man. And it is
in that characteristic that Superman stands alone. Superman did not become
Superman, Superman was born Superman. When Superman wakes up in the morning,
he's Superman. His alter ego is Clark Kent. His outfit with the big red
"S", that's the blanket he was wrapped in as a baby when the Kents found
him. Those are his clothes. What Kent wears, the glasses, the business suit,
that's the costume. That's the costume Superman wears to blend in with us.
Clark Kent is how Superman views us. And what are the characteristics of Clark
Kent? He's weak, he's unsure of himself... he's a coward. Clark Kent is
Superman's critique on the whole human race.”
* * *
Even a cursory look around my office—and even more so if
you could see my office at home—you will discover something very important
about me: I am into comic books and super heroes. (Big surprise, right? Nikki Skaggs even embroidered superhero logos
on the back side of this really beautiful stole.) I recently cataloged my comic book collection
at nearly 2,000 issues, and I have a little more than fifty action figures. (Most of them variations of the Batman.) And let’s be clear – I’m not one of those
white-gloves and tweezers kind of collectors who keeps everything in its
original packaging so as to maintain its maximum value. Oh no! I read
my comic books and, since I’m among friends, have been known to play with my
action figures from time to time. I’ve
even started making stop-motion videos with them. So yeah, I’m a comic book geek.
Yet this morning I want to use the superhero as a window
through which to explore something really quite relevant to us—you and me—and
not just something for folks who’s super powers include fitting into incredibly
tight spandex outfits. Before we get into
that, though, I want to quibble a bit with the reading we heard as our Opening
Words.
You see, as I said, I’ve read a lot of comic books. And believe it or not, a great many of them
explore real philosophical issues (in-between super powered smack-downs of
course). And one of the favorites, the
one that was the core of our opening words, is the question of identity. Just who is the Batman: is he the man or the mask? Over and over throughout the years Peter
Parker has thought about, and tried, opting out of the super hero biz, but
again and again the question comes up – can he simply throw away the costume and
live a normal life, or is he somehow destined to be Spiderman? This kind of exploration is actually in a lot
of comics — the ones, at least, by the good writers. And with all due respect to Mr.
Tarantino, the current consensus is that while Superman may in fact be a
“strange visitor from another planet,” his true identity is the simple Kansas
farm boy, and millionaire playboy Bruce Wayne is really just a more or less
convenient persona into which the Batman retires at the end of a shift. Still, his essential point remains
correct: part of the classic superhero
myth involves the interplay of identity and alternate identity.
And see? That’s where
it gets relevant for us. After all we,
too, wear a variety of masks in our day-to-day living. Don’t we play a multitude of roles, finding
ourselves to a greater or lesser extent revealing or concealing our “true
selves” depending on the situation? I’ve
had stay-at-home mothers come to talk with me, once their kids had grown up and
were spending more and more time out of the nest, talk to me with great concern
because they felt that they had played the role of “mommy” for so long that
they no longer knew who they were “in real life.”
And don’t we, at least sometimes, find ourselves playing a
role that really feels removed from who we really are? Able to bend steel with our bare hands we
feign difficulty opening the lid of a mayonnaise jar. I’ve had women and men talk to me about the
difficulties of having to hide—or, at least, seriously downplay—parts of who they
are while at work, for instance: everything
from people who pretend not to be as smart as they really are, to people who’ve
had to deny the existence of the person they love most.
You know what I’m talking about – right? We know what it’s like to play more than one
role. Do you ever wonder which one is you?
Which one is the real, the authentic, the true you? It can be hard to know, can’t it?
This sermon this morning is an update of one I preached
ten years ago in another congregation.
That one was suggested by a Worship Weaver I was working with then. He brought that Tarrentino reading to my
attention, and suggested the title – “Death to Clark Kent.” I think the title
was his way of expressing that yearning we all feel to be ourselves—just ourselves—no
games, no masks, no roles; to simply be our full, complete selves all the
time. This is no new longing. It’s a frequent form of the hero’s journey –
the discovering of one’s true identity – and it’s a goal described in a lot of
the world’s spiritual literature.
Again and again Lao Tsu and Chuan Tzu talk about the “self
free person,” the person who plays no roles, who simply is. Tilden Edwards, one of the founders of the
Shalem Institute, speaks of Jesus as one who was “always discovering his
identity, [and who was not] possessed of one.”
Or, we might say, possessed by
one – forced into a role rather than freely and organically discovering himself
in each and every moment. This was, in
its simplest terms, the idea behind the “go and find yourself” movement. There’s this fantasy that Superman could
throw off his glasses and funky suits, could get rid of the geeky and gawky
Clark Kent and be, once and for all, the Man of Steel he was meant to be. And if he could do it, maybe we could, too.
I have to admit, though, that I wonder about this
quest. There’s no question that in my
lifetime I’ve played a lot of different roles, and I know I've even played roles
that have not felt completely authentic, but I’m not so sure it’s all that easy
to know which “me” is me. I’m a parent,
a partner, a pastor, a prestidigitator, a published author, a pain in the neck
(who apparently really likes alliteration), and each of these – all of these –
is me. I’m courageous and cowardly; I’ve been incredibly insightful
and incredibly off the mark. How do I determine which version of me is the
“real” me?
My friend Takeo Fujikura told me something about his
language that I find really profound. In
Japanese, he said, there is no single first-person pronoun, no way to say
"I." Or, to be more precise,
there is no single single first-person
pronoun—there are, if I remember correctly, something like seven. He said that this is because Japanese culture
recognizes that there is no single "me." (As Walt Whitman said, "I contain
multitudes.") The “me” I am with my
parents is different than the “me” I am with with my friends, and both are
different than the “me” I am with my kids.
The “me” I am in the break room is different than the “me” I am when I’m
called into the boss’ office. I mean,
yes, it’s all “me.” But …well … you know
what I mean, right? You’ve known those
differences, too.
The cover of our Order of Service has on it the cover of
JLA #51, which is the beginning of an
absolutely fabulous four-issue story arc featuring the Justice League of
America. As my fellow comic geeks know,
there have been many iterations of this super team, but at time of this story it
consisted of the big guns: the Batman,
Superman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Flash, Green Lantern, and Martian Manhunter. Now, if I can resist going into way too much
detail, let’s just say that in this story there’s a sixth dimensional creature
with the ability to grant wishes. (And
if you think that sounds weird try reading the book of Revelations sometime!)
So, this creature hones in on Superman's thought in a
moment of frustration that he wished he and the others didn’t have to live with
two identities. And, suddenly, there is
both a Superman and a Clark Kent, a Batman and a Bruce Wayne. Over the course of the series, each of these
figures begins to change, to transform, and not in particularly pretty
ways. Superman, without the humanizing influence
of his adoptive parents, becomes more violent and coldly authoritarian. Batman, without the driving passion of his
grief over his parents’ murder, becomes unfocused and ineffectual, an empty
shell. Clark Kent, on the other hand, without
the cape and tights, becomes the coward he portrays. And Bruce Wayne, without the Dark Knight, begins
to lose his mind because there’s no outlet for his raging grief. Similar difficulties befall each of the
heroes, until they finally realize that they each need to reunite their now
separate selves.
Which brings us back, quite nicely, to one of my favorite
theological positions —“both/and.” A
number of years ago I read about a psychologist at Harvard who was studying why
it’s so hard for people to change behaviors they themselves find
objectionable. Even though there are
aspects of their personalities or behavior that they really and truly would
like to change, no amount of effort seems to have any lasting result. Maybe
you’ve heard about people like that. I
think I saw a movie about people like that once.
Anyway, as part of her study this psychologist had people
make a list of the behavior traits that disturbed them the most. She also had them make a list of the
behaviors that they were most proud of. What she found was remarkable – the two
lists were almost invariably mirror images of one another. Let’s say that a person was bothered about never
being on time and rarely following through on commitments; at the same time,
though, this person would take great pride in being free and spontaneous. Somebody else who thought that their rigidity
was problematic also thought that their discipline was a positive. The psychologist posited that people have so
much trouble riding themselves of their most negative traits because they are
so intimately tied to their most positive ones.
Superman needs Clark Kent.
The Batman needs Bruce Wayne. And
you and I need those parts of ourselves that we would rather not
acknowledge. We need to be our whole
selves, not just those parts we think are acceptable or that project what we
think we should be like. Years ago the Catholic priest Henri Nouwen
popularized the phrase, “the wounded healer” as a way of capturing the idea
that it is precisely our wounds, our woundedness and our weaknesses, that are
our greatest strengths.
That’s not exactly intuitive, is it? Not, apparently, logical. Not even, if you’re anything like me a good
bit of the time, all that believable.
Yet apparently it’s true.
Superman and Clark Kent need each other; Bruce Wayne and the Batman need
each other. And you … well … you need
…you. We can’t split off part of ourselves
and still be whole.
But does that mean we’re condemned to be, to stay, as we
are right now? Does that mean we can’t –
or shouldn’t – try to change? To
improve? To grow? There’s another comic book arc in which
Superman loses his powers but still wants to fight the bad guys. So he goes to the Batcave and undergoes a
kind of superhero boot camp. Clark Kent
wants to be a hero even if he’s lost the “super.” Change is
possible, but it can’t simply be done by negating or rejecting those parts
of ourselves we find unlovable. A
Christian colleague and friend likes to say, “God loves you exactly as you are,
and loves you too much to let you stay that way.”
The key to change, the key to growth, the key to living as
our true and authentic selves is learning to recognize and appreciate the
strengths in our shadows (and the shadow of our strengths) and then to
integrate the two. Near the end of that JLA story line, the two aspects of the
heroes join, but not fully. They
coexist, yet still remain less than integrated – two heads, four arms, torsos
joined like victims of some awful transporter accident on the Enterprise. And, of course, in this state they are
virtually useless (as well as, you know, in agony). And many of us get stuck in this in-between
place when we first try to acknowledge our “dark side” yet are not quite ready
to embrace it.
It’s Wonder Woman who finally saves the day since in truth
we are always wholly ourselves and Wonder Woman is, in essence, the Spirit of
Truth. The narrator has this to say,
“The Spirit of Truth.
The only force on earth that has even a chance of galvanizing her
friends and allies … of forcing ten men to acknowledge that they are but parts
of a whole … useless, crippled, fragments who cannot coexist apart … who must
for once … just once in a world of never-ending battles … stop fighting … and
surrender … to each other.”
Stop fighting and surrender. Good advice, and a quest worth pursuing.
Pax tecum,
RevWik
One Sunday, as I was preaching about modern Unitarian Universalism's historic roots in the Christian tradition(s), I had two parishioners come forward and lift up those drapes. The long-time members were not at all surprised by what was revealed, of course, but many of the more recent members had never even thought to look behind the drapes and, so, an audible gasp arose as people saw the two golden crosses that were built into that wall.
