Someone in my chaplaincy cohort was on to me. And I’ll admit that I found it frustrating. In our group sessions, she would suggest that I was holding something back. I want to see the real Kyle, she would say. But I didn’t feel like I was being anything other than the real Kyle. What was expected of me?
I didn’t like this. I certainly wasn’t trying to be dishonest; I simply felt that there were certain things I should share, and there were other things that were best left unspoken. I was annoyed by the repeated suggestions that I was withholding something that should be shared with the group. And of course, that annoyance remained unvoiced.
We were in the middle of Clinical Pastoral Education, a chaplaincy experience usually undertaken after one’s first year of seminary. The setting of this chaplaincy was a busy inner city hospital. It wasn’t an easy place. Because it was a Level One trauma center in a major city with a fair amount of crime, we saw gunshot victims and every severe injury or illness that other hospitals couldn’t take.
I suppose I was trying to tough it out. Some of my colleagues expressed all manner of emotions in our group conversations. There were tears. There was anger. But I prided myself on having it all together. No matter how much troubled or bothered me, no matter what irritated me, I was self-composed.
I had all manner of excuses for maintaining my composure and for bottling up some of my emotions. I had had real life ministry experience in parishes before serving in that hospital. You can’t lose your cool in front of others in a church setting, I thought. You must hold it together and know when to speak up and when to remain silent. I assumed that my colleague didn’t understand that because she hadn’t had such experience.
But in hindsight, my colleague understood something that I didn’t, and I couldn’t quite see this at the time. And yes, I knew something about the emotional filtering that’s necessary for a leader, which I’m not sure my colleague fully grasped. Each of us had a piece of the truth.
We don’t get easy words from Jesus in today’s Gospel reading. To be honest, it would have been far easier to ignore this reading altogether and preach on one of the others. But that doesn’t seem right to me. When Jesus says things that make us squirm, it’s our bounden duty to tackle them and spend time with them until we can make some peace with them. And the way to make peace with Jesus’s difficult words is often to hold two extremes together. Both extremes carry some truth, and to find the entire truth, we need both pieces.
The most obvious piece is what’s most visible. In Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount, he refers to the tradition of the law, a good and venerable tradition that he’s carrying forward into his life. He gives obvious examples. You’ve heard it said that you shouldn’t murder. You’ve heard it said that you shouldn’t commit adultery. You’ve heard it said that you shouldn’t swear falsely. All these laws are common knowledge.
But then there’s the other invisible piece, lurking in the depths of the heart. Here’s where Jesus makes us uneasy. I say to you that anger can lead to murder. I say to you that even looking lustfully at another is akin to adultery. I say to you that offering gifts at the altar is shallow ritual unless you seek reconciliation with your enemies. I say to you that divorce should not be an easy exit strategy to avoid embracing the difficulties of marriage. I say to you that you should forego oaths and, instead, speak plainly and honestly.
These are the two pieces of the moral picture handed to us by Jesus, and we need both to arrive at the truth. If we only have one piece, we assume that our visible actions are enough. If we refrain from murder, adultery, or swearing falsely, then we’re doing just fine. On the other hand, if we’re incapacitated by guilt because of the disturbing emotions that seep unsolicited into our hearts, then we will be of no moral use. Visible actions and the invisibility of the heart are both needed.
Part of knowing the depths of one’s heart is also the wisdom to know what should be said and what should be left unsaid. It’s knowing when the nasty email should not be sent in haste. It’s knowing when a mean glance or a rude word should be avoided.
According to Jesus, it all starts with the heart. And here, he has provided fodder for a piece of ancient wisdom from the early Church, which holds that the inner world inside each of us is merely a microcosm of the larger world. Perhaps this is what my colleague in Clinical Pastoral Education instinctively knew. If each of us is honest, we’ll see within us things that terrify us. We’ll find murderous impulses lurking in the hatred that festers within. We’ll find urges to steal because we so covet what someone else has, whether a gift, talent, or material object. We’ll find a deep-seated fear of not having enough that might lead us to do anything to feel like we do have enough. If we look deep within, we’re probably horrified. Heinous crimes are not the sole provision of criminals behind bars; they reside in our hearts, too.
We’ve heard it said, give voice to your anger so that the truth can be named. But Jesus says to us, tell the truth and name your hurt, but then let it go. Otherwise, it’ll eat you alive. We’ve also heard it said that ignoring our erotic urges is mere prudishness. But Jesus says to us that none of our urges is hidden from God and that God can take those feelings and transform them into desire for him. We have heard it said that sometimes divorce is the lesser of two evils, but Jesus says to us that perhaps we in the Church often fail to uphold and support all who live within the covenant of marriage, especially when things get tough.
It’s only by tackling all the frightening things inside our hearts that we can begin to live as Jesus calls us to live. And to do this, we need both pieces of the truth. First, we must look deep within, where the demons hide, and call them out. We recognize our tendency to claim power by holding onto anger and resentment. We acknowledge our inherent cowardliness when we’re passive aggressive or utter unkind remarks rather than approaching someone and asking to be reconciled.
But then there’s the hard reality that frequently when we look within our hearts at the monsters lurking there, we can’t simply make them disappear, which is why the visible things we do matter. In full awareness of our aimless interior posture, we behave as if we’re better than our hearts seem to be, not to be dishonest but to train ourselves to live towards God’s glory and not towards sin.
It's a deep tragedy that people who feel unworthy of God’s love or who are angry at God stay away from church. Why should we presume that God wants nothing to do with our anger, lust, or rage? Why should we assume that we can decide whether or not we can approach God’s altar for grace and forgiveness? Isn’t the first step to go there in the first place because we want God to change us?
And this is precisely why our presence to one another, in person, in the flesh, is so crucial. When we come into this holy place, we bring everything—our selves, our souls and bodies. We can’t keep anything from God. It’s all here. All our anger at the person we see in another pew, all our jealousy of the person who has more money or a better job, all our envy of someone else’s childlike faith. It’s all here. And this is exactly where God wants it to be.
When we come here each Sunday, we bring it all. God asks that we hold nothing back, because all of it—not part of it or some of it, but all of it—is to be placed on the Altar. God reaches inside our hearts, touches our rage, and heals it. God reaches in and puts salve on the wounds where we’ve been broken by the Church, society, or one another. God takes our emotional urges and redirects them to love of him, so that we can in turn share that love with all. God doesn’t want only some of it. God doesn’t want us to filter certain things out and control access to those most favorable parts. God wants all of it. God wants all of you.
And when we let God in, the most miraculous thing happens. We find that we are free. We are no longer chained to our inner demons. We no longer hide the little world inside our hearts. We open it up and offer it to God.
You have heard it said that church is the place to be prim, proper, and polite. But Jesus tells us that God wants all of us, no secrets and no doors on our hearts. Because God wants to take it all into his loving arms, transform it, and give it back to us so that we can be whole again.
Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany
February 12, 2023