S:12 Take Off the Mask in the Pulpit

E1: Unmask the Heart and Mind

Remember wearing masks?

The inconvenience of it all, and in hindsight, the debunked reasons for wearing a mask in the first place. Preventative for sure, but with no guarantee. Every State, City, and School District seemed to have a different set of rules for the same virus. Though we towed the line, I don’t think the virus was listening.

And listening is something that requires you to take the mask off, not from your face but from your mind and heart.  

What follows may not be the ideal read for those of you who don’t go to church, but we are approaching Easter when a lot of you will attend church. Either way, I would ask that you read this short blog. Whether you realize it or not, you already have an opinion about church. Furthermore, I would like to hear back from you about your opinion. So, stay with it.

I’ve been listening unmasked for some time now.  

Sermons, homilies, discussions, and debates have been a staple diet for me for many years. So, let me get straight to the point and ask, what’s happened to the church pulpit? It seems to me that Ted Talks and Motivational Talks in the style of an entertaining Talk Show of 45 minutes, or more, have replaced the person who speaks with conviction, resolve, is informed, and most of all, is moved by what they are saying themselves. In most cases, such speakers were probably unaware of how persuasive they were in an almost perfect balance of ethos, pathos, and logos.

It seems to me that such speakers have been replaced by entertainers who are equally persuasive, but something is missing, or rather, something is needed that has lost its priority. An unhealthy stream of speakers have been delivering their philosophical statements from the pulpit, posted on social media platforms, as though God Himself had personally revealed something new formally undisclosed for the past two millennia. New and confusing twists are added like a pinch of salt about things that were once called sin, often labeled as emerged and emerging, or worse still, progressive. 

All this presented with the allurement of a rapper-come-life-coach performance, or softly-spoken-big-smile presentation. Congregations applaud while ambidextrously posting from an iPhone in one hand and sipping a beverage in the other. Is a thumb on the right hand more active than uplifted hands and hearts?

Let me paint the picture of what is missing, or deprioritized.   

“Then he said to me, ‘Son of man, eat this scroll I am giving you and fill your stomach with it.’ So, I ate it, and it tasted as sweet as honey in my mouth. He then said to me: ‘Son of man, go now to the people of Israel and speak my words to them’” (Ezekiel 3:3-4).

Quite an odd picture for sure. Ezekiel had to consume the Word of God. Yes, that’s right, he had to eat the paper (or papyrus) literally. He had to take it into himself to the degree it would affect his speaking. The picture continues from the Old Testament to the New Testament:

“I went to the angel and asked him to give me the small scroll. He said to me, ‘Take it and eat it. It will be bitter in your stomach, but it will be as sweet as honey in your mouth.’ I took the small scroll from the angel’s hand and ate it. It was as sweet as honey in my mouth, but when I had eaten it, it was bitter in my stomach…you must speak what God has revealed in front of many people, nations, languages, and kings’” (Revelation 10:9-11).

We see the same thing in both Testaments.

John had to consume the Word of God as Ezekiel did. By consuming they both took God’s Word into their heart and mind to such an extent that people instantly recognized it was God’s Word when they spoke. Consuming the Word meant taking the mask off their heart and mind. I’m not advocating that speakers from a Sunday pulpit eat the pages of the Bible. But the principle is there. Take the Word of God into yourself and then let it read you. Remember, it’s a living Word, not like Shakespeare or Dickens, but the living and active Word of God (1 Timothy 3:16).

Do that, and people will see a difference in the pulpit.

Once a congregation recognizes the pulpit is consistently filled with the unmasked speaker, maybe some will leave, some will stay for sure, but most of all, perhaps people who are looking for answers beyond an entertaining Sunday morning Motivational Ted Talk will start to fill churches again.     

Anyone who has been called to public life will have bitter and sweet things to say, specifically in the Christian faith. Courage does not come from strutting around but from a broken and contrite heart. As the Word of God is consumed, it will precisely do that. It will break your heart. Confidence does not come from eloquence or even formal education (and I have a great deal) but from time spent consuming the Word of God no matter how it tastes. If you have any education on any level, offer it to God as something for Him to breathe on.

Now, there are several types of people I’d like to encouragingly challenge that may be reading this blog who are still wearing a mask over their heart and mind. 

The first are the Peter types.

He got it wrong. He made mistakes. He put a mask on his heart and mind to the point where he denied his own conviction and resolve. He denied Christ, and as a result he got fired. The Gospel of Mark tells us, “But go, tell his disciples and Peter” (Mark 16:7). There you have it; Peter is no longer a disciple. He’s unemployed, and as a former fisherman, he can’t catch a single fish (Luke 5, John 21).

But then the resurrected Christ spoke to him directly saying, “Feed my lambs…feed my sheep” (John 21:15-17). Something had changed in Peter. He took the mask off his mind and heart as Christ questioned him three times saying, “Do you love me?” It tasted sweet but it quickly became bitter when Jesus asked the third time “Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, ‘Do you love me?’ He said, “Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you.’ Jesus said, Feed my sheep.’”

If you are a Peter type, you may have rejected God, but His call has never left you. Take the mask off your heart and mind and consume the Word of God no matter how it tastes. As L.P. Hartley said, “The past is a foreign country” so you will find what the Word of God talks about your mistakes, “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more” (Hebrews 8:12).    

The second are the Ezra types.

He worked hard, he did good, and then he burned out. General McArthur said, “Old soldiers never die, they simply fade away.” This was Ezra. He was a faithful, reliable, dependable, and a trustworthy man. After returning with a remnant of Israel to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem, he simply fades away. Tired and exhausted. Then a young man comes along called Nehemiah. He rebuilds the city walls in 52 days rallying a huge team with all the best practices, skills, alliances, partnerships, and youthful vigor.

In the process of rebuilding the walls, Nehemiah finds the Scriptures but could not read them. He was not illiterate; he simply did not have the experience. With all his skills and talents, he could not proclaim the Scriptures with godly authority. But Ezra could. The younger man finds the older man and invites him to return to the pulpit to teach the Scriptures. Ezra not only knew them, but he had also lived them. He could say with clarity, like King David, “Why so downcast O my soul? Put your trust in God. For I will yet praise Him” (Psalm 45:3). You see, Ezra had consumed the Word of God. With an unmasked heart and mind the older man read from the pulpit. The impact was so great the people “kneeled down and worshiped the Lord” (Nehemiah 8:6).

If you’re over a certain age and deemed old by this present generation, we need you and your example to come back unmasked. No one really talks about it, but age discrimination is rampant in the church. We talk about inclusion in terms of race and gender but we’ve forgotten that includes age as well.

The third type are those that resemble the two disciples on the road to Emmaus.

You might call them an absent congregation. They knew the Word of God but only in an intellectual sense, like taking a class on mechanics without having callouses on your hand from using a wrench. They had not consumed the Word of God by allowing it to enter their life. Sure, they could quote it, but it did not mean anything beyond cleverness. That is, until the resurrected Christ walked beside them and expounded the Word of God in such an unmasked way that their “hearts burned within them” (Luke 24:13-35). You could say their masks were burned off their hearts. Not only that, but they also turned around and were sent straight back to Jerusalem to unmask the other disciples.  

If you are the road to Emmaus type, you have a need for the pulpit to change from entertaining Motivational Ted Talks to Sunday’s where your heart burns within you through God’s Word in all its bitter and sweet ways.   

I hope you can see that the first and second types need to take off the mask from their hearts and minds for people to turn around. It starts in the pulpit when the preacher has the courage and resolve to take off the mask and consume the Word of God with all its bitterness and sweetness. No longer compromised, pliable, sanitized, and vanilla.  

My hope is that men and women will once more feel as Jeremiah felt: “But if I say, ‘I will not mention his word or speak anymore in his name,’ his word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in; indeed, I cannot’” (Jeremiah 20:9).

Please, take off the mask as a voice in the wilderness preparing the way of the Lord.

(Let me know your thoughts in the comment box)