Inside (Hebrews 10:11-25)

First UMC of Pocatello

November 17, 2024

Hebrews 10:11-25

I’d like to begin by sharing a poem with you. I read it for the first time a couple of weeks ago and have been returning to it almost daily. Marie Howe, a former poet laureate of New York, wrote it, and the title of the poem is “The Affliction.” I’d like to hold her poem up next to this highly theological passage from Hebrews, which, as we’ve heard, speaks of the affliction of sin, the saving sacrifice of Christ, and the promise of a cleansed conscience and renewed heart.

Here’s “The Affliction” by Marie Howe:

When I walked across a room I saw myself walking

as if I were someone else,

when I picked up a fork, when I pulled off a dress,

as if I were in a movie.

It’s what I thought you saw when you looked at me.

So when I looked at you, I didn’t see you

I saw the me I thought you saw, as if I were someone else.

I called that outside—watching. Well I didn’t call it anything

when it happened all the time.

But one morning after I stopped the pills—standing in the kitchen

for one second I was inside looking out.

Then I popped back outside. And saw myself looking.

Would it happen again? It did, a few days later.

My friend Wendy was pulling on her winter coat, standing by the kitchen door

and suddenly I was inside and I saw her.

I looked out from my own eyes

and I saw: her eyes: blue gray transparent

and inside them: Wendy herself!

Then I was outside again,

and Wendy was saying, Bye-bye, see you soon,

as if Nothing Had Happened.

She hadn’t noticed. She hadn’t known that I’d Been There

for Maybe 40 Seconds,

and that then I was Gone.

She hadn’t noticed that I Hadn’t Been There for Months,

years, the entire time she’d known me.

I needn’t have been embarrassed to have been there for those seconds;

she had not Noticed The Difference.

This happened on and off for weeks,

and then I was looking at my old friend John:

: suddenly I was in: and I saw him,

and he: (and this was almost unbearable)

he saw me see him,

and I saw him see me.

He said something like, You’re going to be ok now,

or, It’s been difficult hasn’t it,

but what he said mattered only a little.

We met—in our mutual gaze—in between

a third place I’d not yet been.

Outside or inside. Absent or present. Distant or close. Watching the fiction of the self or seeing the reality of others. Marie Howe uses these dichotomies and tensions to explore the condition of sin as a kind of dissociation, an inability or unwillingness to be present. There are many reasons why we might dissociate from reality, flee the moment that we’re in, or numb our perceptions. It can be a legitimate defense against trauma, a way to manage anxiety. It can also come from a compulsion toward perfection, or a fear of intimacy.

This poem speaks to such a deep place in me because this is very often how I experience the affliction of sin. Just as an example, sometimes I will be playing with my kids and, suddenly, instead of truly seeing them, I will watch myself with them from the outside, see the dad I think others are seeing, evaluating whether or not he is one of the good dads. This happened just a few days ago at the Spaghetti dinner on Friday night. I was with the toddlers in the gym. They were running around, chasing each other, kicking and throwing balls. My son, Loren, got so carried away that without warning he tore all his clothes off and started sprinting around the gym naked, cackling. He was so completely happy. And I had a real war within me. On the one hand I was so happy to see him so happy. I was amazed by his unselfconscious joy. On the other hand, I felt myself popping outside, glancing over at the kitchen, wondering what other people were thinking. I was seeing myself and my reaction through the invented judgment of others.

I think that on balance I won that inner struggle. I noticed myself moving away in the moment and I called myself back. I didn’t experience the whole thing purely, but neither did I yell at or shame Loren. I laughed. Sus and I slowly corralled him and helped him get his clothes back on.

I wonder if you ever catch yourself watching your life from the outside, rather than seeing reality vividly through your own eyes? I wonder if there are voices that you carry which whisper or shout to you that you are not enough, that you need to keep close tabs on your behavior or image, that you need to go away, even when you’re “there,” to be safe. I wonder if it hurts that the people closest to you can’t tell that you haven’t been there, really, the whole time they’ve known you.

In Hebrews 10, the author quotes the prophet Jeremiah. In the tradition, Jeremiah is sometimes called the “Weeping Prophet” because of the intensity of his grief over the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians six centuries before Christ. The Babylonian Exile was the darkest moment in the Israelite’s history. It felt like God had forsaken them because of how bad and broken they had been. Yet in a profound passage, the promise of God cuts through the darkness, speaking through Jeremiah about a complete forgiveness and forgetting of sins. There is coming a day, God says, when “I will put my teaching within them and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. No longer will one teach his neighbor or his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they will all know me, from the least to the greatest of them.”

We might wonder where Jeremiah found the strength to stay centered in himself. To see clearly and feel fully both the brutal reality of his people’s situation and the future hope of God’s salvation. Marie Howe would have us wonder if Jeremiah had been fully seen by someone else, whether someone’s fully present gaze had met his own gaze, and if, in that powerful third space where presence meets presence, this new possibility was born. And the answer is Yes! Yes, Jeremiah was fully seen, fully known. Here is how he describes his call into prophetic ministry in the first chapter of his book.

This is what God said:

“Before I shaped you in the womb, I knew all about you. Before you saw the light of day, I had holy plans for you: A prophet to the nations— that’s what I had in mind for you.” But I said, “Hold it, Master God! Look at me. I don’t know anything. I’m only a boy!” God told me, “Don’t say, ‘I’m only a boy.’ I’ll tell you where to go and you’ll go there. I’ll tell you what to say and you’ll say it. Don’t be afraid of a soul. I’ll be right there, looking after you.” God reached out, touched my mouth, and said, “Look! I’ve just put my words in your mouth—hand-delivered! See what I’ve done? I’ve given you a job to do…”

Before we were born, God saw us. Before we saw the light of day, God had crafted holy plans for us. God will show us where we need to go and provide exactly what we need to do what we’re called to do. And God knew our essence and our purpose before things got all beaten up and muddled and scary – before the affliction.

What Jeremiah experienced with God – knowing himself according to how God saw him – was special, but he prophesied that one day it would be the norm. And the author of Hebrews tells us that the day has come. Today, Jesus has put away our sin, broken the powers of sin and death. Jesus has forgiven us and forgotten all the mess that we’ve made of things or that the world has made of us. The affliction can be healed because God is there to meet our gaze, to really see us. And God calls us into a community of mutual seeing. God wants us to experience the power of that third space, where we all, seeing through our own eyes, experiencing things from the inside, meet each other’s reality.

What happens in that new creation where we are once again “naked and unashamed” (Gen. 2:25) as our ancestors were in the Garden? What happens in that new community where we know each other fully as we are fully known (1 Cor. 13:12)?

Well, the author of Hebrews tells us that we can “consider one another in order to provoke love and good works, not neglecting to gather together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging each other, and all the more as you see the day approaching” (10:24-25). When we really let ourselves be seen as we are, and when we really see others as they are, then we will know the right ways to encourage and be encouraged to step into our gifts and embrace the various beautiful “holy plans” that God has for us.

How can we work with the Holy Spirit to form this community of presence and holy provocation? The Church must be a place of profound hospitality. Marie Howe describes the experience of being seen as “almost unbearable.” We who are regulars must know this, and we must recognize that, for most people, coming to Church starts as a risk: How will I be seen? Will I be seen at all? What will the sight of the people teach me about the sight of God?

We have a responsibility to create an environment that corresponds to the reality of Christ’s forgiveness and forgetting of sins. This means being on guard against snap judgments, against making assumptions, against a consumer attitude toward Church. Coming to Church is not primarily about getting filled up or about defending a tradition. It’s about seeing and being seen. It’s about experiencing the power and possibilities of God among us when we encounter each other with true presence.

Perhaps today you are wrestling with The Affliction. I’m sure that, like me, some of you find yourselves from time to time watching life from the outside. Perhaps you’re even, like the poet, numbing yourself from dealing with the Affliction. She used pills, but there are a million different ways to avoid the “almost unbearable” journey back inside.

I want you to know that the journey back inside is worth it. It is the only way to experience the fullness of life, the ripeness of the present; it is the only way to experience true communion with others. The law of love can be written on your heart. You can be renewed from the inside out. You can come home to yourself, because God has made a home with you and in you.

There is a God who sees you and who has seen you from before the beginning.

There is a God who loves the you that he sees.

It is “almost unbearable,” being seen. Almost.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.