BEYOND SMILEY FACE RELIGION

A meditation by the Rev. Dr. James G. Kirk

Harundale Presbyterian Church

Glen Burnie, Maryland

August 5, 2001

Text: "clothed…with the new self." (Col. 3:10)

First Reading: Hosea 11:1-11

Second Reading: Luke 12:13-21

You know the smiley face. It’s that yellow circle with two eyes and the smiley mouth that’s been around for years. Well, recently I found out where it came from. Martin Marty, in an editorial in The Christian Century, read an obituary recently about H.R. Ball. Mr. Ball, who died on April 13, "was the ad man credited with having drawn and promoted the yellow smiley face that began to appear everywhere in the ‘60’s. That image was commemorated on a postage stamp in 1999. In 1971, 50 million smiley-face buttons were telling us to be cute, cloying and smiling." (May 9, 2001.page 31.)

Marty goes on to say, ironically, that it was about that same time that people began to snarl, scowl and act "in your face" to one another. So, at the same time, you have a caped and masked smiley face reducing prices all over Wal-Mart, people acting out their anger through road rage and all sorts of verbal abuse toward one another, and supermarket clerks telling you to "have a nice day."

Then, along comes Paul who would seem to support the smiley face. "But now you must get rid of all such things---anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive language from your mouth." In other words, put a smile on your face, because the Christ has come to make you a new person. The problem with that reading of the text is that it doesn’t go far enough.

We still have people in the congregation who are very angry. We have people who come here Sunday after Sunday who are living in abusive situations. We have people who come here desperately seeking some meaning in their lives. We have people who are like clowns, they paint a smile on their face, because that’s what’s expected of them, but within they’re miserable. Smiley face religion is not where these people are.

We also have people who think the church is supposed to be a smiley place, that there should be no problems. They come here to escape their problems and they don’t want to hear anything from the pastor or from the congregation that will upset them. They want the church to be like Wal-Mart, where the caped and masked smiley face slashes away all that is bad in the world and the clerks tell them at the end of the worship service to "have a nice day." Of course, neither image fits what Paul is really writing about. Paul would never settle for a smiley face religion.

He goes on to write, "Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have stripped off the old self with its practices and have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of the creator." "Do not lie to one another…since you have clothed yourselves with the new self." In other words, this sanctuary, this congregation, this church is the place, probably like no other place, where people can be themselves and ought to be given permission to be themselves.

The other day I had my yearly physical. Prior to that I had gone for the blood work. Blood work has a way of revealing all your secrets. I’m sure that’s why doctors want you to have it drawn. When I went for my physical the doctor knew my cholesterol count, how the kidneys were functioning, the health of the liver, the white count, the red count, what was elevated and what was well within range, everything. No sense in lying about anything. She had the truth in front of her. What Paul writes is as though God in Christ has done the blood work on us. We have no secrets from God. Here, in God’s house, people should be able to confront their fears, their angers, celebrate their joys and accomplishments, all without worrying what someone is going to think or how they’re going to react. In other words, this place should be more than just about smiley face religion.

Paul continues, "you have clothed yourselves with the new self…according to the image of its creator." What image do we have of the creator? Is the creator some masked smiley face who wipes away all that is evil in the world, just as the prices keep dropping in Wal-Mart? Or, is our image of the creator more like what we see in the Christ? That is, someone who knows what it’s like to be hurt, someone who reaches out to the victim on the side of the road, someone who dares the righteous to throw the first stone, someone who feels the tug at his tunic from a woman who’s otherwise too timid to approach him.

That’s the person Paul would have us emulate, not some smiley face that’s somehow impervious to the pain of the world. Paul doesn’t want us with a mask and a cape covering an otherwise smiley face. Paul wants the real us with all the warts, the scars, the fears, the insecurities, the anger, the frustration, anything that keeps us from becoming the person Christ died to save. "Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have stripped off the old self with its practices." Here, people shouldn’t have to pretend. Here, the genuine article should be celebrated and what better place to celebrate that genuine article than around the Lord’s Table.

Paul concludes, "In that renewal there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free, but Christ is all and in all!" Somehow the table strips us of all pretense, all divisions that otherwise separate us from one another. Instead of a smiley face we put the bread and cup in the center of our life together. Instead of wearing some mask and cape, we strip life of all pretense and tell one another to come here with whatever bothers us and see if we can’t deal with it together. Then some clerk won’t have to tell us to "have a nice day," because we’ll have the day that God intends us to have, and that will always be "the day that the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it."