Courageous Confession

Readings: Matthew 10:24-31, Secrets of Heaven #4796 (see below)
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Photo by Daniel Gomez on Unsplash

We humans are fascinating creatures. We have an interior life, with a certain quality, certain thoughts and feelings, and we can choose whether or not that interior life is manifest in our exterior life. Animals cannot do this in the same way. Young children do not do it instinctively; it is an ability that we grow into. Our thoughts can be our own, our feelings can be our own, and ultimately it is up to us how much of those things we share, and in what ways we act upon them.

This is a complex gift. We are each individuals, beloved of God in our own way, and our journey belongs to us, no one else. And also, we exist within, and were born for, community and connection, and the quality of this community and connection will often turn on how much, and in what way, we choose to share our interior life.

The balance of this itself is also complex. We withhold too much our our interior experience and it is hard to connect with others. We share too much of our interior experience and this can destabilize valuable boundaries or center ourselves in harmful ways. Enter also, the possibility of hypocrisy: the pretense of speaking or acting in some way when we secretly believe another; the interior and the exterior becoming misaligned for self-serving purposes. We have an instictive distaste for hypocrisy, I think, because of the way it introduces doubt and mistrust into our relationships. Which leads us further to the notion of “authenticity.” A person is perceived to be authentic, or genuine, when we sense that their interior experience is aligning with their external actions and way of life. And I think perhaps we all yearn for a certain level of authenticity in our lives and relationships. It can feel like a burden, it can feel like work, to maintain an essential level of disconnection between our interior selves and our exterior life. The complexity of this is heightened for marginalized groups as well, who often need to conform to the white centrality, the heteronormativity, or the maleness of cultural and public spaces.

Swedenborg, however, speaks of heaven being a place where any dissonance between our interior and exterior selves is completely reduced. He writes:

…in the other life no one is allowed to pretend to affections they do not really have, so we cannot put on a face that is contrary to the love we are engaged in. We are all refined down to a state in which we say what we think and manifest in expression and act what we intend.(1)

While in many ways this idea might feel terrifying, like being exposed in a way that we might not desire, we can also appreciate the freedom inherent in this state of being. It is the epitome of authentic living. We are not maintaining masks, we are not doing the work of mediating the acceptability of our interior life to others, we are in the flow of life that God made us for. 

Now, of course though, this kind of flow only works in the context of heavenly mutual love. And we cannot get to a state of ongoing mutual love without the practice of courageous confession. The reason that angels can get to that level of authenticity is that they have courageously and faithfully confronted all the things within them that might desire to hide. The shame, the selfishness, the fear, the anger, the resentment, the history of harm toward the self and others that we all harbor in some way. This kind of reflection is the path of regeneration, as we call it in our tradition, and it begins with courageous confession. This confession can be primarily to ourselves and our God. There is value in a private reflective process; we can go deep, we can feel the safety of God’s personal presence with us, we can take the time and the pace we need. 

And, there is value in a public reflective process as well. The success and effectiveness of 12-Step programs speak to how public and crucially, communal, confession and reflection can be integral to living an authentic life. Sometimes we may not feel like we have the ability to do it on our own, and so the acceptance, compassion, and accountabilty of a group can be key. One-on-one therapy is another semi-public way into couragous confession. Speaking our truth to another can be powerful, as can be receiving an outside perpsective that we hadn’t considered.

There is no one right way to do courageous confession. But if we are serious about discipleship - which is the earthly context for the Matthew text - and more broadly, if we are serious about an evolving spiritual life, then we have to learn how to get comfortable with courageous confession. It is the starting point for all growth.

This principle is true for groups as much as it is for individuals, for it is not so much a Christian principle as it is a human one. As we consider the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, it is a principle that we would do well to consider for the overall health of our nation. The United States has never been very good at courageously confessing its flaws. The very declaration we celebrate only granted true independence and rights to white men, and many of the founding fathers that we venerate now owned slaves in their day. When we let the full truth of that sink in, we can only see it as a heartbreaking and demoralizing level of hypocrisy.

Yet, within that messiness, there was a kernel of vision, a baby bud of equality, that started to give birth to something important. It wasn’t born perfectly. And yet, we all have a responsibility to help it become better, more inclusive, more expansive, more effective. This can only happen through courageous confession, through being thoroughly honest about who has been left out and why,  about who has been primarily served and why, and about what harmful forces still exist that threaten the vision of true equality and enfranchisement for all.

We might think of the effort to take down the National Park signs in our sister city, Philadelphia, that uplifted the story of George Washington’s slaves. For some, it feels more comfortable, more patriotic, to remain in an uncomplicated and simple veneration of the founding fathers. But I don’t believe that patriotism is supposed to be comfortable, just as our spiritual journeys are not supposed to be comfortable. If either are primarily or only comfortable, then we are not growing, we are not learning, we are not evolving. When we refuse to practice courageous confession in either realm, we stay stuck in a facsimile of patriotism or of faith that actually doesn’t ask anything real of us.

So, why talk politics? Not for any partisan purpose, but because we recognize that it is all connected. When we develop a robust personal practice of courageous confession, through a spiritual or other framework, then we are more likely to be able to continue to practice it in our communities, our organizations, our countries, and our world. And our world —the survival and thriving of our world— needs people who are actively building this ability within themselves.

When we look at it this way, when we look at how our own journeys intersect and undergird the trajectory of the whole world, the stakes rise and it can feel overwhelming. My own knees get a little wobbly just thinking about it. So, thank goodness Jesus ends our text today with some encouragement.

Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.

We are reminded that God’s care extends to all - the whole world and everything in it. We are reminded of God’s intimate knowledge and love for us - enough to number the very smallest things within us. We are reminded not to be afraid - that our unique reflective abilities were given to us for a purpose, and we should step into them knowing that God is with us, and is guiding us. We can be honest here; the path of growth is so very uncomfortable at times. Our impulse is to conceal, even to ourselves, that which causes us to question and to doubt, that which causes us to feel guilt, that which needs us to re-imagine or reframe. …for there is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known. From God, this is a blessed promise, so let us not be afraid. Amen.

(1) Emmanuel Swedenborg, Heaven & Hell #457


Readings:

Matthew 10:24-31

24 “The student is not above the teacher, nor a servant above his master.
25 It is enough for students to be like their teachers, and servants like their masters. If the head of the house has been called Beelzebul, how much more the members of his household!
26 “So do not be afraid of them, for there is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known.
27 What I tell you in the dark, speak in the daylight; what is whispered in your ear, proclaim from the roofs.
28 Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.
29 Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care.
30 And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered.
31 So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.


Secrets of Heaven 4796
When angels show themselves, all their inner feelings appear clearly in their face and beam from it. Their face, then, is the outward form of their feelings and an image representing those feelings. To present a face at odds with one’s feelings does not happen in heaven.