Inside Out!

We so easily get caught up in what we see. The lives we live often focus so much on the external that we completely forget about what is happening within ourselves, our souls, and bodies. This reminds me of some beautiful, hammered copper mugs that my wife and I received as wedding presents.

 

After receiving the mugs over the summer I wanted to utilize them as much as possible. So some evenings I heartily enjoyed making myself a drink or two. The cold and delicious beverage tasted so refreshing. As I drank though, I noticed condensation gathering on the outside of the mug. If I procrastinated enough to wait awhile before cleaning the vessel, then that condensed water would stain the copper. A few times this happened, such that I retrieved the copper polish to restore the original state of the mug. 

One day as I was doing this my wife noticed that I was polishing the exterior and she asked if I had cleaned the inside of the mug. Sheepishly I looked at her, then I excitedly pointed to the outside of the container, “Look how clean it is!” Then, as she continued to give me a particular stare, I reluctantly took the mug back over to the sink to clean the inside as well as the outside had been polished. Through her words I heard Jesus’ own, “You fool! Did not the one who made the outside make the inside also?”

Jesus in today’s (slightly extended) Gospel lesson corrects the practices of Pharisees and lawyers who made a show of small gestures they exhibited, but neglected their own interior needs and others’ needs. Justice and the love of God cleanse both inside and outside of us all. And yet, often we are worried about the ways that others perceive of us. Vanity, vanity as Ecclesiastes reminds us. We want our outside lives to be shiny and streak free, just like I wanted my copper mugs to shine. This way of living though tends to distract us, such that we miss our interior longings for life in Christ. If we are focused so much on how we appear to others, are we really allowing God to work on our own souls?

The Jesus that Luke’s Gospel account paints often appears difficult and challenging. We may even be offended by him. I can hear my fragile self crying out in the words of the lawyer, “When you say these things you insult us too.” But, the truth is if we turn our personal devotion into something that is showy, if we demonstrate our piety to impress others or to gain a seat of honor or to shame someone else into acting like we think is right, then we are tying heavy burdens on others and even on ourselves. If we focus solely on how polished our lives look to others rather than how much God loves us and how much the love of God transforms us, then we may be shiny on the outside, but we are like that unwashed copper mug on the inside. 

Just like those Pharisees and lawyers we live in a time of both injustice and God’s love. It is the best of times and the worst of times. We may feel that we have to live our lives externally, so that others may see. For some reason social media has made it such that we believe we must get our opinions and beliefs out into the world because everyone is waiting to hear what we think—right! Aren’t we forgetting the inside of the mug?

Woe to us who hide in echo chambers, for we will miss the Christ present in the opposing viewpoint! Woe to us who scream what we think at others who believe something different, for we are too busy talking to listen with our hearts to hear the pain of someone else! Woe to us who sacrifice next to nothing, as we neglect our neighbors who are suffering! Woe to us who want respect from everyone else, but will not show it to someone who is of a different creed, color, background, or belief than ourselves. Woe to us, for we may keep telling people we have good news, but they will walk over us like unmarked graves, as no one stops to hear a bad news gospel made up of “shoulds” and “don’ts”! Jesus may sound insulting to us, I may sound insulting to you, but until we begin focusing on more than just how we appear to others we will be missing the message of Christ. We are called to focus on both an interior and exterior life that allows the true Christ to heal our aching souls, bodies, minds, and hearts together. Otherwise we will remain a shiny copper mug that is unclean and unusable.