Go As You Are - The Rev. Philip DeVaul

Sermons from the Episcopal Church of the Redeemer

Phil got roped into being a line judge This was very funny until I saw the picture of myself and said, Is that how I look? Can someone please delete this picture? And you all, I don't mind saying that to you because I don't know a person I've ever met who is happy with every picture of themselves. And by the way, the pictures that we don't like of ourselves, it's very often not because they don't look like us, it's because they look like us. Could you have shown a picture that looks less like me to people? That way I would feel better about me, but I guess that's me looking like that. Meanwhile, my friends are laughing because they love me. And because they think it's obviously ridiculous that I've gotten roped into this job I didn't intend to have, and we're all having a laugh and I'm taken out of the experience of communal enjoyment because I'm thinking, is that what I look like? And this is how we do; this is how we are as people. Am I, as I am, someone anyone should be looking at or being in relationship with? This is a thing that people do to ourselves. Am I enough as I am? Can you imagine a God loving me just like I am? And even if we don't want to admit it we're drawn to this reality; we're attracted to this idea that there's a certain way you've got to be if you're going to present yourself before your God. And if you're going to share real life with people you love, what do you have to be? What do you have to become?