First United Methodist Church Birmingham, Michigan
Scriptures: Psalm 91, Matthew 6:5-6
January 5,1997
One of the pluses of having lived as long as I have is that I am old enough to remember the entire history of television. Which I watch less and less with each passing year. Not because I am a cultural snob. Far from it. It's more a matter of time than choice. For when you don't have much time, choices pretty much make themselves.
But there was a time when there were fewer programs to see and I had more time to see them. And know everything about them. Which explains my familiarity with an early quiz show entitled "I've Got A Secret." The show was hosted by Garry Moore who, at that time, was the highest paid television personality in America, earning every bit of $30,000 a year. Panelists for the show included Bill Cullen, Kitty Carlisle, Henry Morgan and Dorothy Kilgallen (who was subsequently replaced by Peggy Cass). Guests on the show would try to stump the panel with a most unusual secret. The panelists would try to deny the guest by guessing the nature of the secret being hidden. By stumping the panel, a guest could earn the princely sum of $50. As I remember it, few did. Bill Cullen was just too sharp.
Secrets are funny things. All of us have a few of our own. Most of us are aware of some that belong to somebody else. But the real issue of secrets has to do with blabbing or keeping them. At least that's the issue when we are children. Most little kids are indiscriminate when it comes to the dissemination of information. That's just a fancy way of saying that most little kids will tell anything to anybody. Time and place don't matter. Shame and embarrassment don't matter. Sensitivity and delicacy don't matter. What little kids know, little kids volunteer.
Early parental coping strategies are largely centered in denying the child access to sensitive pieces of information. Kids can't tell what they don't know. Eventually, however, most parents feel that it is important to teach kids the art of guarding certain truths, for maturity requires an ability to keep some tilings to yourself. Not all information is public information. Some things are meant to be kept "under your hat." To teach this lesson, kids are usually bribed by their parents, not necessarily with money, but with the implied promise of greater respect. Says the parent to the child: "Do you think you are old enough to keep a very important secret?" And while the child is dying to tell the secret that has been shared, an even greater desire is to be considered "old enough" to be trusted. So the secret is kept....in return for which a measure of trust is earned.
This new stage of development coincides with a couple of other things that are happening in the lives of children. First, the child is beginning to have some things in his or her own life which need to be kept private....especially from parents. Each of us who has been a parent can remember the transition from being told everything to being told next-to-nothing. What caused the change? Did we suddenly become untrustworthy? Did our child suddenly become deviant? I suppose either explanation could be true. But such is not likely the case. Keeping secrets from your parents is part of a very normal process called "generational differentiation." One way to become one's own person is to occasionally keep some things to oneself.
Second, children learn that there is power in holding and withholding information. Listen to a child say (often with a measure of pride and arrogance): "I know something you don't know." To be in possession of knowledge (especially when it is knowledge that very few people have and a great many people want) can make you a very important person. Just listen to others trying to pry that secret out of you. "Tell me, tell me....oh please tell me....pretty, please, with cream and sugar on it....I'll even give you dollar and be your friend for life if you tell me." To have someone at your mercy (in this manner) is heavy stuff indeed. This is why children learn to cultivate such scenarios and play them to the hilt.
If I haven't yet convinced you as to what a powerful thing this can be, think of how deflating it is when (at long last) you have been encouraged to part with a secret, only to hear the recipient sneer: "Oh, I already heard that. In fact, I'll bet I knew it before you did." Children bond with secrets. This is why they form secret clubs with secret membership lists and go around whispering things in each other's ear. Children also exclude with secrets, knowing that the real benefit of a secret club is not in who you let in, but in who you keep out.
This business of secrecy is incredibly common. It is also incredibly essential. Life has its private side. All of us need to learn the art of keeping it so. Trust also has its requirement of confidentiality. All of us need to learn the price of its betrayal. "Let it all hang out," was what we were advised in the '60s. But maturity requires that some things be "tucked in." Adults need to know that. Which means that children need to learn that. Clearly, most of them do.
But it is often a lesson that is learned too well. Listen while Frederick Buechner unfolds the problem:
Our secrets are not so much hidden from God, as they are hidden from each other, and sometimes even from ourselves, so that after awhile we all but forget they exist.
If somebody had asked me as a boy what my secrets were, I wonder if I would have thought to list among them a father who, at parties, drank himself into a self I could hardly recognize as my father, and a mother who, in her rage, could say such wild and scathing things to him that it made the very earth shake beneath my feet when I heard them.
I also knew that the circumstances of my father's death were a secret, until one day (very much later) I realized that since we could never talk about "it," we could never talk about "him," to the degree that his life became something of a secret....almost the very fact that he had existed at all, including the way he looked and talked, the way it felt to be with him, and the way it felt to be without him. And as a result of never being able to speak about such feelings, I finally lost them to the silence.
If the ministry has taught me anything about our deepest (and most personal) human relationships, it is that there are a great many secrets....both terrible and otherwise....that families keep terribly well. Sometimes it is about the way a child enters the world that nobody talks. Either the child was bom too early (and the secret is an out-of-wedlock pregnancy), or the child was bom to a different set of parents (and the secret is adoption), or there was a birth handicap which was not immediately noticeable and became hidden away in the dark.
But sometimes the secret is not about birth at all, but death. As in how someone died....where someone died....when someone died....or the why of someone's dying.
But, most of the time, the secrets have to do with things that take place long after someone is bom and well before someone dies. Many of the secrets are sexual, given the fact that from the day Adam and Eve first felt some sudden urge to hide their nakedness from each other....and from God....we have all been hiding it (more or less) ever since.
A father touches a daughter in a way that grown men do not touch little girls (whether they are their fathers or not), and then says: "Remember now, this is just our little secret." Which is the way it is kept. For years. Even though the touching....and more....may go on for years. And, at some level, virtually everybody in the family knows the secret. Yet no one ever says the secret, for fear of what might happen once it is allowed into the light of day.
Such things happen with a frequency and repetitiveness which used to surprise me, although it surprises me no longer. Sometimes the faces change. Touching fathers become touching mothers.... or uncles....or teachers....or even preachers (I suppose). And the fact that right now (at this very moment) you are thinking to yourself that this is an incredibly strange thing to hear in a sermon (and trying to remember if you have ever heard anything like this in a sermon before).. ..well....that's all part of the secret, too, don't you see.
You want to know more about secrets? Ask a substance abuse professional to diagram the dynamics of the family constellation in a home where one family member is an alcoholic. Most such families have what they call a "no talk rule," where no one talks about the problem to anyone else in the family, and the family (as a whole) closes ranks so that the secret will never be visible to anyone outside the family. Occasionally, family members will take turns yelling at the person who gets drunk. But the yelling is temporary and seldom leads to talking. For talking is forbidden within the carefully-woven constellation of secrecy.
It should come as no surprise that families also hide other secrets from other families, and friends hide them from even their closest friends. In all four churches I have served, I have seen a similar phenomenon at work. There will be a circle of friends which often goes back 20 or 30 years. They will be in the nature of best friends. They will visit each other, share holidays with each other, and even travel with each other. Yet something will happen within the family of one of them, and they will go to great lengths to ensure that others in the circle of friends do not find out. I will find out. Which is okay. For I will know of their preference to have it remain with me. But the funny thing is, I will also know a secret of similar magnitude concerning something that has occurred within the family constellation of every one of their friends. Yet that knowledge, too, will remain with me. Meanwhile, each of them thinks that they are the only one.
I suppose, in a related way, that this is one of my fears concerning the AIDS crisis as it relates to the church. I fear that each such suffering....whether by the virus bearer, or by the virus bearer's family....will be a well-kept secret. And I fear that we as a church will do little to change that pattern of secrecy, because the more something remains hidden, the easier it is to maintain the myth that it doesn't really exist.
What does all of this mean? Does it call for a universal purging of everything that was once considered private? Does it mean that all must be brought to light in a sudden burst of self- revelation? Does it mean that everyone should unburden themselves of everything to everybody? Does it mean that confidentiality is no longer a primary attribute of community? Does it mean that every box should be opened....every closet vacated....and every rock lifted for purposes of show and tell?
Certainly not! Privacy will still have its place. Which is comforting news for those of us (more reticent in nature) who do not bleed easily on cue. I understand such people. I am one of them. One of the positive comments sometimes made about my preaching, is that my sermons strike you as being deeply honest and deeply personal. I cherish that. And yet, pulpit appearances to the contrary, I am a rather private person. Just ask my best friends. It is my nature. It is also my choice.
And yet, for those who need to tell that which is too heavy to keep (which will be all of us at one time or another), the church must become that place where secrets can be heard and honored. For it is only in the telling....and the hearing....that there can be a lifting, that will enable us to come out from under a weight that can be bome no longer.
For some of life's burdens do get heavy, don't they?
Two years ago....same day....same place....I said the same thing (in one of the most memorable ways I ever found to say anything). In that sermon I told you a story about a man who carried a brown bag. I won't go through it all over again. Most of you remember it well....having carried one or more bags of your own....for a long time....being "lifers" in the "brown bag business."
The guy in my story was a "lifer." He carried his brown bag from a very early age. He carried it into school....out to play....up to bed....and away to camp. He carried it into the huddle when he played football. And he carried it on the front seat of his car when he went on dates. No matter how close his "honey" got to his side, his brown bag remained wedged between them. On his wedding day, he could be seen standing at the head of the aisle....black tux....black tie....black shoes....brown bag. At work he was more discreet. He disguised his brown bag under his coat, or hid it in his briefcase. But those who knew him were seldom fooled. They knew he was never without it for very long.
Then, one fine day, he wandered into a strange church....at a strange hour. And, in the middle of a sermon he can't recall....delivered by a preacher whose name he can't remember....he swears he heard the text: "Come unto me, all ye who labor and are heavy ladened, and who carry a brown bag. For I will give you rest unto your soul."
So he took his brown bag to the altar and left it there....as did many of you leave yours here. And then last year I brought in a much bigger bag....a shopping bag....and unpacked it in your midst, the better that you might see some of the stuff that bag people carry (and how heavy such stuff can get).
Well, this is a brand new day. No such gimmicks this morning. No story. No props. Just a reminder that even people who throw awayhand over....surrender to Jesus....or leave on the altar the stuff in their bag.. ..have a tendency to hold onto one last thing. Which you would think would be easy to carry (what with the rest of the bag emptied out). But, surprisingly, this one thing....tucked way down in the folds of the bag, as it is gets heavier by the day. Or by the year.
And I'd tell you what that one thing is. Except that it's a secret. Which means that my lips are sealed. But yours don't need to be. For if (as someone has said) we are as sick as the secrets we keep, then to get well is to air them....if not openly and out loud....then openly and quietly, in the depths of our hearts. Recall, if you will, one of the all-time classic prayers of the church:
Almighty God, unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid: Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of thy Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love thee, and worthily magnify thy holy name; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
When I think about God and how He might possibly be related to me, I find that I need to answer two questions occasioned by that prayer.
Do I really believe that all of my secrets are laid bare before God?
Do I find that idea frightening or encouraging?
A few moments ago, I also read those familiar lines from the Sermon on the Mount wherein Jesus is talking about hypocrisy in praying. Remember what he said about it? "Don't make a big show of it." "Do make a personal matter of it." For years I have been reading the line: "Pray in secret, and your father who sees in secret will reward you." Funny thing about that line. I always figured the issue to be where you stand when you pray. Maybe it's not. Maybe the issue is where you allow God to stand when you pray. Maybe when you pray, you need to enter that place where your secrets are kept. And your Father....who sees your secrets....will reward you.
