Belonging in the Silence: Self-Examination

Sunday, March 20, 2022
The Rev. Tim Hart-Andersen

Psalm 26; Psalm 139:1-6

O LORD, you have searched me and known me.

But I scarcely know myself.

You know when I sit down and when I rise up;

And sometimes I can hardly stand.

You discern my thoughts from far away.

And I can’t even hear what’s on my mind.

You search out my path and my lying down

But I don’t know where I’m headed and can’t seem to find any rest.

You are acquainted with all my ways.

But I feel as if I don’t know what I’m doing.

Even before a word is on my tongue, O LORD, you know it completely.

While I don’t know what to say.

You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me.

And I feel like I’m drifting and unconnected.

Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is so high that I cannot attain it.

I’m afraid even to try. (Psalm 139:1-6)

The confidence of the psalmist in a God who knows them completely presents a stark contrast with those of us who feel like we barely know ourselves.

Lent is the perfect time to do some self-examination. Introspection is an important personal discipline and Christian practice. It keeps us honest. To “walk in integrity,” as the psalmist says, requires that we know ourselves.

“An unexamined life is not worth living,” Socrates is reputed to have said. That may be overstating it, but an unexamined life is a serious mistake, because we may never grow into a healthier, more complete self.

Maybe that’s why Jesus spent those 40 days in his own personal Lent, struggling with forces within keeping him from living fully into what God desired for him. The temptations with which he wrestled are not that different from the daily demons and distractions that inhabit our hearts and minds. For Jesus and the devil in the desert it was all about power and the temptation to abuse it – and that may be the case for some of us. For others it may be more about anxiety or fear, about insecurity or addiction, or hatred and anger that we harbor.

Jesus teaches us in the desert that we can face down the giants looming over us that keep us from living fully into our humanity. Some of the forces arrayed against us are internal and simply what we carry within us. Those are the ones coming at Jesus; he’s striving with impulses within that would divert him from his purpose on earth. Those same voices arise in us.

Other demons are external and beyond our control and bear down on us with ferocity: injustice perpetrated against us; brutality from those more powerful than we are; unprovoked violence raining down on us. The people of Ukraine are experiencing that today, and we’re witnessing their resilience. They’re naming the evil – even when it threatens to overwhelm them – and refusing to let it reduce their own sense of self-worth and value as a nation and as a people. They know where they stand.

The unexamined life does not know where it stands.

In contrast, an examined life knows where it is headed and what the obstacles and barriers are – and names them. That takes practice and discipline.

Howard Thurman was one of the early theologians of the Civil Rights Movement. He lived through difficult years of our nation’s history for Black Americans. He wrote about the power of evil in the world and its capacity to break into our hearts and defeat us. “The mass attack of disillusion and despair,” Thurman said in 1953,

“Distilled out of the collapse of hope, has so invaded our thoughts that what we know to be true and valid seems unreal and ephemeral. There seems to be little energy left for aught but futility. This is the great deception. By it whole peoples have gone down to oblivion without the will to affirm the great and permanent strength of the clean and the commonplace.”

This is the struggle we are witnessing in Ukraine today: in the face of terrible violence, to affirm the great and permanent strength of the clean and the commonplace.

“Let us not be deceived,” Thurman continues, speaking to us and anyone else who longs to break free of all that would hold them captive or destroy them.

“The real target of evil,” he says, “is not destruction of the body, the reduction to rubble of cities; the real target of evil is to corrupt the human spirit and to give the soul the contagion of inner disintegration… The evil in the world around us must not be allowed to move from without to within.” (https://www.aaihs.org/life-goes-on-a-meditation-from-howard-thurman/)

By the practice of self-examination – knowing and affirming who we are and where we stand, and setting our moral compass in the direction of God’s love – we resist the contagion of inner disintegration.

Jesus understands that an unexamined life will not bring us closer to God or to our neighbor or to the fullness of our own, God-given humanity. In fact, an unexamined life can drive us deeper into a world so small that there is no place for anyone else, including the One who has searched us and known us. An unexamined life is a closed life.

A prayer by Thurman invites us to name that which diminishes us and asks God to free us from it.

“Lord, open unto me

Open unto me — light for my darkness.

Open unto me — courage for my fear.

Open unto me — hope for my despair.

Open unto me — peace for my turmoil.

Open unto me — joy for my sorrow.”

The prayer becomes a sacred refrain of self-examination.

“Open unto me — strength for my weakness.

Open unto me — wisdom for my confusion.”

Open unto me — forgiveness for my sins.

Open unto me — love for my hates.

Open unto me — thy Self for my self.

Lord, Lord, open unto me!

Amen.” (https://racelessgospel.com/2015/07/03/praying-with-howard-thurman-lord-open-unto-me/)

Thurman wants the power of God’s love to liberate him, to set him free, to heal him. And yet he knows that the brokenness of the world does not suddenly stop. That which conspires to close us off from the fullness of life is ever-present. Our work – the work of Jesus in the desert – is staying open to the possibilities God has in store for us and resisting the temptation to shut them down.

A friend sewed a custom-made patch onto the shoulder of a coat she often wears. It says, simply, Broken. It’s not a declaration of defeat. On the contrary, it’s an assertion of what is true for all of us. Naming our brokenness can begin to give us power over it, so it doesn’t define us or completely undo us, but, instead gives us new courage to live with it and, one day, perhaps, through it.

Without examining ourselves, honestly searching our inside and outside selves, we may never have the chance to name that which has power over us. Anyone who has gone through a 12-step program understands the impact of naming whatever it is that has a vice-grip on us as a first step toward loosening its hold. That takes bravery, and support.

How do we practice self-examination? Again, we look to Jesus and his 40 days in the wilderness for guidance. We need silence, and time. We may think quiet is in short supply, but if we want it, it’s there – as is the time we need. There are ways to make room in our cluttered lives to incorporate times of silent reflection.

Make an appointment with yourself. It doesn’t need to be long – maybe 5-10 mins a day. You’ll find that you’ll want more time. Be in a place where you are alone and quiet, without interruptions. If you have time and good weather, go outside. Poet Wallace Stevens said, “Perhaps the truth depends on a walk around a lake.” That’s advice we can readily follow in Minnesota.

The psalms are full of attempts of the ancient Hebrew poets to grapple with their inner selves. “I walk in faithfulness to you,” the writer of Psalm 26 reflects on their life and takes a moral inventory:

“I do not sit with the worthless,

nor do I consort with hypocrites;

I hate the company of evildoers,

and will not sit with the wicked.

I wash my hands in innocence.” (Psalm 26:3b-6a)

Their life sounds fairly stable and not under assault. Contrast that with Psalm 69, where the poet puts on their “broken” patch for all to see:

“Save me, O God, for the waters have come up to my neck.

I sink in deep mire, where there is no foothold;

I have come into deep waters, and the flood sweeps over me.

I am weary with my crying; my throat is parched…

O God, you know my folly;

the wrongs I have done are not hidden from you. (Psalm 69:1-3, 5)

Self-examination can be painful, because – if done well – it invites us to tell the truth to ourselves about ourselves. We come face to face with what Thurman called the contagion of inner disintegration.

Where have I done something which I ought not to have done, and why?

Where have I left undone something which I ought to have done, and why?

When we dig deep, we come up against fear and self-doubt, mistakes and anxieties that we paper over most of the time. It can be a dark night of the soul. This is cross-carrying work, hard work.

O LORD, you have searched me and known me.

But I scarcely know myself.

You know when I sit down and when I rise up;

And sometimes I can hardly stand.

The Christian practice of self-examination refreshes our faith and renews our hope. It is the way of Jesus.

Over time it will lead to rebirth.

Over time we will gain the strength to stand up.

Over time we will come to know and love ourselves as God already does.

Thanks be to God. Amen.