It was the first week the students at Campbellsville University were not required to wear masks, the surge from the delta and omicron variants having subsided.
As usual, I was the first person in the classroom that day, and a student I didn’t recognize had also arrived early. She was sitting where one of my best students usually sat. “That’s strange,” I thought, for this particular student isn’t the kind of person I would suspect of having another student sit in her place to take notes for her. She is one of my most conscientious students. Why was this young lady sitting in my star student’s place?
So, I approached her and asked if she was visiting the class.
As soon as she spoke, I realized what I had done. “Dr. Whitlock,” she smiled, “it’s me!”
I had only seen her with a mask. She had stayed after class on several occasions, asking questions, so I knew her voice. She was not one to lower her mask; she always kept it in place. We both chuckled at the case of mistaken identity.
How often do people wear masks of a different kind so that if we knew them without them, we wouldn’t recognize them? People wear all types of masks. Perhaps they have one they wear to church, another to work, maybe another to parent-teacher conferences. The trouble is that it’s easy to forget the “real” person amidst all the mask-wearing.
I’ve had people tell me, at the end of a long and bumpy road to divorce court, “I never knew him,” or “she wasn’t who I thought she was when we married.”
Or, I’ve heard people say, “He was a different person once I came to the office. It’s not what I thought it would be, and I won’t work here. ”
Who are you, really?
It can be dangerous to wear a mask, pretending to be something or someone we are not. I’ve done that. If you’re honest with yourself, you probably have too.
The word “hypocrite” comes from the ancient Greek Word, “hypocrites,” which means an actor or stage player. Masking who we are, pretending to be something else, can make us hypocrites, literally. And soon, we forget just who we are, so confusing do our roles become. We can even lose our personality, virtually erasing our true selves. Like George Orwell said, “He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it.”
But there’s good news: we no longer have to play the role. We can come clean, take off the mask, or masks, however many you might wear, and become your authentic self.
In just a few weeks, we celebrate Easter, the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Apostle John tells how Jesus appeared to Mary Magdalene, the one whom Jesus delivered from seven demons. Mary didn’t know who she was until Jesus came along and rescued her from those demons who would make her first one person, then another, and then another, and another, seven of them. It must have been horrific. She experienced a miraculous deliverance and became a disciple of Jesus. After his death and resurrection, Jesus appeared to Mary. At first, Mary didn’t recognize him. Then she heard his voice, calling her name, “Mary.” And then she knew him, and once again, knew her true self.
It’s in that voice, that is, the words spoken by Jesus, the living Word, the One who never changes and is always the same, that we find who we truly are. For in the resurrected Lord, we find ourselves. So, we no longer need to pretend, for he takes us just as we are, with no more pretending, no more acting, on our part, because Jesus loves us as we are. He loves us into the person He has called us to be.
“It’s okay, Dr. Whitlock,” the student chuckled.
Indeed, it is okay for those in Christ, for the masks are off, and we are who we are in Him, transformed by his grace into the person we were always meant to be.
That is the most glorious freedom you can know, where no masks are required, ever.