The Dance of Inner & Outer Self
The people who escaped the slavery of Egypt, who began to understand themselves as a distinctive people called the Israelites as they followed Moses in the wilderness, likely believed in the existence of many gods. Of the many gods available, they came to understand that their God, Yahweh, was very unusual in comparison to the other gods.
Yahweh cared about their well-being. Yahweh wanted them to live and flourish. Yahweh fed them manna in the desert and made water burst forth from a rock when they were thirsty. This is quite a contrast to other gods, who needed to be satisfied and kept happy or else.
The Israelites found that Yahweh’s law was practical and wise, creating a covenant of care and dignity between the people and Yahweh, between neighbors. Yahweh, unlike the other gods, provided a way to experience love and harmony, ways to practically resolve issues between neighbors and family members according to their law.
On the eastern bank of the Jordan River, the Israelites peer over the water into the land about which they have dreamed.
Just as they prepare to cross into this promised land, Moses instructs the people one last time before he dies:
“For what other people has a god so near as the Lord our God is whenever we call to Yahweh? What other people has this gift of law that I am setting before you today? Take care and watch yourselves closely, so as neither to forget the things that your eyes have seen nor to let them slip from your mind all the days of your life; make them known to your children and your children’s children.”
Moses expresses the core identity of the people- they belong to Yahweh, and Yahweh has given them the gift of the law. Moses urges them to pass this identity and this gift down to the generations that come, so that generations yet to be born may flourish in relationship with God and one another.
The Israelites will face hardship and calamity, exile and war. By the time Jesus is born,
the Israelites are called Jews after the land of Judea, and Jewish people have spread from Spain to India, taking their pattern of life, their law and culture, their devotion to Yahweh with them. Their Promised Land is occupied by the powerful Roman Empire, and they adapt to survive under heavy taxation that goes to benefit distant elites in Rome.
Some scholars propose that Jesus was a Pharisee, a particular subset in the Jewish community. Pharisees were distinguished by strict observance of the law. Throughout the Gospel of Mark, there is this story pattern where Pharisees, who are devoted to the law as a way of devoting themselves to Yahweh, catch Jesus doing something questionable as Jesus responds with compassion for people in need. Jesus looks like a lawbreaker to the Pharisees.
Throughout Mark’s Gospel, this subset of Pharisees appear fixated on customs and traditions with little regard expressed for those who are hurting and hungry. Jesus does not condemn customs and traditions. These practices built up the community and reminded God’s people of their commitment to live according to God’s law and values.
The rub of the Jesus & Pharisee interaction is still here today- it comes from that experience we all have of looking outwardly righteous and kind, while in our hearts we burn with something like jealousy or loathing or greed that creates an inconsistency. Jesus, God incarnate, the Yahweh who is so near to us still today, desires that our inward experience is shaped by goodness that will then flow out into outward goodness. Consistency between our inner and outer lives brings us peace.
Our inner and outer selves are always doing a dance together.
I love to dance, which I think comes from my mother who loves to dance. When my mom and I dance together, she is always the lead. I have tried to lead us, and I’m simply not as good as she is. I find it easy to follow her movements and motions. I follow because it feels graceful and I trust her. It would be strange for me to take the lead because she is by far the better dancer.
The whirling around and guiding must come from our inner self, which is the better dancer. When our outer self is struggling to take the lead, the dancing becomes much less graceful.
An important spiritual pattern for us as followers is to attend to our inner self, to free it from the impulses that make us awkward on the dance floor, that hold us back as slaves to jealousy and loathing and greedy impulses. When we tend our inner self, examining who we are internally and seek forgiveness and healing, we are like the Israelites choosing to walk out of Egypt a free people, willing to leave behind what harms them and explore a new way to be God’s people.
No matter how well our inner self leads and guides our moves, because we are humans, we are often not as graceful as we would like to be. We step on our own toes. We step on the toes of others who dance near us. And so we practice. We practice shifting the lead to the inner self, until we feel more and more graceful at it.
God is the grace that flows through us, through our inner selves that when tended with gentleness and authenticity, flow out into the world. God is the grace drawing us closer to what is good within us. God is the grace that forgives what is falling short within us. God’s grace and generosity towards us, whether we are elegant on that dance floor or not- invites us to live with grace and generosity inside our hearts – which then flows out into our behavior, into our relationships.
As our summer chapel season comes to a close, I encourage you to find some worship space to regularly examine the pattern of your life – to stay on the dance floor and practice the moves that give you the life God desires for you out of God’s deep love for you. This dance draws toward consistency, toward a pattern that glorifies God inwardly and outwardly, and brings us grace and peace.
https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearB_RCL/Pentecost/BProp17_RCL.html
