The Writing on The Wall

New Year’s Eve, December 31, 2015.  Year C
The Rev. Virginia Tyler Smith

One of the nice things about the quiet week between Christmas and New Years is that I got to catch up on my reading. I’ve been reading Sue Bender’s great little book, Everyday Sacred. It’s a collection of essays about finding the holy in every day moments, and she frequently talks about experiences that she has at the café in Berkeley California where she gets her daily latte. One of the essays is entitled “White Walls,” and it describes her experience of walking into the restroom at that café on the morning after the restroom had been painted. You see, before that morning, the walls of the restroom has been covered with graffiti. Every square inch. But on that morning, she found clean white walls and simple terracotta tile floors. Ms. Bender muses that it must have taken six coats of paint to cover over the graffiti, but there they were: perfectly white walls.  And then she asks: Are these walls going to be a temptation?

Now if you think about it, bathrooms are the places where we go to do our dirtiest, most intimate things…and they are also the places where we go to clean up. Whether or not we want to, we are forced to enter a bathroom (and admit our humanity) a number of times a day. The bathroom is the only place where it is acceptable to look at ourselves for long periods of time as we make ourselves “presentable.”  The bathroom is where are our truest selves.

And as I thought about what Ms. Bender had written, I realized that we all have imaginary restrooms in our minds, those places where, when we are alone, when we are feeling most disgusting, or most pretty, when we are looking ourselves in the mirror and seeing both the wrinkles and the potential….we also have walls covered with graffiti. 

And the question is: what is written on those walls? When did they get written there?  What did you write, and what did others write “for” you?  What got written over, and what stands out, so that you see it staring at you every time you go into that place?  How do you hear their voices when you look into the mirror?

Our scripture readings for the new year concentrate on the power of names. Paul, describes himself as “a slave to Jesus.”  To the Romans, a Christian community he hadn’t founded but wanted to encourage, describing himself in that way allowed Paul and the Romans to see the new lives they had started in Christ.

Similarly, the gospel passage talks about the naming of Jesus—the baby who is named, who was named, whose name will forever be the name which saves us.

So…as you think about the graffiti on your internal wall, what is the name that you put there, and what is the name that others have named you? Do those names describe you fully? Do they describe you as you want to be?

On Christmas Eve, I talked about the imperfect Christmas. On New Year’s Eve, we have the imperfect self…closing out a year in which we had joys, frustrations, new starts, and some endings.

And I have to wonder, if you had the opportunity to paint the walls, what would you get rid of?  Or what would you keep? Would you be tempted to write anything new? 

In Sue Bender’s essay, she tells us that 24 hours after she saw the perfectly white wall, she returned to the restroom to find that the walls had been a temptation to someone.  There appeared, high in a corner, the words: “Bathroom graffiti is the only form of democracy.”

Why? Because it’s faceless? Because it’s semi-permanent? Because once it’s up there no one can tell the writer that they are wrong?

The next day appeared: “There is a difference between freedom and democracy, Bozos!”

I love that. Only in Berkeley.  However, maybe the second writer is right.  Maybe bathroom graffiti (at least our own internal graffiti) is NOT democratic, and we have the choice about what we put there, who puts it there, and why.

And if that’s true, and you’ve made the decision to paint over the walls, what if you let God, or Jesus, or the Spirit, or even Paul write something new about you. What would they want you to paint over, to forget, to move away from, or move towards? What name would you give yourself, and what name would God and Paul give you?

Where would they write it, and how often would we look at it?

So as the year ends, and the Christ Child is being named….we are free to write, or to not write.  We free to read, or to erase all together.

Sue Bender continued her reflection by noting that on the third day, new graffiti was whitewashed over, but it could still be read if you tried really hard.  I’m not suggesting that we can just whitewash away what has been with us for year. 

Who we are is written on our hearts. But what I am saying is that Jesus sees us, and he loves us, and in loving us, he is telling us that we have the choice in what we keep and what we make new..

Is what we hope to be, what we have written our wall, what Jesus really wants for us? Or is it what we have put there—our form of naming ourselves? How honest is it?  And what is our plan to make it happen?

On the last day, after the whitewashing, Sue Bender saw these words written on the wall: “Nothing lasts forever. Deal with it!”

So true, so true.  So the year is ending, and tonight we say goodbye to some things while making room for some others.

What do you need to make room for, and how will what you make room for make you new, newly named and newly formed, for God?

These are the questions that we write on our wall tonight.  May the God of unspeakable power and unending love bless you this night, and always.  In Jesus’ name, Amen.