The Person Behind The Mask

"Who is the person behind the mask...?"

She looked up from the table of food she was so artfully arranging, her beautiful and piercing blue eyes catching my attention. Noticing her half-dyed, vibrant blue hair and the faint mustache growing, I asked her name while introducing myself. Unsure if “Georgie” was a girl transitioning to a guy or a guy transitioning to a girl, I determined just to be Jesus’s heart in that moment. I asked simple questions about her life, genuinely interested.

Her love and pursuit of all things artistic had now led Georgie on a path to becoming a hairdresser. The catering and serving business was a side gig. So, as I talked with Georgie, I enjoyed learning how she was growing as a hairdresser and was being mentored by another local hairdresser I knew well.

While engaging in conversation with Georgie at the big birthday party for a dear friend, I wondered how many people had talked with her or how many had avoided her in this mixed crowd of party-goers. The contrast of people could not have been more obvious: the colorful, tattooed, and artistic ones, and the religious, polished, and neatly dressed people at this birthday celebration.

"She was beautiful..."

After decades of going to church and having a more conservative group of friends, I realized over time that God was stretching my heart and enlarging my faith and vision. I could no longer look at people through a narrow lens, but I had asked God to enlarge my heart. I was asking His help to see people from the perspective of His heart.

A few years back, at another gathering of mostly conservative friends, a cross-dressing man showed up at the Christmas party. Gasps and shocked expressions rippled through the crowd. Next, I noted a small group of individuals whispering, laughing, and mocking this man. Sorrow and righteous anger welled up in that moment. While I was just as shocked at “Steve’s” appearance, the compassion of Jesus swelled in me as I made a beeline to greet and embrace Steve, welcoming him to our annual Christmas party.

That experience impacted me. It changed me.

What if we were the only Bible Steve would ever read? What if we were the only church he would ever encounter? What would my reaction or behavior say to him about Jesus? I’ve wrestled with these thoughts then. I wrestle with them now. What are we to do with the blue-haired, gender-confused Georgies and the cross-dressing Steves of this world?

What would Jesus do? How would He respond? I’ve asked myself this question time and time again. And I know the answer: He’d see the person behind the mask, really see them. He’d invite them to dinner! He’d listen to their heart. He’d offer no judgment, but rather a heart of compassion. He’d heal the broken-hearted and set the captive free, but only after first seeing and loving the person wholly and fully created in the image of God. He’d see past the exterior, past the mask, past the packaging, to the real person standing before Him! And then He’d call that one by name and to their true identity as His beloved son or daughter.

And it leaves me to wonder…

I’m afraid the modern-day church, or what we call church, would be too religious to open its doors, let alone its hearts, to the Georgies and Steves of this world. Would we be the tie-clad, perfectly pressed-suited, nicely dressed, and coiffed-haired people too full of self-righteousness and dead men’s bones to love those on the fringes of society? Or would we have our perfectly scripted worship songs, or well-memorized verses, and man-constructed sermons too full of pride and too judgmental of hearts to reach for the outcasts of society and to simply love them?

I wonder…

The church is not an institution. It is not a denomination. It is not even a building. The church is to be the breathing, living, moving heartbeat of Jesus. It’s to be His Hands, Heart, and Feet to move towards the hurting and the outcast. It’s to be His Eyes and to see past the masks or exterior to the hurting, addicted, and bound person. It’s to see the person’s worth and dignity, no matter how dark or foreign it may seem to us, His followers. It’s to look past the clothes, past the tattoos, past the blue hair or earrings to the person created in God’s image. And it’s to love them and call them forth to life and freedom!

The people, whom most church-goers would consider outcasts of society, are not racing to the doors of the churches. So maybe the church needs to move towards them: one person at a time.

Jesus was condemned and criticized by the religious crowd because He dared to touch the leper, to invite the women to follow Him, to deliver the demon-possessed, to welcome the harlot, to eat and dine with the sinners and the tax collectors: basically, the outcasts of society in His day.

And what would Christians make of this God in flesh, Jesus, were He to walk amongst us today? Would Jesus even be welcomed in our places of worship? Or would we see Him as a scandalous Savior? I've wondered about the organized church today. God may very well have to bypass the sacred halls and walls of organized religion for His next big move and outpouring of the Holy Spirit to reach the most unlikely of people.

What if He were to show up at a Pride parade? What if He wanted to touch the unlikely in a bar or smack dab in the middle of a busy restaurant? What if He were to eat with the homeless in their camp or throw a party for the prisoners, the widows, and the orphans?

What if?

"What if we are the church...?"

What if the church is not an institution, a denomination, or a building, but rather

the breathing, moving, heart-led, spirit-filled individuals He calls His own? And what if? What if He wants to live and move through His children to reach for and love the least of these?

Jesus did not come to condemn us. He came to seek the lost, to bind up wounds, to heal the hurting, to deliver the captive. He came to restore us to the Father and to bring us into His family. His greatest act of love was stretching His arms wide in a sacrificial embrace upon the Cross. Sinners did not condemn and crucify Jesus; the religious and self-righteous did.

So, what if you…, what if we are to…, what if each one of us is in fact His real church, a bleeding, loving, embracing, and redemptive heart that beats with His? So how are we to live and love?

I, for one, am asking to see people with His eyes, to see past the mask and packaging and past the wounds, and to let my heartbeat with His and to reflect His love, blue hair, earrings, and all!

Beloved:

I am moving in the world and in this hour in unusual ways. I long to bring the lost, bound, blind, and captive children into My kingdom. Many have been wounded by the church and organized religion. You will have to go to the byways and unusual places to reach the lost in this hour. Be open to how I want to move or work through you and see the lost through My eyes of love and compassion.

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, for he has anointed me to bring Good News to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim that captives will be released, that the blind will see, that the oppressed will be set free.” (Luke 4:18)

“For the Son of Man came to seek and save the lost.” (Luke 19:10)

“God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him.” (John 3:17)