Our greatest need is also our greatest fear:
To be known, to be known fully as we are.
This is our greatest need. And our greatest fear.
This insight is courtesy of Frederick Buechner, who was a wonderful writer in our Jesus tradition.
We need to be known, we desire to be known.
The need to be known is the need to be loved, and to be loved simply as we are.
But the fear, is that if we are known but not loved. Rejected, shamed, reviled, or worse.
Being known means becoming vulnerable. That takes trust. And whom can you trust?
So, we can put a lot of work into avoiding being known for who we truly are. We can put up appearances, we can tend to find certain roles for us to play that we know play well to our audience, or at least keep our audience at a safe distance from the naked reality behind the mask.
For some of us that safe role is a small role. For some of us that safe role is actually a very big role. Sometimes the most famous people are doing the most running away from themselves, terrified of having their true selves be known. Desperate to be loved, but at arm’s length, in a way that would not expose the soft, vulnerable underbelly.
Now, it’s wise to be careful about with whom we are vulnerable and how. Because people can be terrible, right? Humans put a lot of energy into judging each other. People can be really vicious about taking advantage of vulnerability. Or even just often negligent of others and self-absorbed.
It takes trust to begin to let down our masks.
So, our need to be known is a legitimate need, and our fear of being known is a legitimate fear.
But I think we also have a fear of knowing others. It can feel safer to keep other people at a distance not only for a fear of being known, but a fear of what it would mean if we dared let their reality into ours. That may shake up our reality, especially if they’re someone who’s life experiences are quite different from our own. It can feel safer to just make comfortable assumptions about them. It can feel safer to be self-absorbed.
The other challenges is that someone else’s vulnerability can remind us of our own in a way we can find uncomfortable.
That’s why if someone is going through a hard time and coming to us for help or support, it can sometimes take discipline to keep the focus on them and their needs, and not shift the focus to ourselves.
That’s just a way of avoiding joining our friend in their heartbreak and fear and tenderness of love, as a way of avoiding feeling our own heartbreak and fear and tenderness.
To know and to love another person requires us to ourselves be vulnerable enough to be known and loved.
And we can do it, thank God! We can be up to the trust, and so can others.
When it does happen, it’s so healing.
When we are known and loved for who we are, when we know and love someone for who they are, what a gift, what a profound gift. It’s a gift that can be given through a long-term relationship in our lives – with a partner, friend, family member, community member … And it can also be a gift that is given in a moment, between those who were hitherto strangers. It just takes a moment when one person witnesses another with compassion for there to be the gift of someone knowing they are known and valued for who they are.
This is a gift that can be given in a moment, and over the course of years of relationship. This is also a gift can be given eternally. As a matter of fact, it has, it has been given to us eternally.
According to our faith as followers of Jesus, none other than Our God, our Creator, the Holy One, Sovereign of the Universe, the Eternal Spirit in which we live and move and have our being –
God Godself knows us for who we are and loves us for who we are.
That’s the heart of our faith.
God knows us for who we are and loves us for who we are.
At the heart of who we are, at the heart of creation itself, is a tremendous dynamo of love.
Everything comes into creation as an act of being loved into being by the Holy Creative Source of all Being. Existence itself is born of a great Consciousness that knows and loves each individual instance of creation.
Why is there something, why is there anything at all, rather than nothing?
There are deep traditions within Christianity and Judaism and Islam that say that the Holy Creator of the universe created the universe for the sake of knowing and being known. At the risk of anthropomorphizing God, we could say that God got lonely being the One and Only.
“In the beginning is the relationship.” – in the words of Martin Buber, a Jewish thinker from last century.
“In the beginning is the relationship.”
Creation is an extravagant act of love by our Creator, creating something out of nothing for the sake of knowing and being known.
This isn’t just in the cosmic scope of things. This is something we can experience personally by God’s Grace, in any moment.
We can experience some of this, in our hearts, in prayer, through ritual and sacrament, through the stories and testimonies of our faith, and most importantly, through the gift of communities of faith, and the ways we can practice knowing and loving each other, flawed though we are.
Everyone needs this, but it is especially poignant for those who have been wounded for not being known and loved for who they are. God offers us what the world too often denies us. God offers us what, I’m sorry to say, the church too often denies people, when it’s agenda gets twisted. That’s why we gotta keep coming to the central purpose of the gospel.
Jesus lived unconditional love, embodied unconditional love, to the point of himself suffering through the worst of human cruelty, and finding the embrace of the Eternal on the other side, showing that God loves humanity as we are, despite the worst.
Through it all God is present, with a Presence of unconditional love.
I’ll end with the words of Thomas Keating, an important practitioner and teacher of Christian prayer. He’s writing about the Presence of God that can be experienced in the depths of prayer:
This Presence is so immense, yet so humble;
awe-inspiring yet so gentle; limitless, yet so
intimate, tender and personal. I know that I am
known. Everything in my life is transparent in
this Presence. It knows everything about me –
all my weaknesses, brokenness, sinfulness – and
still loves me infinitely. This Presence is healing,
strengthening, refreshing – just by its Presence.
It is nonjudgmental, self-giving, seeking no
reward, boundless in compassion. It is like
coming home to a place I should never have left,
to an awareness that was somehow always
there, but which I did not recognize.
My friends, we are all children of the living God –
Yearning to be known and loved for who we are
Fearing to be known and loved for who we are
Deserving to be known and loved for who we are.
By the Grace of God, we are known and loved for who we are.
For that I give thanks to God.
Thanks be to God.
Delivered Sunday, May 5, 2024, by Rev. Nathaniel Mahlberg, at the United Church of Christ at Valley Forge
The Dandelion Way 