I wish everyday was Halloween because it’s a day when our whole society seems to get it right. It’s a day when strangers come to us and are welcomed. Not so long ago we knew and loved and spent time with our neighbors, but that time seems to have passed as we grow more distant and with that distance we grow more skeptical, if not outright hostile, towards our neighbors, but not on the last day of October.
364 days a year if someone knocks at our door or rings our doorbell we announce, with a mixture of shock and disgust, “Who in the world is knocking on my door?” But not on Halloween night. Steve Garnass-Holmes notes, “On Halloween we decorate our homes, turn on our porch lights, open our doors and welcome family, friends, neighbors and even strangers, whether beautiful, ugly, odd or scary, and we accept them all without question, compliment them, treat them kindly and give them sweet gifts.”
Why don’t we live everyday like that? It’s certainly not because our Lord didn’t tell us to:
Hebrews 13:12, “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.”
Leviticus 19:33-34, “When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.”
Job 31:32, “the sojourner has not lodged in the street; I have opened my doors to the traveler.”
Romans 12:13/15:7, “Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality….Therefore welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.”
1 Peter 4:9, “Show hospitality to one another without grumbling.”
1 Timothy 3:2/Titus 1:8, this is so important Paul listed it as a characteristic of shepherds of God’s flock.
Jesus, Moses, Job, Paul, Peter all stressed the importance of the type of conduct we exhibit at Halloween, so I wish everyday was Halloween. Let’s embrace the spirit of Halloween everyday:
First let’s get honest about the skeletons in our closet, about how monstrous we can be and what’s spookiest about us and what we most fear, about our masks and false personas and our secret agendas, about how we trick each other and parade about stuffing ourselves with junk. This is a day we get honest about it, but remember we can also laugh about it. We laugh at ourselves, and then, having lightened ourselves of the burden of our self righteousness, tomorrow we can move on freely without guilt or pretense and be the saints we actually are. Steve Garnass-Holmes
Why don’t we live like that? Because it is easier to vilify others than crucify yourself. So we make monsters out of other people because it is too scary for us to accept the fact that the monster is often inside us, sometimes it’s just our imagination and sometimes its our bad attitudes: my insecurity, my jealousy, my low self esteem, my pettiness, my pride, my arrogance, my selfishness, my prejudice, my condescension, my judgmental tendencies. If we admit that the monster is in here (heart/head) and not out there (others), then there is nowhere for us to run and hide. If the monster is someone else I can move or quit or leave or build a wall they can’t get through but if the monster is me there is not anywhere to escape.
But here is the thing, the gospel means you don’t have to escape the monsters, you must confront the scary, ugly, monstrous demons that lurk in our own hearts and then trust Jesus to change us back from monster to man, man who is made in the image of God. The reality is this, we were created the as the image of God dressed in flesh, wearing our masks trying to scare away the things that scare us.
Why not take off the mask and put on Christ in baptism, be dressed in His righteousness and if you’ve done that then give out kind words and gestures of love to friends, family, neighbors and even strangers.
***NOTE***
Much of this I didn’t “write” as much as edit, as it was copied or inspired by someone whose name I just cannot remember, otherwise I’d give them credit. I took his thoughts and turned them into a sermon a few years ago, and this year I’m turning them into a blog post.
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