I Was Afraid They Would Find Out

Some of my favorite high school memories are from marching band during football games. Not the actual marching. That was nerve-wracking anxiety. But all the things that went around that. Mostly sitting in the stands with my friends as we cheered our team on. When I was a junior, our team won the Texas state football championship. Given that sixty-four teams go into that tournament, that’s about two months of post-season marching. Those evenings and weekends together for months on end formed tight bonds that persisted through the school year. We would often get together outside of structured school activities and just hang out and have fun.

So I had my band friends, and they were one distinct group of friends. I also had my advanced math and science friends. There were about forty of us in our high school, and for the four years we were together we would help each other through difficult assignments and projects. Having fun with my math and science friends was a totally different experience than with my band friends. For fun, we might discuss whatever was going on in English class, or play some board games on the weekend.

For whatever reason, I didn’t have any friends that were in both groups. I didn’t have any band friends that were also my math and science friends. There was no intermixing of personalities. One of my biggest fears during those high school years is that I would somehow be stuck in a situation where my band friends and my math and science friends came together. I knew that my math and science friends did not have a high opinion of band people. They looked down on them as being somehow not as good because they didn’t take chemistry or physics.

And my band friends also looked down on the “geeks,” the “nerds,” those people that just pushed pencils around — basically my math and science friends. If these two groups got together, I’d have some explaining to do. How could I possibly be “one of those” kind of people? In high school, we don’t get to pick and choose the people in our classes. I didn’t want to risk being stuck with a bunch of people that rejected me because I didn’t fit into the crowd. So I always had this fear that I’d be “found out” and then rejected by those in my class. That would make for a lot of misery.

I was thinking about this situation that I had in high school, and I wondered, “What is heaven going to be like?” Well, there’s going to be all sorts of people in heaven, not just band friends and math and science friends. And we’ll have the ability to get to know not just some of them, but all of them. Will a person in heaven worry that one group of people they interact with isn’t going to like or accept a totally different group of people? That’s not heaven. That would be miserable.

Well, why would it suddenly be so easy to have this place where people are no longer rejecting or looking down upon others? They don’t “say Raqa,” as it is referenced in the Gospel. What is going to change between what can happen so easily here on earth today? There are lots of good things on Facebook, but I did recently turn off my Facebook account because there was too much of the bad stuff — one group pitted against another group, each one wanting me to know that the other group is somehow stupid, or evil, or a Darth Vader.

I remember in band, the band director would constantly remind us that practice does not make perfect. Practice made permanent. If we practiced sloppy, we’d perform sloppy. If we practiced properly, we’d perform properly. In Matthew chapter 5, in the story of anger with your brother, Jesus is saying something similar. Whoever is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment. If we practice anger, we’ll carry anger with us to the next life. If we practice love, we’ll carry love with us to the next life. This Gospel reading is one of the more overt references to purgatory. Otherwise it makes no sense. If a person goes to hell, there is no “being released” after the debt is paid. If a person goes to heaven, there’s no debt being paid there either.

So what is this reference to prison all about? Well, if a person is lucky enough to be invited to heaven, and they accept this invitation, it could be that they have some habits that are not compatible with heaven. They might have to unlearn some bad habits. They may need to decide that they can love the “unlovable person,” to accept the “unacceptable person.” While this time in purgatory might be difficult, or even painful, it’s going to be good, because in the end there is going to be a community that is able to love one another and accept one another. Rejection and pitting one side against another will be gone. It’s going to be fantastic.

If you are still keeping the two groups from discovering each other, start by naming the fear in plain words. I was afraid they would meet. I was afraid I would be found out. That is the sentence. You do not have to force a reunion this week. You do have to stop treating the split as if it is protecting you.

Practice is what you carry. If you practice looking down on one group so the other group will keep you, that is what gets permanent. Pick one small place this week where you tell the truth about both parts of your life to one safe person. Not a performance. One sentence: I have friends from both places, and I have been afraid they would meet. See what happens in your body after you say it. That is the first rehearsal that is not sloppy.

If the two groups do meet, you do not owe a speech that makes you acceptable to both. You also do not have to pick a table and kill the other one. Stay in the room long enough to find out whether the rejection you feared is actually happening, or whether you have been running from a meeting that never came.

Heaven, in this Gospel, is not a place where you finally pick the right crowd. It is a place where looking down on the other group is no longer possible. You practice that here, in small ways, before you get there. That is the work. Not becoming someone else. Becoming able to sit with more than one kind of person without managing who finds out.

This is a pastoral reflection, not clinical care and not a substitute for it. If you or someone you love is in immediate danger, call 988 or local emergency services.

Drawn from a homily first preached in 2017.