Why You Need to Get Naked More Than You Might Have Ever Realized

Decades have passed, but I still remember it, the horror, the shock!   I was at school getting a drink from the water fountain.   Everything seemed fine until I looked down.   I had forgotten my pants.  Somehow, I had come to school without my pants.   It didn’t seem anyone noticed, but I couldn’t hide the no pants things forever, could I?  What was I going to do?   How was I going to find pants?  How was I going to find some way to cover myself? 

 

Have you ever had a dream like that?   It might have been your pants missing or heck, it might be the whole kit and kaboodle.   You stood at a party or a bus stop naked or close to it!  Now, if you’ve had a dream like that, you’re not alone.   Sigmund Freud, when he categorized common dreams, put naked in public right at the top.

But I gotta admit.  When I had that dream, it freaked me out.  But now I realize.  That dream was telling something I needed to hear, that everyone needs to hear.   It’s ok to be naked.  In fact, only when you become ok with naked, do you become free, truly free.   It’s not the sort of naked that happens in the shower.  No, this naked goes deeper than that.  You see.  You can be walking around all day in your birthday suit, and not be naked at all.  How can this be?   Here, God shows you the way.   Let’s listen and hear what God has to say.

Genesis 2:25, 3:1-13

We live in a world where people work so hard to avoid getting naked, even with themselves.  And when you avoid that, it not only limits your life, it can end it.  What do I mean?  I’m not talking about physical nakedness.   I’m talking about the deeper meaning of that word.  I’m talking about what that word means in the story we just heard.   But to understand how crucial that naked is, you need to understand how you and I lost it in the first place. 

Right before you have the story of the tree.  You have this strange description of Adam and Eve.   And the man and the woman were naked and not ashamed.  Why in the world do you need to know that?   It’s because God is telling you something crucial, something crucial about their relationship.

God is telling you.  God is telling you that they were totally exposed to one another, not only physically but emotionally and spiritually, and they felt no shame or insecurity.  These two human-beings had nothing to hide.  Heck, they didn’t know what that word even meant.

But then when it came to the tree it all changed, instantly.  They started hiding all over the place.  Why did just eating from that tree do that?  What happened?

Well, keep in mind, that this story has nothing to do with the tree.   God could have made it not picking a marigold.  This story has everything to do with the trust.   The serpent told them that they couldn’t trust God.  God didn’t really love them.  God didn’t intend the best for them.  That was the lie.   And when Adam and Eve ate from the tree, they showed that they believed that lie. They showed. They didn’t trust God.  They believed the lie that God was hiding something from them, something good.

And once they believed that lie, it infected them.   It infected them with fear.  Before they ate from the tree, fear had not appeared in the world.   But once that trust was broken, fear spread.   And the more it spread, the more Adam and Eve hid.  Fearful and distrustful of each another, they find the fig leaves.   Then fearful of God’s reaction, they hide in the bushes.  And their hiding shows how deadly this lie has become.  For nothing destroys human beings like hiding. 

Have you ever heard of Theranos?  It’s the name of a company that supposedly discovered a revolutionary way to do blood testing.  The company claimed that they could with one prick, they could put a little of your blood in this magic, high tech box, and test you for as many as 200 things.  But last year, after ten years and a billion dollars, it turned out that Theranos had discovered nothing, except how to deceive some of the most prominent investors in the world.   But it didn’t start out that way.  The folks at Theranos started out believing it could be done.

That’s why they hired the brilliant biochemist, Ian Gibbons.  Ian had pioneered innovations in blood testing technology.  And he believed the Theranos revolution could happen too.  But it became clear soon that something was wrong, very wrong.  But the leaders at the top kept hiding the problems, ignoring Gibbons’ warnings.  Then a lawsuit happened.  Gibbons knew.  He’d have to testify, and the truth would come out.  So, what did Ian Gibbons do?  He killed himself rather than come out of hiding.

Now you don’t have to go that far for hiding to destroy you.  Every day, people hide.  They hide their emotions.  They hide their pain.  They cover up their problems.  And all it does is let all that junk eat them away from the inside. 

But hiding goes deeper than that.  For when God comes and tries to draw Adam and Eve out.  They still keep hiding.   Adam blames both God and Eve, and then Eve blames the serpent.  And what is blaming but just another form of hiding.  And who knows?  When they blamed, maybe each of them had convinced themselves it was true.   But when you hide, you don’t just hide from others, you hide from yourself.  You avoid the truths you’d rather not face.  You ignore the pain thinking hiding it will somehow make it go away.   And that hiding from yourself can be the most destructive of all.

And why do people hide?  Why do you hide?  You fear what coming out of hiding would mean.  What if people saw you as you are, flawed, insecure, broken?   Would they love you still?  Would they even accept you?  More profoundly, would God love you?  Would God accept you? In the end, it all goes back to the original lie, to your doubting of God’s love. 

And even religion won’t save you from that hiding.  For even Moses, the great lawgiver hid.   St. Paul wrote about it to the believers in Corinth.  You see.  When Moses talked with God on the mountain, his face shone with such radiance that afterwards he had to wear a veil.  That way his shining face wouldn’t blind the people.  But the radiance went away.  In fact, it went away pretty quickly.  But Moses still wore the veil.   He didn’t want anyone to know.

And today that hiding continues.  In fact, religious people can be some of the best hiders. The molestation and misconduct scandals in church after church show you that. 

But in Jesus, God frees you from hiding forever.  In fact, after Paul talks about Moses, he says this.  In Jesus, you can live with an unveiled face.   Why? 

In Jesus, you see the unveiled face of God, a God who out of love went to death and beyond for you.   And when you know that God loves you like that, you know.  You know no failing, no fault, no matter how shameful or bad can ever take God’s love away from you. God really does love you no matter what.   In fact, because of that love, in Jesus, all God sees is your beauty.  Jesus’ love has taken all your ugliness on himself.   You are free. 

And as you know more that love, the more it frees you.  It frees you from hiding; hiding from God, hiding from others, hiding from yourself.   The more you become free to live with an unveiled face.

In fact, that’s what God has called churches here to do, to let Jesus create communities, a sanctuary where in Jesus, people come out of hiding, where people experience the joy of being naked and unashamed.    That is what God's love in Jesus does.  That love frees you.  It finds you.  As the preacher John Ortberg put it.  "Your life depends on getting found.  There is never any healing in hiding."  So let that God love, let in Jesus, this God call you out of hiding into the beauty and joy of his infinite love.