The author at the gym, 2015.
Click here to watch a recording of this sermon.
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“Do you ever look at someone and wonder, ‘What is going on inside their head?’”
This is the opening line of the Pixar film, Inside Out, a colorful animated trip into the mind of an eleven-year-old girl named Riley. When we travel inside Riley’s head, we meet different characters, including Joy and Sadness, and watch as they interact during the upheaval of Riley’s outside life.
You may enjoy – or dismiss – this concept as a cute fantasy, but there is something to the idea that small people, or parts, live inside each of us. Maybe you have said something like, “Part of me wants to apply for that job, but another part thinks it’s a bad idea.” The language of “parts” isn’t just a way of saying something – it may point to how we really function psychologically. Saying “Part of me this, part of me that” also helps you cope with life better. If it’s just a part of me, say, who is erupting in anger, other parts can help soothe him. And my core self — the true Me at the center — can manage every part and build self-aware wisdom.
So, “parts” language helps. It can even be useful to name the parts inside you, to externalize them a bit and improve your flexibility and skill when working with them. I’ve named a few of my psychological parts. May I introduce you?
Some of you have heard about Monica. She is my driven, achieving self, my focused, uncompromising psychological part. Monica likes to win, but not in a hard or cruel way: there is real kindness in her spirit, even as she pushes me to succeed. She wants to be right, and effective, and good. It is Monica who has gotten me out jogging in the winter rains. Monica wants Grace Church to win, too: she’s not only about me. But her motives are a little suspect: I don’t think Jesus Christ is particularly fond of the idea of a church “winning.” Sometimes I think Jesus has love for my inner Monica, but he also has said to her, “Ah yes, I know you; but I have called you by a different name: you are a Pharisee.”
This is a hard teaching for me: I love Monica. She has pushed me to do good things; she has driven me to accomplish things – like full marathons – that I previously never imagined I could do; she has even helped keep me sober. I like winning. I like getting things done, and I like being flatly unsatisfied with half measures. And yes, Monica is a little judgmental, and on bad days her pushy nature can edge into meanness. But I don’t want to exile her, pushing away the lessons she teaches and the gifts she offers. If part of me is a Pharisee, well, Pharisees aren’t all bad. They often get answers right. They’re not wrong that doing things well is a good thing. They – and Monica – just sometimes get carried away.
My Monica/Pharisee can get carried away when she manages other parts, particularly those who have been exiled or repressed. She is controlling, in both the positive and negative senses of that word. Is there a part of you that likes to control things, and control people? You might call him by a different name, or you may hear Jesus call this part a “Pharisee” and assume that’s just a burn, that there’s nothing constructive in the criticism. But again, Monica and the Pharisees aren’t wrong or bad. They just sometimes go too far. And Jesus shows them respect when he challenges them. One does not challenge someone who has no room to grow, or someone who does not matter, or someone who is only a bad person, or part.
But there’s another psychological part inside me I’d like you to meet. I’m a little more shy to introduce you to him, because I think I sometimes exile him. I certainly manage him. (Or at least Monica does.) I gave him a silly nickname, based on my middle name. This is Danny, and Danny is a ton of fun – until he isn’t. Maybe Freud would call Danny my id. Danny is self-indulgent and unmistakably Irish (no offense to my Irish siblings in the room! I love Danny, and he’s not the only part of me that’s Irish!). It’s just – Danny gets into trouble, is the problem. He loves a good joke … and a good drink. If Monica can sometimes be cruel in her rectitude, Danny can be cruel in his flip recklessness. My core self – the true Me – doesn’t want Danny to party too hard. Someone could get hurt. But Danny’s in there all the same (or in here, I should say). He might live in my gut somewhere, while I imagine Monica is in my shoulders and upper back, the better to push me.
What would Jesus call Danny? Oh I don’t know. Jesus is sometimes criticized for carousing with the wrong people: he might call Danny one of his best friends. If so, then Danny understands that in Jesus he has a scary friend: Jesus loves a good joke, but he is clearly up to something gravely serious. Danny wants the corner piece of cake and will spend most of the evening (or the coffee hour) thinking about little else. Yet Danny is aware that other things matter. Maybe dimly aware, but aware.
If Monica is the Pharisee, is Danny the tax collector in today’s parable? I don’t think so. No. Danny is a little too silly. The tax collector is guilty of some pretty terrible things: he is not just a party guy. The tax collector is collaborating with an empire that is oppressing his people. (He is also trapped in that empire just like everyone else, so let’s appreciate his predicament.) The tax collector knows that he’s culpable, and my inner Danny isn’t that self-aware. If the tax collector lives inside me – or you – then they are somebody else, somebody complicated, somebody with a conscience.
At least one more psychological part lives in me and has a name, but I won’t share much about this part, or person, except to mention them. This is a tender and sensitive part of me, and they prefer to stay close. They have been badly hurt in the past, and I take care of them. All you need to know is that they are deeply, powerfully lovely and kind. They, too, are not the tax collector, though they have met the tax collector.
Finally, if there is a tax collector inside me, it is actually the real Me, my executive self, the person who is in relationship with all the parts. If you destroyed this person, I would not exist. And I believe this is what Jesus sees in the tax collector who comes to the temple and readily admits his need for God’s mercy. The tax collector stands “far off,” not in a prominent place where Monica likes to shine. Unlike Danny he is serious and self-reflective, and unlike my quiet, tender person whose name I didn’t share, the tax collector is mature and articulate. He does not look upward because he is examining and confronting himself – not because he is self-centered, but because he is diagnosing what is wrong.
And then he “beats his breast,” an antiquated spiritual practice for us, but not an unhealthy one: this is not shame, but remorse. Shame is unhealthy, neurotic, and self-abusive (or worse, shame is an abuse put upon us by others); but the remorse of the tax collector is – for all its awfulness – a deeply graceful connection with God. “I have done things I should not have done” can only be said by my executive self, by the real Me, informed by feelings and thoughts, chastened by experience and insight. And then the tax collector – the real Me – asks God for mercy, for grace: I ask for healing and restoration.
The ‘tax collector’ in the parable is the noblest part of the human person, the self inside of each one of us who stands tallest, and searches most deeply for the truth, the awful truth but also the redemptive and glorious truth. For when we do the work of the tax collector – the work of self-examination and repentance – God’s grace pierces us most deeply. Then all the Dannys and Monicas and others inside of us begin to feel better. They are brought back into balance; they are healed. And then, healed and restored, we go forward from our contemplations to heal the world around us.
Soon we will say an unusual confession, one for which no words are scripted beyond “We are sorry, forgive us.” Note well the plural first-person pronoun “We.” Unlike the Pharisee and the tax collector, we are here in God’s temple together, my executive self alongside yours. When we take honest stock of ourselves, shoulder to shoulder, God’s grace works in us with great (if sometimes terrible) power.
And then we will go from here filled with God’s justice, God’s peace, and God’s overwhelming gladness.
My inner Monica would call that a win.
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Preached on the Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 25C), October 23, 2022, at Grace Episcopal Church, Bainbridge Island, Washington.
Joel 2:23-32
Psalm 65
2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18
Luke 18:9-14
The concepts of Internal Family Systems Therapy offered insights in the preparation of this sermon, and the reference to one of my internal ‘parts’ as a “manager” is drawn directly from IFT, created by Richard C. Schwartz.