What do you think about when I say the word "unworthy?" Why is it that some of the most worthy people I have ever known in my life seem to have a feeling of unworthiness. Persons I have known in Biblical characters. Look at Moses. God spoke to him and said, " I want you to lead the people." And Moses stammered and said, "But I can’t speak in public. I haven’t taken the class!"

There’s Isaiah. Isaiah was the one who was told to lead a people. They asked him to speak for the people of God. And there he was saying, "I am a man of unclean lips." I don’t know if that meant that he swore a lot or what it meant. But he refused to do that. He said, "I am a sinner." And now Peter, right here in the presence of Jesus is saying the same thing: I am unworthy of you. What is this about? And then there are some contemporaries: Albert Schweitzer, Mother Teresa. They are persons who did some of the greatest things in the world and are always talking about being unworthy. If they are unworthy, where does that leave you and me?

Now, I want to look at unworthiness and the fact that it is precisely a perceived or real feeling of unworthiness that prevents us from giving our gift to the world. Everyone of you has a spiritual gift that God intends to give the world and God can’t get that word out, can’t get that gift out if we are in a feeling of unworthiness. We need to be able to look at that. Someone said, "Do not ask what the world needs. Ask instead what makes you come alive because what the world needs more than you know is that which makes you come alive." We need to remember that.

There was another person by the name of Maria Cardinal. She said this and hear it closely: "Until you name your ghosts and baptize your hopes, you remain forever unborn. You are still living out the agenda that someone else has given your life." God doesn’t know exactly what to do with that. Robert Bly, the poet, said: ‘Every time you touch your pain, whether in rage or in tears, you will get better." I believe that will be the same thing that is going to happen to us if we name those barriers to our own sense of worthiness. And we’ll need to look at them.

I’ve got two that I’m naming as barriers to our worthiness. The first would be this: the inner conflict that we have inside ourselves. The inner conflicts keep us from a sense of worthiness. I remember the story of a man whose grandchild came running into his house one day. The grandchild was obviously upset. He was mad. His life-long friend, Jimmy, had made him so mad, he came to his granddad and said, "You know Jimmy? Sometimes I just want to kill him!"

His grandfather stopped and said, "We need to talk for just a moment. Son, inside my entire life, it seems that there are two wolves that are living there that often times go to war. One of them is docile, licks my hand and cuddles up to me. He is very peaceful and mild. The other one is always ready to strike, ready to kill, ready to strike out. Those two wolves are constantly living inside me and often times they are at war.

Then the little boy looked at his grandfather and said, "Grandpa, in that war, which one wins?"

The Grandfather said, "The one that wins is the one that I feed."

Do you remember that piece that came from a wise Chinese person who said: "Anytime you are seeking revenge, make sure to dig two graves."? What can that possibly mean to us today? What can that possibly mean to America, to the church, you as an individual? That’s that first barrier that we have to our own worthwhileness. It has to do with those inner conflicts.

There is a second one. It has to do with outward fixes. I don’t know if you have read at any time some of the work of a man by the name of David G. Myers. He has written a lot about happiness. He is a sociologist. He’s looking at what makes people happy and why some are and some are not. His recent book is entitled, An American Paradox. He recognizes this central thing in America and I don’t know if we have enough courage to face this. We clearly are the people with the most goods and the most unhappiness of any people in the world. Do we dare to look at that? What are we like? Myers says we are kind of like the people who are talked about in Psalm 106. It was a time that the people of Israel were constantly bugging God: give me, give me, give me. That had a long "give me" list! And the text says the most interesting thing. It says that God finally relented and gave them what they wanted, and at the same time gave them leanness of spirit. Leanness of spirit is really, in effect, joylessness. Is that the payment that we have made for getting everything that we want; all of the outward fixes. Getting me what I want has given me joylessness. This is at an epidemic proportion in the United States today. Do we have enough courage to look at that?

I hope that we will have courage to look at those barriers because then we can look at some of the bridges that might lead us to a new way of being. The outward fixes, the inner conflicts. They are what stand as barriers in our lives to what God wants for us. So I am going to ask you this final question: where is our hope? We know the barriers, we live with the barriers. They are inside us. Sometimes we want to deal with them, most of the time we don’t. Where is our hope? I think our hope is going to be at the place that it has always been. That in the shadow of the One who calls us to task and has given us gifts is also the One who can deal with our unworthiness by the power of his grace. This happened with Jesus and Peter. It also happened to me.

Go with me back to when I was in the fourth grade. There was a girl in my class by the name of Mary Jane. She was from the wrong side of the tracks. We all knew it. We said unkind things behind her back. She would come to school often times not dressed well. It seemed there was a time that her life was really going into the dumps. Her dress was dirty all the time. Her hair was unkempt. We thought for a moment, whether real or imagined, she smelled. On the playground we would play a cruel game, not in front of her, but we would play the cruel game of acting like we had this terrible smell on our hands. We would play tag and run around the playground doing that. She got to looking worse and one day she didn’t show up. Nor the next day.

At the end of the week the teacher came to us and said to us, "You know that Mary Jane has been gone. She is going to be coming back next Monday and I want all of you kids to be very nice to her. Be very, very nice. You see, Mary Jane’s mother died of cancer. Mary Jane has been like a mother to the other kids, taking care of the clothes, cooking most of the meals. And now her mother is gone and I want you to be very kind to her." The collective guilt in that room was so thick that you could have cut it with a knife. The next Monday, Mary Jane came back. There she was, recess time. I went out to the play yard. She was standing alone as she was most of the time. I came up to her and said, "Mary Jane, I’m sorry. I heard about your mom." She said, "Don’t worry about my mom. It’s ok now because she don’t hurt no more. She had a lot of pain." She said, "Thank you. And thank you for being nice to me." I ran across the play yard as fast as I could to the farthest corner of the play yard and cried my eyes out. Why was I crying? Because...because at the very point on my most unworthy moment in life—I’m ashamed to talk about it now—I was given the grace of God in the face of Mary Jane. That’s the only thing that can help us, I think, that kind of grace.

You know, they will be calling us together pretty soon, my high school graduating class. They said to us, "Hey, everybody come together." Then they gave us a list of people they couldn’t find. "Do any of you know where they are?" And at the top of the list was Mary Jane. I won’t write back, but I know where she is. She’s inside my heart. She’s inside my life. Hers is a face that I can never, ever afford to forget. She is the one who in the midst of my unworthiness brought right directly to me the grace of God which is the only thing that will finally help with the unworthiness, either real or imagined, that we carry in our lives. May you find your Mary Jane, your place, that holy place, that place of the grace of God. That is my prayer. Amen.

Interview with Richard Wing
Interviewed by Floyd Brown

Floyd Brown: What a marvelous message! Unworthiness. I think we are all troubled with that from time to time. I want to challenge you, to tell me and our viewers, was there a time that you felt totally unworthy, particularly in your professional life? And if so, how did you overcome that?

Richard Wing: It’s kind of long process. The answer is yes. I’ve felt that. I have found this little voice always talking, maybe just behind this ear, saying: "Now you know you are an imposter. If somebody finds you out they will know that you’re not so hot. You look pretty good and you are putting on a good act." I had to literally go on a life-time journey to find out what that’s all about.

I would say that some of the things that helped most, I had a key professor in seminary who really pulled me aside and when I was worrying about some sense of inner worthlessness, he just really looked me square in the eye and said, "This is your calling. You need to be able to do this. I will stand behind you and the school will stand behind you." It became a dramatic moment. It doesn’t sound like it when I talk about it. But also in spiritual life retreats, there is a thing called "negative love syndrome." Sometimes in our lives we have been given negative love syndrome that is someone saying to us that you are really an imposter, that you are going to be found out. And it is a real tough barrier to get through that. Both through confrontation with myself, which is very difficult, with persons that you really trust who will look at that, and then also listening to that voice that gives you your worth, makes all the difference.

Brown: You named all these wonderful people who have made tremendous contributions in life and still they have a feeling of unworthiness. It has almost always been a message that we are unworthy for all the blessings that we have received from the Lord. So is it inbred in our religion?

Wing: I think that’s an unfortunate, strong message that has been gleaned from scripture: you’ve got to be humble, got to be kind, got to stand in the background, don’t take the front seat, turn the other cheek, and all of theses things. The problem with all of that is that it can cover up the gift that we have to give to other people. Do you remember when Nelson Mandela was quoting someone else in his inaugural address and he said, "Your playing small with the world does not serve anyone."? And I really had to take that to heart. I think we have to decipher between true and false humility. False humility is saying that I really can’t do that when I can. What if you could do that, find some way to be able to give that gift because that’s God at work.

Brown: I’m a great believer in "how to’s." There is somebody watching us right now who probably says, "I feel unworthy, and I really don’t quite know how to share my gift." What do they do? Do they pick up the Bible and start to read or do they become introspective or do they seek someone to advise them? What do they do?

Wing: Well, I remind people that often times they are the only scripture, sometimes the best scripture that someone could read. I’m not sure that I would turn someone loose in scripture with all of its complexity and all of its different messages. I think that I would turn them loose with the right person that can be their guide through that, to really get a total perspective of what that’s about. But there is not a single piece of Scripture that is affirming that you must hide your gift any time that you have a gift. God is not served in that. The human family is not blessed when we hide those gifts that are right in front of us and inside us.

Brown: The "positive" books have come through with this kind of thing: I can do it; if you believe it you can achieve it, and this kind of thing. Years ago, Rev. Jackson was saying to people, "You are somebody, I am somebody. That’s really enforcing the fact that we are worthy and we deserve better.

Wing: That’s right.

Brown: A marvelous message. Thank you very much for being with us today.