Twenty-sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time, September 28, 2025
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Imposters
Thus says the LORD the God of hosts:
Woe to the complacent in Zion!
Lying upon beds of ivory,
stretched comfortably on their couches,
they eat lambs taken from the flock,
and calves from the stall!
Improvising to the music of the harp,
like David, they devise their own accompaniment.
I trafficked with two popular but bizarre phrases this week, talking to friends. Bed-rot was one, and imposter syndrome the other. The first was entirely new to me, and apropos of some of my lazier days. Sleep my darling … sleep … sleep … the temptress calls. You can always get up at noon.
The second, much more familiar, rests uneasily and often unnamed in the back of most of our minds. Why are we so special? Maybe we’re not. I think if I look a little I’ll see several others who are more special than me. Why don’t I just give up and go back to sleep?
Because of bed-rot, that’s why!
And also … because imposter syndrome is not about truth; it’s about a devil-sent temptation to think evil of yourself and lift others up to levels of perfection that belong only to God, never to any of us – not to those of us who live or have lived or will live on the earth we’ve been given.
We do NOT suck, and then die. We live our one life and can rest assured that everyone else does too.
And then we die.
Blessed is he who keeps faith forever,
secures justice for the oppressed,
gives food to the hungry.
The LORD sets captives free.
Praise the Lord, my soul!
The conclusion of Annie Dillard’s For the Time Being highlights evidence I will include in my courtroom brief:
You cannot mend the chromosome, quell the earthquake, or stanch the flood. You cannot atone for dead tyrants’ murders, and you alone cannot stop living tyrants. The work is not yours to finish, Rabbi Tarfon said, but neither are you free to take no part in it.
In our hands, the hands of all of us, the world and life”—our world, our life—“are placed like a Host, ready to be charged with the divine influence …
Then before me in the near distance I saw the earth itself walking, the earth walking dark and aerated as it always does in every season, peeling the light back: The earth was plowing the men under, and the spade, and the plow.
No one sees us go under. No one sees generations churn, or civilizations. The green fields grow up forgetting. Ours is a planet sown in beings. Our generations overlap like shingles. We don’t fall in rows like hay, but we fall. Once we get here, we spend forever on the globe, most of it tucked under.
Yes, we die … gloriously if we’ve adopted humility like a second skin. On the occasion of our deaths if not before, whatever we’ve claimed to own as gods falls to pieces, but all we own as God’s image-bearers rises up to heaven. Don’t you want to flow along with those holy wisps into eternity?
Moving from Annie’s prose poetry to my own practical psychology, here are two practices, one folded into the other, that remove the fangs from imposter syndrome. You need no anesthetic in this spiritual dentist’s chair. I hope they are familiar to you. The first one – the 5 R’s of the Examen and the second, carrying the nickname NAN.
R Rejoice that you’re not alone in this unraveling of your messy mind. You can discard any thoughts of god-ness and claim your proper place as created one, the Image-bearer, not the maker. And therefore, in this honest recognition, you are NOT Alone.
R Review your day. And your thoughts during the day. And the comparing you have done today of yourself with countless, unnamed others. And with the ones you think you know. This is where the enfolding comes. Here’s a way to get at this review.
N Notice the moments when this comparing happens.
A Acknowledge that this comparing might be quick and incomplete.
N Name your assumptions as best you can. Call them out. Don’t judge them, just be aware of them. Make them conscious. Then, back to the R’s …
R Repent of your thoughts. Say “I’m sorry” to yourself and to your source, your maker, whatever you want to call God.
R Receive the transformation that is available only from beyond yourself. Call it forgiveness, or freedom, or even surrender. Don’t short-change anybody, including yourself. Say out loud the words, “I receive.” A simple I-message like this gradually transforms your mind and consequently your emotions. Close your eyes, stretch out your hands, and feel the gift. Squeeze it tight. Recognize how real it is. Take your time with this.
R Resolve to rinse and repeat tomorrow. I know that my personal mind and body requires far more attention than my laundry. I need renewing every day.
(Don’t you just love all those R’s. Add some of your own!)
Enough! Thanks for listening. Be blessed by poetry and practice and turn away from ugly false thoughts about yourself and others. Love your enemies, even yourself.
Pursue righteousness, devotion, faith, love, patience, and gentleness.
Lay hold of eternal life, to which you were called.
(Amos 6, Psalm 146, 1 Timothy 6, 2 Corinthians 8, Luke 16)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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