Dissemblers, Pretenders, or Confessors
Dissemblers, Pretenders, or Confessors
Another Ash Wednesday, another liturgical cycle, the wheel turning round again from last year, the same readings, the same invitation to a holy Lent, the same ashes, the same reminder of our dying, the same litany of penitence, the same confession. I understand if it might seem like the same old same old. Does Lent feel like fighting the same fears, the same sins, year after year; or does it seem as though old sins just get replaced by new ones? Has that liturgical wheel turned you forward, or do you feel like you’re spinning in place? Do you feel a little hypocritical? Perhaps we’re all like the hypocrites that Jesus seems to set up as a straw man. But that may not be near as bad as we think it is.
Our English word — hypocrite — is not so much a translation as a transliteration of the Greek word — hupokrates — which literally means — actor. Some actors you can’t trust. They want you to think that they agree with you when they really want to take advantage of your trust and you are simply an object for them to manipulate and betray to their own advantage. Those are dissemblers and are what we generally think of as hypocrites.
But other actors might be sincerely trying to learn their lines, hoping to become the role they’re playing. You might also call them pretenders, pretending to be something that they want to be. I suspect the praying hypocrites that Jesus referred to were more pretenders than dissemblers. I suspect that’s what most of us are. I like to think that Jackson Browne sang for all of us: I wanna know what became of the changes / We waited for love to bring / Were they only the fitful dreams / Of some greater awakening?…Caught between the longing for love / And the struggle for the legal tender / Where the sirens sing and the church bells ring / And the junk man pounds his fender…Are you there / Say a prayer for the Pretender.
This Ash Wednesday, and every Ash Wednesday, our Lord invites us to become more than pretenders. This Ash Wednesday, and every Ash Wednesday, our Lord invites us to go into our room, shut the door, and pray to our Father who is present in that secret place,, so secret that it is often a secret to ourselves, our breaking and wondering hearts, trying to understand who we really are to the One who made us. This Ash Wednesday, and every Ash Wednesday, our Lord invites us to cease dissembling, and move beyond pretending. This Ash Wednesday, and every Ash Wednesday, our Lord invites us to begin becoming a confessor.
Our Lord invites us to begin unveiling our selves, as best we understand our selves, and in that unveiling, trust that our one Father who sees us in secret will look back at us, not to condemn, but to enlighten, and forgive. “And if,” in the words of The Exhortation from the Book of Common Prayer, “you need help and counsel, then go and open your grief to a discreet and understanding priest, and confess your sins, that you may receive the benefit of absolution, and spiritual counsel and advice; to the removal of scruple and doubt, the assurance of pardon, and the strengthening of your faith.” Scruple, by the way, is that specific pain of the conscience, from which God gives us relief.
In traditional religious language a penitent is the person who confesses, and the “confessor” is the one who hears, and pronounces God’s forgiveness. As we unveil our selves more and more to our self, and to our God who sees in secret, then the more we shall all be able to unveil our selves to each other, our hopes, our disappointments, our burdens, our fears. And those who come to us searching, with all those same feelings and scruples, will find reason to say, as the Romans said of the Christians, “See how they love each other!”
Pretenders we may be, but that’s a lot better than dissembling. This holy Lent, let us trust more deeply our Father who sees all in secret, and who loves us in secret, to make us all confessors.
February 18th, 2026
Ash Wednesday
The Rev. David Kendrick