Letting it all go
12 September 2010 Luke 14: 25-33
Proper 18
There are several different types of people in the world. In fact, there are probably a lot more, but as I was thinking about the Gospel lesson today, it occurred to me that there are at least three—with variations along a sliding scale, I suppose. The first type is the person who doesn’t want to take responsibility for himself. He makes his choices, if he stops to think about them, or merely goes along with what others are doing, but he can never seem to accept the consequences of what he does. He makes messes both large and small and counts on others to clean up after him. He blames others for his mistakes and when others help him he doesn’t waste effort on gratitude, but believes that he had it coming to him. He seems to feel that life ought not to be difficult and when it is, there must be someone to blame. I don’t suppose that many folks could manage to be like this consistently—unless they were very rich. Reality would catch up with them too quickly. They are certainly very tiresome to be around.
Another type of person is the exact opposite: he takes full responsibility for himself and you will never find him blaming others for the consequences of what he has chosen to do. If he makes a mess of something, he cleans it up himself. He knows that part of being an adult is simply being accountable for your actions. He is quick to ask forgiveness if he has offended someone and is grateful if someone does him a favor—although he doesn’t really like it when others do things for him. He knows that a good life requires work and he is willing to put in the time. He doesn’t expect that life will be fair, so he does not get too discouraged when things don’t go his way. These are the kind of people you want for your neighbors.
Both of these types of persons, of course, live in societies which make it easier or harder for them to get along. The conditions in which you have been raised make it harder or easier to be a person who grows to full adulthood. Sometimes the upstanding citizen has a hard time understanding the person who takes less responsibility for himself. It may be that he has come from a fairly secure background and cannot sympathize with the person who never had any advantages. But sometimes the person with little sense of responsibility criticizes those who are successful as if they have all cheated him—not taking into account the value of work and perseverance. So there are exceptions to the rules, of course—prevailing conditions may wreak havoc on the best-laid plans and the hardest work sometimes ends in failure. Sometimes the irresponsible are simply lucky and don’t fare as bad as we might expect. If you listen carefully to our lesson from Deuteronomy this morning, you get the impression that Moses was speaking to these two types of people. “I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live.” That is, take responsibility for yourselves—obey the laws, do what God wants, keep the commandments—and all will be well.
But then we get to Jesus’ comments in the Gospel for today and we wonder what is going on. “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.” By now we ought to be prepared to hear Jesus say some strange things and we realize that the shock of this statement is meant to get us to think more deeply about who we are. Obviously the God who commands us to love our neighbors is not telling us here to hate everyone including ourselves. “Hate” does not mean, as C. S. Lewis once pointed out, “cherishing feelings of vindictive resentment” in this passage. So what does it mean? Jesus is talking about a third kind of character that is possible in this world.
St Paul dealt with the same topic on several occasions. For example, when he said (Romans 6:6): “We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin.” Or this (Ephesians 4:22): “You were taught to put away your former way of life, your old self, corrupt and deluded by its lusts, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to clothe yourselves with the new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.” Now I have heard language like that for a long time—ever since I was a child—and I have struggled to come to grips with what it means. George MacDonald, in the 19th century, in one of his “Unspoken Sermons” talks about God destroying what men call themselves, so that what they really are can be saved. Let me quote him (from the Sermon, “The Consuming Fire”): “When we say that God is Love, do we teach men that their fear of Him is groundless? No. As much as they fear will come upon them, possibly far more. But there is something beyond their fear—a divine fate which they cannot withstand, because it works along with the human individuality which the divine individuality has created in them. The wrath will consume what they call themselves; so that the selves God made shall appear, coming out with ten-fold consciousness of being, and bringing with them all that made the blessedness of the life the men tried to lead without God.” MacDonald says that all of the created world and its history inexorably lead to this end: that the selves God made shall appear.
Thomas Merton seems to be getting at the same idea when he says that most human beings live according to a false self that they have imagined for themselves. It is a self made up of images from their childhood, their education, their family—and, of course, now we must add: relentless advertisements, films, TV, and a million different web sites. The trouble is that this self which has been fabricated from all the bits and pieces taken from the surrounding culture, may not have anything to do with reality—the true reality of the true self which is buried deep in the heart and which only God knows about. The only way to get to that true self is to find God, with whom it is hidden.
I think that Jesus and Paul and George and Thomas are all speaking about the same thing: the third human possibility: the self focused on God, the self which cares to be nothing except what comes from obedience to God, the self for which any life apart from or unrelated to God is simply unreality. This third way means a process of divesting oneself from oneself, being undone, renouncing one’s independent existence, laying aside the false self, the person we call ourselves, so that the self that God has made, that God knows about, can emerge. So our third type of person is set over against the irresponsible person who tries to coast along through life getting others to take care of him; but it is also set over against the responsible person who keeps the rules, does good work, and tries to make something of himself. The new Christian person knows that he doesn’t stand on his own two feet making his own life and taking personal responsibility. He is utterly dependent on God and most of the results of his work are outside his ability to control. He knows that he is not responsible for himself, because he knows that he has no power in himself to maintain his own life. All comes to him as a gift of grace. But he is not irresponsible, either. He is willing to do and to work in whatever way God wants, even if it means cleaning up the messes of others, in order to be found doing God’s work and not his own. He doesn’t want his own work, he does not care to make his own way in the world. He wants to take God’s way and do his work. He blames no one but himself for his own sins, but has compassion on other sinners, for he sees how closely his own cling to him.
To live like this is truly to carry a cross, because it means death to a whole way of self-chosen existence. It may also mean suffering, but it mostly means dying to that false self, the self we want to call ourselves, about which God knows nothing. I don’t think it is a quick and easy process to become this Christian kind of person. I think it takes a relentless self-scrutiny and persevering obedience—which we may not complete in this world. That is what Jesus was getting at by telling the two parables about the tower-builder and the king going to war. If we are not prepared for this kind of self-abandonment, if we are not willing to work at it, if we have no taste for it or interest in it, it is good to admit this to ourselves and not waste our time. Anything else is not really Christian discipleship.
George MacDonald was a lonely voice in his day, speaking words to established forms of Church life that were not welcome. And maybe his conclusions are still not welcome. He speaks in the same sermon I cited above, of the love of God which is not only light but fire. To the man who clings to a sinful way of life—that is, pursuing the false self, the self-chosen way—the love of God must appear as an appalling fire. But, as MacDonald goes on to say: “The burning will not come the less because he fears it or denies it. Escape is hopeless. For Love is inexorable. Our God is a consuming fire.”
Jesus concludes by saying, “So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.” That is the translation of the NRSV. I prefer Eugene Peterson’s this time: “Simply put, if you’re not willing to take what is dearest to you, whether plans or people, and kiss it good-bye, you can’t be my disciple.” But what Jesus means is that what must be abandoned is what the false self calls its dearest, not what truly is. Our true treasure is found in Jesus and in his will for us. When we find that, we find it all—including who we really are.
Every once in a while a Sunday Gospel corresponds with the life of one of the saints we celebrate during the week. So it was this week. On Tuesday we remembered Aidan, a bishop of the 8th century in England, who tirelessly walked about his diocese—he refused to ride a horse most of the time since horses belonged to the nobility and he did not want to separate himself from the peasantry. He cared little for his own interests, had no particular agenda other than talking about Jesus and building up the faith of his people. The collect for his commemoration speaks of us imitating his way of life, which is described as living in simplicity and humility and love for the poor. I think that fairly closely describes the third kind of person, the Christian person, that Jesus was talking about. It certainly describes Him.