Materials
Living In The Way Of Jesus,
#1
Letting
Go
Matthew 16:24-28
by Jack Burch and Todd Bouldin
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For several weeks now, we have been dwelling in the lofty heights
of theology, Christology and eschatology. If that isn’t enough
to send you into a deep sleep or to cause you to run out the church
doors never to return again, I hope you heard something significant
and even practical in those messages. My intent in every one was
to help us discover again the meaning of Jesus Christ and His Gospel
for our time. Most of the New Testament is written as reflection
on what it means to be a people shaped by that Gospel story of
Jesus. For the next several weeks until Christmas, I would like
for us to consider some habits of one who walks in the way of Jesus
Christ. The list isn’t exhaustive – no list is – but
these are habits that I think make us distinctively Christian in
our 21st century postmodern world. I wish to begin today with the
practice of letting go of all that we desire to possess, even our
very lives.
Prayer
The Gospel of Matthew, probably written thirty or so years
after the ascension of Jesus, served as a manual on discipleship
for
the early followers of Jesus. Several times in his gospel, Matthew
addresses the matter of “the self” and says that the
crucifixion of self is the first step in following Jesus. It even
comes before you can love.
The Greek word for “self” is psyche, and it is often
translated as soul. Sometimes in the New Testament it can be used
to mean persons, such as in Acts 2:41, “About three thousand
psyches were added to their number.” But in its root meaning,
though, it really refers to the animating principle, the life force;
that is, life itself. It denotes the self, and it is understood
as one’s inner life or true personhood including who they
are as genders, races and personalities.
So when Jesus begins to
describe to His disciples what it will mean to follow in His way,
He says that “If any want to become
My followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross
and follow Me.” (Matthew 16:25). Deny the self. Who is the
self that you are going to deny if you want to become Christian?
What is your real self, the core “you”? Is it
your name, who your parents were, your gender, your job, your personality,
your dreams? Is it your church, your beliefs, or your ministry?
What is the core “you”, the real self, which Jesus
says that you must deny if you are to follow Him?
Our culture is
obsessed with finding and expressing this real true “you.” According
to many psychologists, adolescence and early adulthood is nothing
more than the experience of finding
the true “you.” We are raised to suppose that everything
that really matters in life happens “to me.” We do
this or we do that depending on what impact it will have on me.
As some of you have sometimes helped me see, sometimes we even
confuse the situation so that we say that we are seeking the benefit
of others while we are still doing what we truly want to do. Sometimes
doing what “I” want to do comes at great pain to those
we love. Notice how misfortunes are weighed by their affect on “me” – so
that a traffic jam on the 405 is of much more concern to me than
genocide in the Sudan. People are judged to be good or evil based
on how they feel about “me.” Anger directed at someone
else is disappointing, but anger directed at “me” is
cosmic. My disappointments are catastrophic, and constructive criticism
aimed at “me” is earth shattering.
And of course, the
world as it was on the day “I” was
born is the way it is and the way it always should be. The way “I” read
Scripture or how “I” interpret it must be the only
way to see the passage. And wrongs done to me – real or imagined – are
the only unforgivable sins. All the rest should be forgiven – as
long as they are done to others. And that “I” succeed
in my dreams is central to the whole operation of the universe.
And if they worry “me” the whole universe should be
concerned too. After all, “I” am the center of all
that matters.
Our culture reinforces this kind of thinking too.
We are taught to “look out for #1” and we admire those
who give themselves to others – up to a point – up
to the point where it costs something. We Californians are particularly
narcissistic,
worried about our health, our bodies, our cars, our homes, and
our lifestyles. Yet we sense deep inside that this focus on ourselves
hasn’t really gotten us anywhere. The world’s greatest
minds and its wisest teachers always have told us that belly button
gazing is wrong and too shortsighted. Albert Einstein once observed
in his book The World As I See It, “The true value
of a human being is determined primarily by the measure and sense
in which
he has attained liberation from the self.” The late British
novelist Iris Murdoch wrote in an essay, “Love is the extremely
difficult realization that something other than oneself is real.” And
an apostle of Jesus Christ once wrote, “It is no longer I
who live, but Christ lives in me.” (Galatians 2:20). Based
on that animating principle, that his life had taken on the life
of
Jesus Christ, he wrote to some people trying to get their own way, “Do
not think of yourselves more highly than you ought, but rather
think of yourself with sober judgment.” (Romans 12:3).
So it
seems to “me” (ha) that Jesus is asking us
to crucify this “I” and “me” that keeps
wanting to live life on its own terms if we desire to follow after
Him. He goes on to say, following the earlier passage in Matthew
about taking up our cross and following Him, “For whoever
wants to save his life (psyche) will lose it, and whoever
loses his life (psyche) for Me will find it. What good
will it be for a person if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits
his own life
(psyche)? Or what can a person give in his exchange for
his life (psyche)?” (Matthew 16:25-26). It is interesting
that in four cases, the same Greek word is used, the word which
when anglicized
is psyche. It denotes the self, the soul, the life force, life
itself, one’s true life and inner personhood. That means,
if you are going to follow in the way of Christ, that you won’t
make anything about your life – including your claims that
your race, your gender, your sexual orientation, your calling,
or your job defines who you are. To follow Jesus is to crucify
this self and let Him give you back a self with Him as your animating
principle, as your life force. Jesus will be your psyche. “It
is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.” It
doesn’t matter who you are, when you follow Christ to the
cross, Jesus becomes your identity and the animating force of your
life. That is why, that “in Christ, there is no
more Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male or female.” (Galatians
3:28) In Christ, human characteristics no longer define
our “selves”.
We belong to Christ. And that becomes our true self.
So listen to
the passage again, “For whoever wants to save
his self will lose it, but whoever loses his self for Me will find
it.” That may sound like bad news, and it may seem so difficult
that it will take a lifetime to do it. You are right. It is terribly
difficult. But this may be one of the most freeing passages in
all of Scripture. It tells us that you will find your life when
you go ahead and lose it. You will discover untold freedom, joy
and love when you can just let go of the need to see all of life,
every person, your spouse and your children, every issue and belief,
through the lenses of “I” and “me.” Go
ahead and let “me” go. If you try to cling on to your
life, assert your way in the world, and look out only for yourself,
you will lose yourself and all that you are trying so hard to protect.
Listen to my paraphrase of Jesus again then:
For whoever wants to
save self or anything else will lose it,
But whoever loses self or anything else will find it.
To save our
lives, we must let go of the desire to control it on our own – the
need to make of it what we want. All attempts to control life are
ultimately doomed, because as hard as we may
try to control it, there will be something we cannot control. The
attempt to control what we cannot control sentences us to a daily
life full of unmet expectations and mind-numbing worry.
How do we
move past this? It means surrendering the expectation that we can
control life and the tendency to construct every situation
out of the lenses of “I”, “me” and “mine” and
then to operate only from that perspective. Our notions of ourselves
are largely self-constructed anyway, and who we perceive ourselves
to be changes like the Santa Ana winds. Do you believe you are
someone different than you perceived yourself 10 years ago? 20
years ago? So that means there must be something more to who you
are than the shifting winds of your self-perception. It’s
that desire to make yourself into something and continue reinventing
yourself that you must surrender if you are to walk with Jesus.
This
is not only what Christ has commanded of us. It is also the way
of freedom, peace and great joy. Jon Kabat-Zinn writes
this in his book on meditation, Wherever You Go, There You Are, “If
you stop trying to make yourself into more than you are out of
fear that you are less than you are, whoever you really are will
be a lot lighter and happier, and easier to live with too.” Jesus
knows that our efforts to make and save ourselves – and all
that we want out of life – is the way of bondage and death.
It really leads us to nowhere. But when you follow Him to a cross,
you can go ahead and let go of yourself and all the things to which
you are clinging, and you will find life indeed.
I believe that
all of the Christian life, and most importantly love, begins by
acknowledging that “I” am not the center
of the universe and choosing to no longer operate out of that perspective.
And once I realize this, and give over the desire to control and
possess everything in my life, then I’m freed up to experience
life like never before. I learn not to hear every comment as something
about me. To take everything someone says personally is to assume
that everyone is focused on you. That’s not only arrogant;
it’s a horrible way to live. Next time you are tempted to
take something personally, what if you just thought for a moment
that what the person said or did might reflect more about who they
are than who you are? That’s the freedom we experience when
we stop living life according to “I” and “me.” Anger,
resentment and hatred begin to disappear when I no longer live
life from the standpoint of my thoughts or my feelings. Jealousy
and envy disappear as I stop comparing “I” against
you. And we’re already half way through the 7 deadly sins
here – it all begins in surrendering a life with “me” at
the center. So go ahead and deny yourself, take up your cross and
follow Jesus.
When we follow Christ, we do not just deny ourselves.
We deny all of the things to which we are clinging that we believe
will
save our lives. We deny the world views of capitalism and consumerism
which Madison Avenue and Wall Street teach us will give us an identity
and give us a life. We deny the expectations of our parents, our
children, or our jobs that we are working so hard to force to happen.
We deny all of these things by going ahead and letting them go.
We try to force things, we hold on so tightly to things – all
because we can’t imagine our lives without this thing we
just have to have. When we do this, this expectation,
or this dream, or this person, or this job – it becomes our
god. And you can never enjoy things that you just have to have.
You will be
too afraid of losing it. And that includes the relationships you
hold dear. The best way to get over the fear of losing things – the
things around which your view of yourself are based – is
to just go ahead and lose them.
But now here is the good news. Not
only will you find freedom and peace in releasing all that you
believe will save your life
and give you a real self – even Eastern religion teaches
that – but for Christians, you will be losing them into the
hands of God, the hands who raised Jesus from the dead. And that
is what we Christians believe about walking to the cross of self-denial.
“
If anyone wants to follow Me, let them deny themselves
and take up their cross and follow Me.” It all begins on
a cross. But placing yourself and all of your expectations of life
on the cross isn’t the last word. As we crawl on to our own
crosses, we place our “selves”, not into an empty vacuum
of nothingness, but into the hands of The God of Jesus Christ,
The God who will resurrect the self that places itself on the cross
and you’ll receive back a true life that is everything God
created for it to be. Sometimes you will even get back the things
which you were clinging to in the first place. But this time you
can enjoy them because you’re not expecting them to save
you. They do not define you. They are God’s gift to you.
When
you start living life shaped by cross and resurrection, you’ll
find more than just life and joy. You will finally know who you
really are.
October 16, 2005
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