Losing Yourself to Find Yourself

Exodus 3:1-15 Proper 17 – A
Romans 12:9-21 St. Benedict’s, Los Osos
Matthew 16:21-28 August 30, 2020

Losing Yourself to Find Yourself

I. Jesus Foretells his Suffering
A. Jesus makes the first of his predictions of his own suffering and death in the gospel reading from the 16th ch. of Matthew.
1. He has just heard of John’s violent death at the hands of Herod.
a. At the same time at this point in his ministry he is aware of increasing opposition that his teachings and actions have aroused.
b. Perhaps he sees his mission in line with that of the prophets or Suffering Servant in Isaiah 52-53.
2. So it is entirely possible that with his intuitive vision he may expect a confrontational or even violent outcome to his career.
a. In describing this he speaks of necessity,
(1. “…he must go to Jerusalem…”
(2. His fate is a part of God’s plan, a divine necessity.
3. With this prediction there is a definite turn in Matthew’s story,
a. Jerusalem now will continue to loom larger.
b. Jesus’ teaching becomes almost exclusively directed to the
disciples rather than to the crowds.

B. In the midst of this we have this startling portrait of Peter who was the first of the disciples to declare that Jesus was the Messiah. —
1. Jesus has just given Peter his blessing, naming him Peter, the rock on which he will build his church.
a. Jesus gives him the authority of “binding and losing” on earth as in heaven.
2. Now on the heels of this dramatic confession of faith, Jesus says to him,
“Get behind me Satan, you are a stumbling block to me…for you
Are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”
3. This is all precipitated by Peter refusing, in the name of God, what Jesus has just said must happen, — his own suffering and death.
a. And here is where we can clearly connect with this story.
b. We too are often confusingly confident with our claims
upon God, thinking that we can claim God for our purposes.
(1. Peter’s first attempt at “binding and losing” is a complete
failure.
c. Peter is clinging to his new self-understanding as Jesus’
right hand man more than he is clinging to God.
(1. It’s his protectiveness and rigidity that earns him the
name, Satan, not his zeal.
d. Peter will have to relinquish his understanding of the rock,
(1. give up control over his expectations.
e. Peter has no idea now, but by the end of the story, this
indeed, will happen. –

C. Here Jesus makes one of his most enigmatic statements that is
so difficult for us to fit into our outlooks and understandings.
1. “If any want to become my followers, let them deny
themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those
who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their
life for my sake will find it.”
2. This is particularly hard for us to hear today because we rank very high, near to the top, the values of self-actualization and finding oneself.
a. We value the successful life as a steady trajectory toward
these fixed ends that we can control.
b. What could it possibly mean that we must surrender, pride,
ego, status, comfort and even life itself for the sake of the
kingdom of God.
c. This is not simply a call to lose oneself in a selfless cause, as
noble as that may be.
(1. It’s a specific demand placed on those who would follow
Jesus,
(2. Losing one’s life “for my sake,” for the sake of God
revealed in Jesus.

II. Losing One’s Life to Find it – Centering Prayer
A. Jesus is calling his disciples and all who would follow him to a spiritual transformation, an awakening to something much larger than our conventional way of being.

1. His words about losing one’s life to find it is akin to his other similar words.
a. “You must be born from above.” (John 3:7)
b. “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it
remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much
fruit.” (Jn. 12:24)
2. Jesus taught from the conviction that so many of us live with a case of mistaken identity.
a. The person I normally take myself to be –
(1. that busy, anxious, little “I,”
(2. so preoccupied with its goals, fears, desires and issues –
(3. is not remotely, the whole of who I am.
b. To seek the fulfillment of my life at this level means to miss
out on a much larger life.
3. So, the one who tries to keep his “life” (i.e., the small one)
will lose it,
a. and the one who is willing to lose it – will find the real thing.
4. Beneath the surface there is a deeper and vastly more
authentic Self,
a. but its presence is usually veiled by the clamor of the
smaller “I” with its constant needs and demands.
5. This confusion between the small self and the larger “Self”
(variously known in the traditions as “True Self,” “Essential Self,” or “Real I”)
a. is the core illusion of the human condition.
b. Penetrating this illusion is what awakening is all about.
6. I’m sharing with you here some of the teachings on prayer
from Cynthia Bourgeault, in her book, Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening.
a. It’s been a very formative learning for me over the past 10 years or more and I recommend it to you highly.
b. One sermon can’t go into much detail about Centering Prayer.
c. But I think it is valuable to give it some attention in relationship to Jesus’ startling direction in the gospel today. —–

B. Jesus did not use psychological language but spoke in straightforward ways his contemporaries could understand.
1. In our modern usage we’d say he is speaking of liberation
from the ego, the “small self,” or as spiritual teachers say,
the ‘false self.’

2. Richard Rohr, the Franciscan teacher says both Catholics and Protestant scholars confined by the same western European World-view have both ended up interpreting Jesus as liberating us from the ‘body-self,’ something imagined distinct from spirit. —
3. For much of our Christian history, the body carried shame.
a. The body carried guilt
b. When one had too much to drink, too much to eat, or had
been involved in dishonest sex, the body knew it.
c. We knew that this was not what we were about,
(1. so, we naturally felt shame and guilt in regard to mistakes
we made with our body.
(2. It was easy to capture this.
4. But mistakes we made with our ego, like pride and ambition,
did not cause us to feel shame.
a. We actually felt these things as empowerment.
b. But, in fact, this is the ego from which we have to free
ourselves.

C. Our plight, in our default, conventional state of being, has been described by spiritual teachers for ages, as sleep.
1. On the one hand, each of us have incredible, luminous depths within in which we know how to listen and to whom we are listening.
2. But the clarity of our listening is obscured because out on the periphery we also have a self-manufactured sense of self who thinks that the whole world is riding on our back.
a. That ‘false self,’ that ‘small self’ drowns out the inner
music with a constant barrage of voices that say,
(1. “I need,” – “I want,”- “Pay attention to me.”

III. The Hope that is within you
A. It is possible to experience what lies beneath. Spiritual traditions of many stripes teach that the first step is to pull the plug on the constant self-reflexive activity of the mind.
1. That’s the human capacity to split our field of vision into subject and object and perceive oneself as the outside observer.
a. It’s the ordinary thinking about ourselves that is in a complete closed circuit with egoic identity.

2. Intentional silence, meditation, centering prayer, contemplative prayer –
a. all these are names for putting a stick in the spoke of conventional thinking, so that the whole closed circuit gets derailed.
b. And by grace, not by effort, the more subtle awareness at the depths of your being can begin to make its presence known.
3. At first when you practice meditation, it feels like a place you go to.
a. You may think of it as my “inner sanctuary” or “my place apart with God.”
b. But in real practice, it is not a withdrawal into oneself; it is not a passive retreat from the one’s immediate experience or the world.
c. Rather, as the practice becomes more established in you, this inner sanctuary begins to flow out into your life.
d. It becomes more and more a place from which you come.
e. It is a bedrock of spiritual intelligence, a sense of connectedness known from deep within yourself. Nothing can shake it.
f. It becomes your source for action in the world.
g. This is “the hope that is within you that can never be taken away,” no matter what the outer circumstances may be.

B. Our lives today are difficult and often feel overwhelmed. We need healing.
1. Our attention is shadowed with major crises that threaten our lives, seemingly beyond our control.
a. The Covid 19 pandemic quickly spreads over the world and exposes our biological and social vulnerabilities.
b. We suffer an historic economic downturn. While many have been disenfranchised to begin with, now many wonder if and how they could recover.
c. We are confronted ever more visibly with systemic divisions of race, and large-scale immigration of people fleeing violence and chaos in their home-lands. These are global realities that increasingly affect everyone.
d. Beneath all this, and I would say deeply connected and affecting the others, is the realization in the developed world that the way we have been living is not sustainable. We have trampled the natural world not knowing we are part of it and are killing off Earth’s life biospheres. —
2. Today, people of faith from every tradition are finding a common voice and recognition to say that these crises are inter-connected and first of all, spiritual at their roots.

a. Could it be that the global threats we face today might open new doors, an opportunity to recognize what Jesus tells us, that we have to first, lose ourselves; to die to the pretenses of our ego; to learn a new humility in the face of realities larger than ourselves?
b. We might rephrase his words to say, “We must actually be out of the driver’s seat for a while, or we will never learn how to give up control to the Real Guide, which is the Spirit drawing us ever together and into the life of our Creator.
c. We find this pattern of letting go and finding in the life of Jesus himself who for the sake of his love for God and the world, gave himself up, even to death on the cross.
d. Our prayer this morning is for God to “mercifully grant that we may walk in the way of the cross, … and find it none other than the way of life and peace… through Jesus Christ, our Lord.” Amen.