2019-08-15
Brooke Strong
“Dying Unto New Life”
Scripture: Malachi 3:1-4; 2 Corinthians 4: 8-12, 16-18
Malachi 3: 1-4
1"I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me. Then suddenly the LORD you are seeking will come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come," says the LORD Almighty. 2But who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears? For he will be like a refiner's fire or a launderer's soap. 3He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; he will purify the Levites and refine them like gold and silver. Then the LORD will have men who will bring offerings in righteousness, 4and the offerings of Judah and Jerusalem will be acceptable to the LORD, as in days gone by, as in former years.
2 Corinthians 4:8-12, 16-18
We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies. For while we live, we are always being given up to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus may be made visible in our mortal flesh. So we do not lose heart. Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day. For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure.
A few weeks ago, I preached a brief, two part sermon series on Jesus. During the first week, I talked about whether Jesus was fully God or fully human, often called the Mystery of the Incarnation. I came down in the middle, of course, ultimately suggesting that the theology about Jesus doesn’t matter nearly as much as whether or not we follow the way he lived his life, the life he modeled for us, living consistently out of an ethic of love and compassion, even for one's’ enemies.
The next week, I talked about the cross, and about precisely how it might work our salvation, coming down on the side of the ancient theologian, Abelard, who disagreed with the theory, common since Anselm, called substitutionary atonement, which was the idea that Jesus, through dying on the cross, somehow took our place or paid a cosmic debt to cause God to let us off. Instead, I suggested that Jesus came not to proclaim himself or his death, but to proclaim love, which is really just another word for the Kingdom of God. His death was the result of his political rabble-rousing, and the way to get to Easter which is truly the center of the Christian faith. Dying unto new life.
But here’s the thing, in the days after that second sermon, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had failed to emphasize something important. Really important. And through some reading I happened to be doing, it came back to me that one of the things I most believe about Jesus’ death is the idea that by it, he was modeling one of the most important things we need to embody all throughout our life-long spiritual journeys: that is- death to our own lower selves, what Buddhists would call the death of ego in us. Death to our unhealthy attachments and compulsive thoughts, to our judgments and fears and resentments, to what our Christian epistles indeed call our lower selves.
Someone once said the purpose of the Gospel is in part, to help us get good and sick of ourselves. Sick of our lower selves and all its little complaints and judgements and insecurities and compulsive thinking; sick, that is, of our monstrous attachment to me, myself and I. Sick of the distorted version of our own egos.
To get at the core of the ego self, I turn to one of my favorite writers, Eckhart Tolle, who says that much of our egoic or lower self is born out of our innate tendency to think too much. What some buddhists call our "monkeyminds." Tolle says,
"Not to be able to stop thinking is a dreadful affliction, but we don't realize it because almost everybody is suffering from it, so it is considered normal. The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly, used wrongly, however, it becomes very destructive. To put it more accurately, it is not so much that you use your mind wrongly; but that it uses you!"
In addition to our tendency to get caught up in over-thinking, there is our egoic tendency to defend ourselves in conflict. Someone once said, most of us do not listen in order to understand; we listen in order to react. Our egoic selves desperately need to be right. In even silly arguments, it feels like our life is on the line, and we are nearly willing to go to the death in order to prove some ridiculous point, like who really left the clothes in the drier too long such that they are now corrugated.. Indeed, so often we would rather be right than happy.
Another thing that fuels our lower selves: not being present to the moment. In our Spirits and Spirituality session the other night, we got to talking about Mr.Rogers. His cousin, our own Harriet Rogers, said that Mr. Rogers would sometimes ask, "who is the most important person?" and the answer was always, "you!" He would give his complete, rapt attention to whomever he was with at any particular moment. How often do we give our full attention to the other person in a conversation? How often do we make what needs to be the conscious choice to listen, not so that we press on the other person with our own agenda, but so that we can truly understand, and then, even to invite more from them. And make no mistake: it doesn't come naturally to most of us, save, perhaps a few highly evolved folks like Mr. Rogers. The rest of us need to make a deliberate choice really to set aside our own inner buzzing and be fully present for someone else. It's all part of that long, slow transformation process; that dying to our lower selves as we move up the path.
Listen again to the second letter to the Corinthians, explaining how to undergo spiritual growth into our higher selves: our balanced, whole, joyful and strong selves, deeply imprinted with the image of God.
For while we live, we are always being given up to death, so that the life of Jesus may be made visible in our mortal flesh. Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day. For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure.
And I believe the eternal weight of glory is, in part, our own wholeness and joy right now. We don't just have to wait for heaven for it. It's here and now every time we step away from that grumbling, little ego self and rise up to the way of Christ. We might say it this way: Jesus is our model, the prototype of what whole, love-based living looks like. His earthly life modeled full aliveness, to be sure. But it also included, at every turn, the death of normal, human comforts and aspirations, until it finally culminated in his physical death. He modeled for us death to self, to over-attachments and anything short of incarnated divinity, all along the way:
CS Lewis said it this way, and I quote him directly, with apologies for the gender biased language for God, a relic from his era.
“Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of - throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a whole new palace. He does, after all, live in it Himself.”
Or if you want to hear it less metaphorically & more theologically, again from Lewis:
"We had tried to set up on our own, to behave as if we belonged to ourselves, possessed by the lower nature. Repentance (we might say spiritual transformation, or the technical term, sanctification, into our higher selves) means unlearning all the self-will that we have been training ourselves into for thousands of years. It means undergoing a kind of death.”
So the question is, how do we die to our lower selves? How do we allow God to tear down the old ramshackle parts of our house in order to build that dazzling palace, fit for our ever emerging divinity, for God to live in us, to be sure, but also for us to become the spiritual, little g Gods and Goddesses that CS Lewis says we are meant to be, and into which we are gradually being transformed.
I think the main way we do it is through dealing redemptively with the content of our lives; allowing God to tear down the old walls and pipes of our lower selves, and replace them with the amazing new materials. We ask God to use the circumstances and situations of our daily lives to refine us.
We might start by considering the statement made, I think by Marian Williamson, of recent, new fame, that our words tend to be either an expression of love or a cry for love. Most of what we call "bad behavior" is actually a cry for love! When we can begin to notice this in ourselves and others, we have more choice about how we want to behave. Putting it in the simplest possible terms, we can begin to pause before we unconsciously utter, yet again, the same tired old complaint, the same barbed judgment, the same humor couched insult, the same grumpy intolerance. Maybe we give up the comfort of that third drink on which we’ve become too reliant, or the drudgery of going through the same old motions when, instead, something life -giving is trying to nudge its way in. Maybe we give up the comfort of too much ease and go volunteer somewhere, or get involved in justice work or get active politically. In each one, there is a moment, where a turn can be made, where we can allow God in to begin to do a new thing. I'm sure Phil and those kids have days when their lower selves whisper to them to stay home and do something else. Yet, time after time, they let die their own lower self's preferences, and instead, they show up to do God's work. In making that decision there is always that quarter second upon which everything rests. If we can pause, and become aware that this is the quarter second turning point, and God is waiting expectantly to see which way we will choose, then we have more of a fighting chance to do the right thing.
Perhaps, on social media, you have seen the lovely piece entitled “Practice the Pause.” I paraphrase:
Pause before giving in to your own spiritual laziness, Pause before judging, pause before assuming, pause before accusing, pause before reacting. Practice the pause & you will find you have far less to regret.
I have tried it once or twice, and it really helps. Learn to look for it and you will see that there actually is that quarter second between stimulus and response. You might think some things just come out of your mouth involuntarily, but they don’t. There is always that half or quarter second when you get to make a choice. You might rarely even be aware of it. But try to start noticing. You see, that’s the little crack in the sidewalk where God can sneak through and grow a flower, can change the whole interaction. It might be you even need to say the same hard thing, but the whole thing will be different if you practice the pause, maybe take a breath and let God calm your mind and heart so you can proceed with a whole different spirit.
Another anonymous piece from social media, also on practicing the pause:
"Sometimes we try harder.
We push faster and harder
when what we really need is to pause;
not necessarily stop, but take pause, learn to rest,
and take a deep breath or twenty.
Practice this, practice the pause
so when things start to feel overwhelming and too fast,
you don’t get swept away.
You can take pause.
You can close your eyes and go inward;
maybe put one hand on your heart
and the other on your belly and stop,
even if just for a second or a minute,
even if just for a month.
Learn to pause and rest
instead of quitting or controlling or forcing;
learn to pause and rest
instead of pushing so hard that you are forced to quit.
Before you make yourself sick or someone else crazy,
practice the pause."
You see, it's in the pause that God can change us. It’s in the pause where we can learn, tiny bit by tiny bit, to die to the lower self, as Christ’s death on the cross so powerfully models. Its in the pause where can breathe out the old way of self and breath in the new way of Spirit-
Malachi 3: 1-4
1"I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me. Then suddenly the LORD you are seeking will come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come," says the LORD Almighty. 2But who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears? For he will be like a refiner's fire or a launderer's soap. 3He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; he will purify the Levites and refine them like gold and silver. Then the LORD will have men who will bring offerings in righteousness, 4and the offerings of Judah and Jerusalem will be acceptable to the LORD, as in days gone by, as in former years.
We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies. For while we live, we are always being given up to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus may be made visible in our mortal flesh. So we do not lose heart. Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day. For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure.