Who am I?
Isaiah 45:11-13, 18-19
Psalm 33: 1-8, 18-22
I John 4:7-21
John 15:9-17
Tim
Christoffersen
St. Timothy's
May 25, 2003
Sixth Sunday of Easter
Good
morning. How many of you caught a sense of how many times the word "love"
was used in the readings from I John and the Gospel of John? Put your hand
up if you think you heard it at least ten times? How many of the rest of you
think you heard it at least 20 times? Did any of you think you heard it at
least 30 times? Well, you were correct.
We heard the word 'love' about 35 times. When we use the word in the context of our relationships with other humans, love clearly refers to a relationship that we have with another person. But there is one use of love where we are apt not to think of relationship. Listen to Jesus' words in the Great Commandment: "Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is the only Lord. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. The second is this: Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these."
There is a relationship with God and with your neighbor, but what about yourself? When you look around in our society today and, especially, listen to our advertising, you get the clear sense that no relationship is involved or necessary. From my listening experience to advertising, I think the words I hear (or selectively choose to hear) most often are "you deserve it." The connection usually is with a service or product, but many times the subtle message is that if you buy the product or the service, a result of that acquisition or purchase will be a relationship with a desired person. What you have is more important than who you are.
Let's look at the second part of "Love your neighbor as yourself." We could start with the question of what does it mean to love our self as we love our neighbor. But we really have to ask ourselves the prior question, "who is yourself," or in more direct English, "Who am I?"
When we ask, "Who am I," at the deepest level there are really only two fundamental answers. One is that we are just one of the latest, minor random happenings in a universe that somehow came into existence. The other answer is that we are a gift of God who is the Creator and Sustainer of this world and universe in which we live.
The 20th century American Trappist monk, Thomas Merton, describes what he calls the 'false self' and the 'true self.' Merton says, "All sin starts from the assumption that my false self, the self that exists only in my own ego centric desires, is the fundamental reality of life to which everything else in the universe is ordered. Thus I use up my life in the desire for pleasure and the thirst for experiences, for power, honor, knowledge, and love to clothe this false self and construct its nothingness into something …real." Expressed another way, the false self sees itself as "the measure of all things," or in practical terms, the creator of its own life.
The alternative path
has a spiritual life at its core. Here we catch a glimpse of the 'true self.'
At the heart of the 'true self' is a relationship with God. "We love
because he first loved us." In John, Jesus says, "As the
Father has loved me, so have I loved you."
Merton's characterization of the false self and true self has an uncanny parallel
to believing the universe and our world is a cosmic accident or believing
God created us. It challenges us to look deeper into "who am I."
The true self knows he or she is a gift of God. But as each of us sits here this morning, the reality for almost of us is that we are, in a sense, made up of both a false self and a true self that struggle with each other, in some respects like the Old Testament story of Jacob's wrestling with the angel. The nature of this struggle for each of us is whether and to what extent we humbly acknowledge that we are a gift of God and our capacity to love our brother, our neighbor and especially our enemy is rooted in deeply accepting that God first loved us and that our life is a gift of God.
One of my favorite quotes from my seminary days is from Reinhold Niebuhr, one of the great theologians of the 20th century in America. For me it captures the reality that each of us is composed of a blend of both the false self and the true self. Niebuhr said, "man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible; man's capacity for injustice makes democracy necessary." [ Now I know if I shift to making the biblical connection between love and justice, I will go on too long and "get the hook!"]
How do we free ourselves from the subtle tyranny of the false self, surrounded by our achievements, our possessions and our shaky conviction that this is the deepest reality of our lives? We come back to where we started…with love. In John 8:32, Jesus says, "And you shall know the truth, and truth shall make you free." I John tells us twice in the reading "God is love". The truth that liberates is the power of love. Love sets us free.
The words are easy. The doing of love is not so easy. The false self does a pretty of job of protecting us from our true self. But it is in loving our neighbor and our enemy that we whittle away at the tyranny of the false self. It is in humble acceptance that we are a gift of God that we catch a glimpse of our true self. It is in prayer that our heart can truly open to God's presence in our life and acknowledge that God loves us. In Thomas Merton's words, "prayer is a death to every identity that does not come from God."
Some of you know I work as a hospice chaplain. One of the deepest joys for me in many of those relationships is the privilege of being granted access to the true self. Our awareness that death is near often means the false self vanishes. The image that strikes me is the hospice patient has no "personas", no mask between them and me. They have asked to see a chaplain and they have spiritual issues and needs. I am granted the gift of looking into the eyes of a human soul. God's love and presence is unquestionably present in those encounters.
But we don't have to
wait until death is imminent to achieve a deeper awareness of our true self.
A story in Philip Yancy's, book What's So Amazing about Grace? captures it.
The story tells of an Irish priest on a walking tour of his rural parish.
He encounters an old peasant on the side of the road, praying. The priest
is impressed and says to the peasant: "You must be very close to God."
The peasant looks up from his prayers, thinks for a moment, and then responds
with a smile on his face, "Yes, he's very fond of me."
AMEN.
