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Once again in the round of Scripture readings for Sunday liturgy we’re given that paradoxical statement from Jesus: “Whoever wish to save their lives will lose them, but whoever lose their lives for my sake will save them.” Luke who records these words for us today clearly saw them as something to be taken literally. He was probably, according to Thomas Cahill, a convert to Judaism from an educated Greek background. It’s thought that he heard firsthand about the destruction of Jerusalem as well as the atrocities the Emperor Nero was inflicting on Christians. He had come into a developing church that knew only too well what might be asked of those who believed in Jesus. And he realized what those called to spread the Christian message had to endure in their travels and in their encounters with all kinds of opposition. Luke has been called the stoic Evangelist, the one who presented Jesus in strength and power rather than vulnerability and emotion. And he sees himself and the other followers of his day looking for a model of fearless courage in this Jesus they had committed themselves to follow. He records for himself and for them the encouragement and the promise they must have yearned for.
And what about us? What does this passage have to say to us gathered here today? We probably won’t be losing our physical lives, something that was very real for many first century Christians. What does our life mean in these times and how are we meant to lose it? Clearly, we are meant to, as the way to saving it. Also clearly, to hold onto it is, in that very act, to lose it. Perhaps we have a clue in the second reading from Galatians. We are no longer slaves or free, male or female, Jew or Greek; since we have put on Christ in our baptismal commitment; we are beyond all of those categories. I’d even venture to say we have gone beneath them, down into our very essence which has been touched and transformed. Our selves have been grace-filled, gift-filled. We live no longer for ourselves but for the Christ who has redeemed us. We are children of a Creator God, a Parent-God, greater, more loving, than the fathers we honor on this day each June, no matter how wonderful those fathers may be.
Surely this is not the life we are meant to lose. I’d venture to say we are meant to lose the lives we have created for ourselves, the lives we substituted for this deepest self of ours. There are a number of names for and descriptions of this created self. Some call it the ego, that aspect we developed beginning in early childhood to deal with our fears and protect ourselves from the dangers we saw around us. That ego seemed to be our friend, saving us from what we saw as destruction from threatening people, circumstances, the environment, and even God. But it separated us, too, led us to withdraw, to cut ourselves off, to go it alone.
Some call this life, this ego, the self with the small “s” in contrast to the Self with the capital “S.” This latter is someone God created in love, someone truly lovable, someone who could meet life, the people in it, and God with open arms. Surely, we needed the former self, the little one, because we live in a world populated by ego folks like ourselves, poised to self-protect and retaliate; we would not have survived had we not cared enough to look out for this small self, to make it strong, to befriend it.
Thomas Merton names this aspect the false self, and he does so because it covers over the Self with the capital S that God created out of love. He describes that Self this way:For me to be a saint means to be myself. Therefore the
problem of sanctity and salvation is in fact the problem
of finding out who I am and of discovering my true
Self.This sounds pretty much like Luke to me. Merton, in his writing uses these adjectives to describe the false self. I think we can recognize this life that must die in us in one or another of Merton’s descriptions: superficial, exterior, alienated, shadow, like smoke up a chimney, imaginary, private, illusory, petty. This false self, this ego, keeps us for the most part on the surface of reality. What must happen to it? Well, Luke tells us, and Merton echoes it: “In order to become one’s true self, the false self must die.” It must be “discarded like an old snake skin, and the invisible self of the Spirit must become more present and more active.”
This is not something that happens in an instant. It is a dynamic by which we are progressively liberated from selfishness, and, says Merton, not only do we grow in love, but in some sense we become love. And contemplation is the only way this comes about, because contemplation stops us from running away from our reality, forces us to look squarely, which means humbly, at it. St. Benedict had it right. And it is to that contemplative spirituality that we are called, if we are to be truly Benedictine.
Perhaps we might ask for that courage to die to our ego life. To do so feels, indeed like death, but it is not truly death of our selves, but only of that ego we have made and which isolates us from love of self, others, and God. We might ask to be drawn into the endless act of love where we are born again, fearless and strong in the knowledge that all is love. Foolish though it may seem to our sophisticated and self-preserving living, this loving life is what we are called to over and over again.