BEING OURSELVES
Homily for Leighmoor Uniting for 15 April 2018
Let us look first at the essence of the Epistle, or letter written by Jesus’ cousin, John the Apostle, who, as an eye witness to some of Jesus’ doings, also wrote the fourth Gospel. The letter is dominated by two great thoughts: God is light and God is love. God is the source of light to the minds and of warmth to the hearts of his children. I note particularly verse two of chapter three: “Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known”. From the Easter period we all know that Christ came to take away our sins. In Christians this effect is that No-one who lives in him keeps on sinning. Indeed the life we live reveals the source from which we draw our life. John clearly states that we, who do what is right, in the sight of God, are righteous. The standard is Christ, just as he is righteous.
A Eddie Askew, Past President of Leprosy International, who I often refer to, from one of his many his books, “Talking with Hedgehogs” refers to the longest running play in London, “The Mousetrap” It is a thriller by Agatha Christie, running for 70 years plus. The cheese may be getting stale but there have been generations of mice come and gone. And the tourists love it.
The audience is asked to keep the secret of who did the murder when they leave. Knowing how the play ends would spoil it for those who come later.
And it could spoil everyday life too. There are times when we’d like to know what’s going to happen tomorrow or next year. There really is no way we can predict it with any certainty. That is why footy tipping is so popular. And if we knew what is to happen, we may not like it. Perhaps would not be able to cope with it.
We want to feel safe, to know where we are and where we are going. Hans Christian Anderson, who wrote some wonderful fairy stories, was born in a slum and felt insecure all his life. When he travelled around the world, he always carried a rope with him, so that he could escape through a window if he was caught in a fire.
Not knowing, not being sure is part of life. As we start each New Year, we should take life as an adventure, a pilgrimage. It’s scary sometimes, but God is with us on life’s journey.
Now I want to share a sermon, the theme of which was given by Garry Deverell, at the South Melbourne Baptist church in April 2015. This is based on both our Gospel and Epistle readings.
The disciples were not sure it was Jesus standing with them until he showed the wounds in his hands and feet and slipped some fish into his mouth to show that he was himself. The essence of the story this morning is becoming who you are by letting yourself go of who you are to become a new self that is like the risen Christ.
Luke‘s story shows that Jesus was not always himself. His name was Jesus, a son to his mother and a brother to his siblings. He grew up in Nazareth and learned a trade and used it to support his family. Even after his baptism by John the Baptist, in Jordan, and even after Jesus left his home town in pursuit of a new dangerous vocation, Jesus was recognizably Jesus. And yet, Jesus had not yet become entirely himself. At the point of his death on the cross Jesus was not yet what God had promised he would be. He was not yet the risen one, who could shake off the power of sin, evil and death. For much of Luke’s story, then, Jesus is not yet himself in the sense of having become who God had destined him to be.
Crucially, Jesus is only able to become truly himself by letting go of a whole heap of cherished dreams about his future, some originating in his own imagination and some in the imagination and hopes of others. His Jewish mother probably hoped that Jesus would become a successful merchant and maybe a lawyer or rabbi. She and Jesus had to let go of such dreams. His friends and companions hoped that Jesus would become a political leader and oust the Romans and restore the fortunes of Israel. They and he had to let go of that plan. From the story of the garden of Gethsemane, we guess that Jesus himself would really have preferred to live rather than to die. One option was retirement to some regional small business rather than to suffer the wrath of the Jewish Council. In the end, he makes a crucial decision which makes all the difference. “Not my will, but yours be done”, he says. He says that to God, his Father. By that decision he lets go his own hopes and dreams in favour of his Father’s hopes and dreams, which ultimately enables God to complete the process of his becoming. By this death, Jesus becomes the Christ, the one anointed by God to bring a new kind of life in the world, a life so new that most of us still have trouble coming to terms with what it all means.
That is how it is for all of us, as well. We shall never be truly ourselves until we are able to let go of ourselves, the usual hopes and dreams planted in us by family, friends, and culture, grasping, instead, the self that God wills and promises for us, the self that is Christ. The Christ-self, as the first Letter of John tells us, is righteous. Not righteous in the sense of a self-interested hiding away from the rest of the world or a sitting in judgement upon it. No, the Christ-self is righteous in the sense that Jesus was righteous-an engaged embodiment of the mercy of God, a tough kind of love that is centred on other people and refuses to simply abandon them to the powers of death, despair or banality. According to John, we shall never be entirely ourselves until we are like the risen Christ, the new human being, the revelation of what God intends for humanity in general. “When he appears”, says John, ‘we shall be like him’. This is God’s promise but like all God’s promises, it is not a promise that can be fulfilled apart from the choices we make. God created us for freedom. To become who we are, we must choose the path that Christ would choose.
“I am myself” is what the risen Christ said to his disciples. We shall only be able to say that ourselves if we are prepared to do what Jesus did, to take our baptism into his death seriously as a very real dying and a rising. We shall be ourselves when , by faith, we have allowed Christ to take away the fear of what others may think and the desire to conform to all that is conventional or common-sense.
We shall be ourselves when we stop believing that there is nothing we can do to transform this crazy world of economic and scientific rationalism. We shall be ourselves when prayer has become more familiar than watching TV or surfing the internet like on Facebook, We shall be ourselves when we are able to attend the needs of others, even if it means putting aside what we think we might need for ourselves. We shall be ourselves when we are able to surrender ourselves to Christ and say ‘not my will, but yours’.
Now I am very aware of not yet being myself. And you will be aware of it too. But in faith, I believe that Christ will complete the work that he began when I was baptised. He will do it for you too. If only you, and I will surrender. If only you, and I will let go and let God.
In the name of God, Father, Son and the Holy Spirit, as in the beginning, so now and for ever without end, Amen.
Geoff Serpell
