Living In Denial

Luke 9: 18-24

Once when Jesus was praying alone, with only the disciples near him, he asked them, ‘Who do the crowds say that I am?’ They answered, ‘John the Baptist; but others, Elijah; and still others, that one of the ancient prophets has arisen.’ He said to them, ‘But who do you say that I am?’ Peter answered, ‘The Messiah of God.’  He sternly ordered and commanded them not to tell anyone, saying, ‘The Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.’ Then he said to them all, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it.

The False Self, or the Wounded Warrior, is the part of you that is continually scrambling to save its own life and it's often easy to identify when the Warrior is saving its own life in a very self-oriented mode. That’s when you begin to give in to self-pity, when you experience offended pride rearing up inside or when you feel anger, resentment, heavy anxiety or fear of loss and you react strongly in order to manipulate or modify the circumstances. These kinds of life saving mechanisms are not hard to identify even though it’s extremely difficult to become disentangled from them.

The place where recognition is more problematic is where the Warrior is trying to save its own life on a spiritual level. The Warrior is not always recognizably selfish. In fact, very often the Warrior seems outwardly deeply selfless in its goals and apparent desires. It’s not the goals and desires that are flawed; it is its own inherent need to be in control and to make things go the way it thinks things should go. Underneath its seemingly good motivation to serve God, the continuous and unhealthy motivation is to keep itself from blame, guilt and further wounds. This motivation is unhealthy because it totally distorts the essential message of the Good News.

 “For those who want to save their life will lose it…” Save their life.  Who’s doing the saving here? Not Jesus. Jesus is saying that no one has the ability to save his or her own life. Later in scripture Paul states that no one even has the ability to follow the law perfectly and even if they could it wouldn’t save them. Last week’s second reading is a great example:

Brothers and sisters:  we know that a person is justified not by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ. And we have come to believe in Christ Jesus, so that we might be justified by faith in Christ, and not by doing the works of the law, because no one will be justified by the works of the law.  For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God.

I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not nullify the grace of God; for if justification comes through the law, then Christ died for nothing. (Galatians 2: 16, 19-21)

It is interesting that alternate translations of the above underlined phrases read: “…so that we might be justified by the faith of Christ,” and “I live by the faith of the Son of God.” It would seem that we aren’t even capable of faith; we are completely dependent on Christ’s faith. The cross and self-denial Jesus speaks of is accepting that spiritually you just don’t have a leg to stand on and that total surrender is the only thing that’s left for you to do.

Jesus says to pick up your cross daily but what the Warrior wants to do is fashion its own crosses. The reason that it wants to create its own crosses is because the daily cross is not under its control. This cross is whatever is happening in the moment. It is your life. It is your simple and broken humanity. It is the broken humanity of everyone around you. It’s the messy chaos that makes up your life. The cross is the core or the central meeting point of life, death and resurrection and it is not within anyone’s control. If you are spending your time trying to manufacture other crosses that are more acceptable or finding a way to get the cross of the present moment under control whether it’s through prayer, repentance, good deeds or by trying to manipulate and direct everything in the way you think it should go, you are trying to save your own life. The Warrior is in control.  The Warrior has made a judgement that life should not be the way it is and the spiritual life should be something entirely different and it will do everything it can to make life conform to the way it thinks it should be.

And Jesus simply says, “Pick up the cross of your day and understand that you have no control and cannot save yourself. Just follow me.” As I have quoted before, he also said, “The flesh is useless. It is the Spirit that brings life.”  These words of Jesus are often confusing and threatening to the Warrior. Sometimes it seems like Christ is saying that you’ve got to do it all yourself and other times like he’s saying there’s no way you can do any of it. What’s the deal here?

True Self has no problem with understanding ‘the deal’. True Self is so aware of and comfortable with its own inability to be spiritually effective that all it wants to do is turn its face toward the sun, soak up the energizing and healing rays and become a sponge that is saturated by the whole nature of Jesus.

The Greek word for ‘deny’ means, “utterly refusing to recognize the original source involved”. Your True Self, by staying with Christ and keeping its face turned toward Christ in full openness and acceptance, is utterly refusing to recognize your original perceived source of power, love, life and control: ego, False Self or the Warrior. Turning away from the striving of the Warrior can feel like dying and loss because you are letting go of control but True Self knows that authentic life will never be found in the Warrior's camp. 

Who do you say Jesus is? If you say he is the Messiah, the Christ of God, then you must stop allowing your Warrior to be your original source, the one who has your program of self-salvation all worked out. The Warrior loves programs and plans. But there is no program. There is only the daily cross and following Jesus through that cross to new life.

Jesus is the True Self of all True Selves, the Name above all names. The love, life and power he possessed when he was on earth sprang from the fact that he had no Wounded Warrior muddying the waters and dragging him into a self-serving circle of defense, control and self justification. Christ knew exactly who he was: the Beloved of God, and he knew exactly what he was: the Messiah who had come to free his people and take them back to their real home.

And that’s what he calls us to follow. Brilliant, isn't it?