“I Am Myself”
Texts: Acts 3.12-19; Psalm 4; 1 John 3.1-7; Luke 24.36-48
When, in Luke’s version of the story, the risen Jesus first appears to
his closest friends and companions, they are not entirely convinced
that he is Jesus, the man they had known and loved. At first they
think he is a ghost, some kind of other-worldly apparition who has come
to harm them. They start to believe only after Jesus has said,
‘Look, I am not a ghost, I am myself’ and invited them to touch the
wounds in his hands and his feet. A few moments later he eats some fish
in the presence, again to show that he is himself, ‘in the flesh’ as it
were. This story, and the one before it about the encounter on
the road to Emmaus, have always intrigued me. Not because of
their apparently miraculous elements (I have never really struggled
with the idea that God can do miracles) but because they model for us
that rather paradoxical process by which Christian selves become yet
more themselves by dying to themselves. So, that is what I should
like to talk about this morning. Becoming who you are by letting
go of who you are in order to become a new self that is like the risen
Christ.
According to Luke’s story, Jesus was not always himself. Which is
not to say that he was not recognisable as himself. His name was
Jesus, he was a son to his mother and a brother to his siblings.
He grew up in Nazareth and learned a trade, which he then used to
support his family. Everyone who knew him over a period of
years could have identified him as himself, even if they had not seen
him for some time. Even after his baptism by John in the Jordan,
even after Jesus left his home town in pursuit of a new and dangerous
vocation, Jesus was recognisably Jesus. And yet. And yet
Jesus had not yet become entirely himself. Even 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. He was not yet the new kind of
human being that the disciples encounter in our story, a flesh and
blood person who could nevertheless appear and disappear as though he
were no longer subject to the powers of time and space. For much
of Luke’s story, then, Jesus is not yet himself in the sense of having
become whom God had destined him to be.
Crucially, in the story, 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 of
others. His mother, being a Jewish mother, probably hoped that
Jesus would become a successful lawyer or rabbi. She, and he, had
to let go off that dream. His friends and companions hoped that
Jesus would become a political leader, a leader who could oust the
Romans and restore the fortunes of Israel. They, and he, had to
let go of that plan. And from the story of the garden of
Gethsemane, we can surmise that Jesus himself would really have
preferred to live rather than to die, to retire quietly to some
regional synagogue perhaps, rather than to suffer the wrath of the
Jewish Council. Yet, 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. And by that decision to let
go of his own hopes and dreams in favour of God’s hopes and dreams, God
is able 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.
But 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 media—grasping,
instead, the self that God wills and promises for us, the self that is
Christ. The Christ-self, as the 1st 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.
Ego eimi autos . . . I am
myself. That is what the risen Christ said to his
disciples. And 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 are prepared to risk both security and sense
for the sake of a gospel of outrageous love. 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 a more
familiar habit that watching TV or surfing the internet. We shall
be ourselves when we are able to attend to the needs of others
(‘needs’, note that, not ‘wants’), even if that 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, I know, are 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
to. If only you will surrender. If only you will let go.
In the name of God—Father, Son and Holy Spirit—as in the beginning, so
now and for ever, world without end. Amen.
Garry
J. Deverell
3rd Sunday of Easter 2006
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