Some Things I Learned During Lent:

Against the Theology of the Sovereign Self

Mark 8:31-38

Philippians 2:1-11

Rev. Stephen H. Wilkins

Georgetown Presbyterian Church

March 12, 2006

In a hospital emergency room waiting area, one rather self-important man was getting impatient at the long wait. Unwilling to wait any longer, he barged into the triage area and demanded to be seen by a doctor. He shouted to the nurse, "Don’t you know who I am?" The nurse calmly went out into the waiting area and asked the other waiting patients, "I have a gentleman here who doesn’t know who he is. Can someone please assist him in finding out? Thank you."

Face it, we live in a selfish world. We have this sense that the world revolves around us. Ours is a me-first society, and I’m part of a me-first generation. There is so much emphasis on the self: self-absorption, self-actualization, self-advancement, self-assurance, self-improvement, self-interest, self-realization, self-respect, self-righteousness, self-fulfillment. Everywhere you turn, you’ll find encouragement to focus on yourself. Marketers appeal to our selfish motives when they advertise their goods--they want me to think of me, and how I will benefit by the use of their products.

We live in a selfish world. It’s something that surfaces as soon as we learn to speak. After all, what’s one of the first words that a baby learns to say? "Mine."

We live in a selfish world. One might even say that we worship the self, that we try to be in control of our own little world. This isn’t a new development in human history; it’s as old as the Garden of Eden. In the garden of Eden, the serpent appealed to selfish motives in tempting Eve to take the forbidden fruit: "You will not surely die," the serpent said to the woman. "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God. . ."

"You will be like God. . ." That’s the temptation that tricked Adam and Eve in the garden. And it’s the temptation that gets us, as well. We want to be like God, not only by taking control of everything, but also by being consumed with ourselves. Our greatest form of idolatry is self-worship.

I once heard someone describe our selfish nature by using the term, the Theology of the Sovereign Self. He concludes that the Sovereign Self is pervasive in our culture and is in fact the unspoken presupposition of our pursuit of what we consider to be good in life. The theology of the Sovereign Self tells us to grab all the gusto we can. It proclaims accumulating--whether material goods, power, money, influence, status--to be the way to live a truly fulfilled and meaningful life.

And so it’s because the Sovereign Self is front and center in our lives, it’s because we’re so focused on feeding the insatiable appetite of the Sovereign Self, it’s because the Sovereign Self is the all-consuming passion of our world, it’s because of the Sovereign Self that the words of Jesus are so difficult to accept: "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves, take up their cross, and follow me." His words make us stop in our tracks. His words rub against every fiber of our selfish being. It’s as if Jesus is speaking a foreign language; at the least, he’s using words that are not part of our everyday vocabulary--deny yourself, take up your cross.

Before we try to unravel what it means to deny yourself and take up your cross, we have to talk about what it doesn’t mean. Some think it means that we must accept whatever lot in life we have been given. If you’re poor, then that’s just the cross you must bear. If your skin is a different color, then that’s just the cross you have to bear, and so you shouldn’t work to change a system that discriminates on the basis of race. If your husband is abusive, you have to accept that and stay with him, because that’s the cross that you must bear. Let me be clear here: none of these are accurate interpretations of what it means to deny yourself or bear your cross. It doesn’t mean that we must not resist injustice. It doesn’t mean that we must endure being treated as less than human. It doesn’t mean that we blindly accept systems that oppress or discriminate.

Denying yourself, and taking up your cross--these things are about a change in heart that stops turning inward, and begins to look outward, toward Christ and toward our neighbor. Paul describes this so beautifully in the second chapter of Philippians. If we’re going to deny ourselves as Christ calls us to deny ourselves, we will, as Paul says, "Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others."

Denying yourself is about changing the center of your lives. It’s about changing the axis around which your life rotates. It’s about changing the center of your universe, so that you are no longer at the center, but instead Christ is at the center. Instead of worshiping and following the Sovereign Self, to deny ourselves means that we will worship and follow the Sovereign Lord, Jesus Christ.

Denying yourself sounds a lot like what it would mean to live out the two great commands, to love God above all else and with all our being, and to love our neighbors as ourselves. Unless you deny yourself, how can you be faithful to those two commands? How can you love God if you love the Sovereign Self more? How can you possibly love your neighbor if all your focus is on yourself. If you’re going to be obedient to the first and second greatest commandments, you must deny yourself.

The story is told of a time when Mother Teresa heard of a family that was on the verge of starving to death. So she immediately rounded up enough rice for the family to live off of for a week, and she delivered it to the family. While Mother Teresa was with the family, she saw the wife take half of the rice and put it in a bag and start out the door. When Mother Teresa asked the woman where she was going, the woman replied, "There is another family that is also starving; I’m going to take this rice to them." To deny yourself is to take yourself out of the center of your universe, and become aware of others. To deny yourself means to consider others before considering yourself.

William Barclay puts it like this: "If a man will follow Jesus Christ he must ever say no to himself and yes to Christ. . .He must say no to every course of action based on self-seeking and self-will. . .He must unhesitatingly say yes to the voice and command of Jesus Christ. He must be able to say with Paul that it is no longer he who lives but Christ who lives in him. He lives no longer to follow his own will, but to follow the will of Christ."

But what about taking up your cross? That’s a phrase that requires that we go back twenty centuries to understand, and so it’s a term that’s foreign to us. Of course, for Jesus, and even for his disciples, the cross was a form of execution. And so, at its most extreme, to take up your cross is to be willing to die for Jesus Christ. And there are parts of the world where that is a very real possibility.

But in the United States we’re pretty safe from that extreme form of taking up our cross. We don’t have to worry on a daily basis about having to die for our faith. Yet that doesn’t mean that the command doesn’t remain, for it does. Take up your cross, says Jesus, and follow me. So, what does it mean for us?

One of my favorite hymns, and we will probably sing it more than once during the weeks leading up to Easter, is When I Survey the Wondrous Cross. In that hymn, there is a verse that helps me understand what it means to take up our cross, as we see what the cross meant for Jesus. The verse goes like this: See, from his head, his hands, his feet, sorrow and love flow mingling down; did e’er such love and sorrow meet, or thorns compose so rich a crown?

Taking up the cross is about sorrow and love. To take up our cross is to experience in our own lives the same kind of sorrow and love that drove Jesus to the cross of Calvary. In other words, it means that we will face suffering for the cause of Christ, but it also means that the suffering is an outpouring of the love of Christ that is in our hearts.

The call to take up our cross is the call to face suffering as we follow Jesus. Sometimes the suffering will come in the form of resistance and rejection, because the world is fundamentally at odds with the gospel of Christ. Sometimes the suffering will come as we fight for the cause of Christ in our world. It means engaging the unjust and oppressive structures of our world, in the name of Christ. It means fighting for the rights of others, in the name of Christ. It means standing up for truth, in the name of Christ. John Calvin said that, "Whether in declaring God’s truth against Satan’s falsehoods or in taking up the protection of the good and the innocent against the wrongs of the wicked, we must undergo the offenses and hatred of the world, which may imperil either our life, our fortunes, or our honor." And so taking up our cross means that we must not shy away from difficult positions just to avoid suffering; rather, we recognize that as we stand on the side of Christ, suffering will naturally come our way.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was one who learned first-hand just what kind of sacrifice taking up the cross sometimes entails. Bonhoeffer was a pastor and theologian in Germany during World War II, and he saw it as his Christian duty to work within his own country for the defeat of Adolf Hitler. And so he became a part of the underground resistance movement. He was arrested after a plot to assassinate Hitler was uncovered, and he was executed just before the end of the war.

Taking up our cross means that we must not shy away from difficult positions just to avoid suffering; taking up our cross means that as we stand on the side of Christ, suffering will naturally come our way.

But taking up our cross is not just looking for suffering for the sake of suffering. Because while the cross of Christ was an instrument of unbelievable suffering, it was also Christ’s greatest expression of love for us. For the cross is our instrument of redemption, and Jesus went to the cross willingly, FOR US. "No greater love has anyone than this, that they give up their life for their friends." And so the writer of the hymn is right--"Did e’er such love and sorrow meet, or thorns compose so rich a crown?"

You see, while the call to take up the cross may--and likely will, at some point, in some way--entail suffering, it is suffering that is entered into willingly out of love. To take up the cross is to express sacrificial love, love that doesn’t necessarily come naturally. It is the ultimate expression of denying yourself, for the sake of Christ, for the sake of others.

What does taking up the cross look like in your life? Only you can answer that question. Maybe it looks like enduring the shock to your senses and going into a nursing home that reeks of urine, and visiting someone. Maybe it looks like giving up a couple of hours to serve food to the poor and hungry at Friendship Place. Maybe it looks like giving up a couple of hours once a month to deliver food after our pastoral visitation luncheon. Maybe it looks like offering respite care to someone whose child is severely handicapped, so that the parents can have a night out to shop or do other things that we take for granted. What does taking up your cross look like in your life?

I’ve learned something during this season of Lent. I’ve learned that the way of discipleship is not through cheap grace. I’ve learned that to follow Christ means to go against the grain of my natural instinct to obey the Sovereign Self. I’ve learned that to follow Christ means to empty my selfish self and fill myself with Christ, walking in the footsteps of Jesus, and in some way experiencing both the pain and the love of the cross.

"If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves, take up their cross, and follow me." Are you ready to do that?