“Losing Self, Gaining Life”
a sermon by Carol Howard Merritt
Pastor of Western Presbyterian Church
Washington, D.C.
June 22, 2008

Text: Matthew 10:24-39

As many of you know, I grew up in a fundamentalist Christian home, and when I felt a call into ministry, I went to a conservative Bible school. There were many, many things that led me away from the movement that I grew up in, but I can pinpoint one of the moments that were crucial in my journey.

I was sitting in a class entitled Christian Life and Ethics. And the teacher, Dr. Hart, was droning on and on. I always struggled to stay awake in the class, trying to keep my eyes open, trying to look at Dr. Hart. He was a short, young man, with an overgrown black mustache. Somehow his monotone voice would say the most inflammatory things, and I would hardly get upset. He was considered too conservative, even for his colleagues at the school. And so no one ever took his class unless it was required.

I was in the required class, listening to him lecture with his hands to his side, saying absurd things like overpopulation was a myth. There was no environmental crisis. Women should never work outside of the home. Parents should only home school their children. Divorce was never allowed in a Christian home. Even though almost everything he said angered me, his voice and affect were so bland that I hardly even heard him. Honestly, the buzz of the fluorescent light bulbs above me were interesting than this class.

But, for some strange reason, on that particular day, a woman, an international student from Italy was paying attention. She held up her hand and asked, “You said that divorce was never allowed in the Christian home, but what about abuse? What if a wife is being abused by her husband?”

“Divorce is never permitted for Christians,” the professor repeated with an impassioned resolve.

And she reframed her question, “What if there are children?”

“Divorce is never permitted for Christians.”

The woman didn’t give up. “But doesn’t a woman have responsibility to the kids? Shouldn’t she protect them?”

And he answered again that divorce is not permitted for Christians, under any circumstances. They went back and forth, and I watched the argument unfold. It was like a tennis match of horror. And the last swing came when Hart emphasized his point, as the final word, he said, “If a woman is being abused by her spouse, then that is simply her cross to bear. She needs to deny herself, and take up that cross.”

That did it. He twisted the words of Jesus, and with no emotion, no hand gestures, he ended the argument. The woman was horrified by the end of it, but he just stood, no anger, no sadness. He just finished his lecture. 

I sat in my chair, with my head in my hands. I had a sudden, pulsing migraine.

It is no wonder that I’ve had a struggle trying to figure out a healthy notion of “the self,” and I’ve had a terrible time with the wisdom of Jesus when he says to give up our selves. I don’t like hearing it. It’s not that I’m narcissistic; it’s just that growing up as a conservative Southern Baptist, a Christian fundamentalist, I was immersed in a home and culture where women were always subject to men. Wives were encouraged to graciously submit to their husbands. Women were told that we could not discipline our children, or control our household finances, or teach men. We certainly could not preach to them, and when I protested, I was often told that I needed to deny myself.

It was a long journey for me to the pulpit, the place where God wants me to be, and much of it had to do with not denying myself, but hearing myself. It was about gaining the knowledge and perspective that I am made in the image of God.

In light of this experience, with this in the background, when I come to this passage, the one that we read this morning, I always wince. There are so many scriptures in the Bible, even words of Jesus that I would like to pull apart and examine. Here, in this text, there is a string of difficult verses that we could wrestle with, yet I’m afraid it would take weeks to pick apart all of the troubling words. And so, I will need to focus on this idea of the self, the part where Jesus says, “whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.” Jesus also says, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”

I had a difficult time hearing it. And so I set those verses aside, and thankfully, I began to hear the voices of Feminist theologians, like the Jewish theologian Judith Plascow who took commandments like, “Love your neighbor as you love your self,” and pointed out to me for the first time that we need to be able to love our selves in order to follow this command. She said that the problem for many people is not the sin of concupiscence, or pride, but it is self-degradation. It is that we have not learned to love ourselves.

It was important for me to hear, and I know that it is the same for many people. As the comedian Margaret Cho says,

“I have self-esteem, which is pretty amazing, because if you are a woman, or a person of color, if you are gay or lesbian or bisexual or transgendered, if you are a person of size, of intelligence, of integrity- then you are a minority in this world, and it’ll be really hard to find messages of self-love or support anywhere…

When you don’t have self-esteem, you will hesitate before you do anything. You will hesitate to go for the job you really want. You will hesitate to ask for a raise. You will hesitate to defend yourself when you’re discriminated against because of your race, your sexuality, your size, your gender. You will hesitate to report a rape. You will hesitate to vote. You will hesitate to dream. For us, self esteem is truly an act of revolution.”

So in a certain point of my faith formation, it was important for me to hear the commandment, “Love your neighbor as you love yourself.” And remember that I needed to love myself. But now, I think I can step beyond that. Now that I have worked out that denying my self for the sake of Jesus does not mean that I should put up with oppression, or abuse, or degradation. That would go against the most important commandments to love God, love neighbor, and love your self.

And so I can pick up the words of Jesus again, and read them, for there is great wisdom here, especially for this moment in time. In our country, we will need to learn to do things differently.

We are a country of rugged individuals. We raise our sons and daughters to be independent. Self-sufficiency is the ultimate goal of parenting, and we would like for them to achieve it at age eighteen. As young adults, we won’t think of getting married until we are financially independent, even though our D.C. economy often needs to incomes for one household to sustain. And when we do get married, even in our own families, we are seeking a secluded life.

The Wall Street Journal observed this as it reported new trends in architecture. We are designing homes to make sure that people stay to themselves. “Major builders and top architects are walling off space. They’re touting one-person ‘Internet alcoves,’ locked-door ‘away rooms,’ and his-and her-offices on opposite ends of the house. In fact, the showcase of the Ultimate Family Home hardly had a family room. The boy’s personal playroom had its own forty-two-inch plasma TV, and the girl’s bedroom had a secret mirrored door leading to a ‘hideaway karaoke room.’”

We live in a society where ultimate happiness is portrayed by a man, in an expensive car, with leather seats, with a blasting stereo, driving as fast as he can, making smooth corners on a road somewhere, completely isolated, completely alone.

Of course, after driving in traffic gridlock of D.C., I do understand this fantasy a bit more… but the problem with this advertising fairytale is that the isolation, even in with great wealth, is not making us any happier. This era of independence, of self, does not bring us contentment.

Bill McKibben writes about this in his book, Deep Economy. As wealth has grown in the last couple of decades in our country, happiness has declined. Americans who said they visited with their neighbors fell from one-third to one-fifth, and it keeps falling. We’ve been working too hard. We’ve been entertaining ourselves in our own personal playrooms.

Our sense of independence has affected American religion, where a personal, privatized faith in Jesus Christ has become much more important than the faith community. I know of some churches have difficulty maintaining their budgets because people give so much to televangelists. What they receive in the privacy of their own homes is more important than being a part of a body of believers. 

We have based so much of our economy on individual gain, even though our communities suffer. Wal-Mart is a good example of this. My brother-in-law and sister-in-law work for Sam’s, so I know a lot about Wal-Mart and their employment practices. People shop there because the prices are so low for the individual customer. And yet, as the superstores have multiplied, we know that they are bad for our communities.

In the few years that Wal-Mart was expanding in Iowa, “the state lost 555 grocery stores, 298 hardware stores, 293 building supply stores, 161 variety shops, 158 women’s clothing stores, and 116 pharmacies.” A new Wal-Mart eliminates a job and a half for every job it creates. Comprehensive studies have shown that counties with Wal-Marts have grown poorer than surrounding counties, and the more Wal-Marts stores in the county, the faster they grew poorer. Communities suffered but the individual benefits, from lower prices.

The problem with putting individual gain over the community is that humans seem to be genetically wired for community. People who have good friends or who are close to their families are happier than those who are not. People who participate in religious communities are happier than those who are not. Joining a club, a society, a church of some kind cuts in half the risk that you will die in the next year. And the activity that makes Americans happy, that produced all kinds of joy? Volunteer work. People make friends through it. They see results. It broadens their experience of life. It gets people out of themselves.

For a moment, people begin to deny themselves. They put aside their independent self-serving, and they see themselves as a valued part of a community. I would say that we are not only genetically wired to be in community, but our spiritual selves crave it. Long for it.

And so we find ourselves in this good community. A place where we can learn to love God, love our neighbors, and love ourselves. In this place we can rest from the relentless pursuit of gaining. We can learn that we are beloved by God. We can learn how to lose our self, and gain richer, fuller, and more abundant lives.

To the glory of God, our Creator,
God, our Liberator,
And God, our Sustainer.  Amen.