It's Not All About Us!: A Sermon for Proper 16 by The Rev'd Deacon Ed Richards

Pentecost 13, Proper 16, Year B, Sermon, August 22, 2021

Poet Laureate Billy Collins opened one of this poetry lectures by first bantering a bit with his audience, telling them how wonderful it was to see them there, how great it was to see how many people were interested in poetry. Then he said, “Now, enough of that. Let’s get this off of you and focused back on me.”

He was kidding, but Collin’s audience laughed because they knew the sentiment to be true of themselves. We live in a culture in which there is constant pressure to focus upon, become preoccupied with, and to cultivate ourselves.

We all embody the aphorism of Oscar Wilde, who is reported to have said to someone at a London party, “Come over here and sit next to me. I’m dying to tell you all about myself.”

Poet Walt Whitman in Leaves of Grass asks, “Why should I pray, why should I venerate...One word is aware and by far the largest to me, that is myself.” It is hard to believe that there was ever a day when Whitman’s “Song to Myself” was considered radical or even interesting. Today we are all singing that song. We have no world that interests us more than the world that is ourselves. We are the most interesting project we undertake. Through such self-absorption, the human landscape has not grown; it has shrunk. The value of everything is reduced to the question, “What is in it for me?”

Protestant Reformer Marin Luther defined “sin” as “the heart curved in on itself.” Curved in on ourselves, focusing mostly upon our needs, our aches and pains, we wither and die. This is the sin that afflicts us today.

“I would die if I didn’t get to play golf at least once a week,” a man in a past church once told me. 

“Surely you exaggerate.” I said. “Golf can’t be that great.”

“Oh but it is,” he replied. There is nothing better than to be out on a nice day, focusing all my attention, all my thought and affection on that little white ball. All burdens are lifted from my back; all concerns are put on the shelf. All I want to do is to get that little ball into that little hole on the green. Its’ …. wonderful.

Recently I was asked to reflect on “the pause”, in that moment; just before I preach. 

I pondered the question and I realized not much. Before that moment, when the congregation is singing the “Great Amen” before/after the sermon. I confess that I do sometimes wonder: How do I look? Am I going to do well? Will they like what I have to say? Have I come here with the right sermon, at the right time, for the right congregation? Will they like me?

But in that pause in that moment just before I preach, I find that I am not thinking about anything except the sermon. My whole being is being caught up, focused on the demands of the sermon. I become what I am intending to preach. 

It is wonderful, all-too-rare (in this culture) moment of self-forgetfulness. It is close to what Charles Wesley meant in his hymn when he spoke of being “lost in the wonder, love, and praise” when one is in love with Jesus. It is the self-forgetfulness of an artist who becomes obsessed with the art, preoccupied with the moment; wholly focusing on the thing itself, giving the art absolutely everything that it deserves.

I think it is something close to what Jesus said in saying, “Deny youself, take up your cross and follow.” It’s quite an achievement, in this culture, to “deny yourself” when we are encouraged by so much around us to focus upon ourselves, to care and feed our adorable, all-important me.

Or maybe self-forgetfulness is not so much an achievement as a gift.

When you are in love (I hope I’m describing something that most of you have experienced), part of the joy of being in love is that you find yourself “consumed” (as we sometimes say) by the object of your love. Your find yourself thinking all the time about the beloved. Every waking moment, and sometimes much of our sleeping moments as well, are preoccupied with the one who is the object of our love. Eventually, if a relationship develops, we find ourselves no longer thinking in terms of “I” and “you”, but rather in terms of “us” and “we”.

Well, something very much like that happens to the believer and Jesus Christ. We find ourselves being drawn out of ourselves and into Christ. We find that we are thinking less of ourselves and more about others. Our needs seem to grow smaller as we are given more responsibility for the needs of others. 

The love for Jesus beckons us on one of the most important journeys we will ever undertake; the long, counter-cultural journey outside of ourselves toward the true center of our being who is our Creator and our Savior. Christians sometimes say “Jesus Christ saves us from our sins.: True. But this Sunday I’m thinking that It’s also true to say, “Jesus Christ saves us from ourselves!”

And when we are in love with someone, to continue my earlier analogy, we don’t prattle on about our love, we focus on the one we love. We don’t say, “You know, I am a great lover of someone. I am so perceptive and caring and have found a worthy object of my affections.” No! We say rather, “My life has been commandeered by another. A wonderful person has come into my life and changed everything.”

Furthermore, when we love someone, we would never say, “I’m in love with someone because I get great things out of our relationship. Whatever I ask. They will do for me. I can use them to get anything I want.” That’s not love! Love that loves someone in order to get something out of that person isn’t love by anyone’s standards.

And yet, sad to say, that’s how we are sometimes guilty of thinking about the Christian faith. Are you anxious? Are your in need of reassurance and comfort? Then come to Jesus; he’ll fix that.

In today’s Gospel we have a strange story, even for a strange Gospel like the Gospel of John. Jesus makes some wild assertions about eating his flesh and drinking his blood. His disciples are clearly baffled by his words. Some of his disciples even desert him after hearing these weird words. Jesus asks his remaining disciples, “Will you also go away?”

And they respond, “Lord to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life.”

Maybe the point is a lack of understanding. Maybe the point is not that we always hear what we want to hear. Maybe the point is Jesus.

Sometimes when we come to church on a Sunday, we get new insights or fascinating ideas. Sometimes we come here anxious and perplexed and leave comforted and at peace. But our understanding, our peace and reassurance are not the point. The main thing we get is the presence of God in Jesus Christ and that is point enough for being here.

It’s not about us. It’s about God in Jesus Christ coming to us as he is, rather than how we might like him to be, speaking to us words we need to hear rather than words we might want to hear. 

Ah what a gift, what a strange and wonderful gift, to be given by this faith – the ability to love someone other than ourselves, the wonder of having your life caught up in some grand project greater than ourselves, the miracle of – for a few glorious moments on a Sunday morning – standing outside yourself. 

Lord, you really do have the words of life. Amen  

“It is not all about us!”