Self-sacrifice is what we’re all meant to be about.
We were made to lose ourselves.
This is why in the traditional baptism rites candidates were, and sometimes still are, immersed in a symbolic drowning.
We are so grateful for the lives of Zachary and Alice - their drowning would be a million miles from our thoughts this morning! Nevertheless all we are about this morning announces the desire they have their sinful human nature drowned to death. That they come to live lives not full of themselves but full of the unselfish Spirit of God.
We can trace our existence this morning in five stages: the creation of inert matter, the formation of the earth, the emergence of life, of consciousness and then, in human beings, self-consciousness.
Only self-conscious beings are capable of fulfilling what the universe is all about, the sixth moral and spiritual stage, which is self-sacrifice.
This action came to perfection, and so perfected the universe, on an April day around 30AD when God who had taken human form gave himself up to death for us and for our salvation.
Self-sacrifice, losing your life to universal gain, is not applauded uniquely in Christianity of course.
In the book Born in Tibet Chogyam Trungpa tells of a saintly man in north-east Tibet whose compassion was so great he opened his house at all times to the poor. When, as an old man, he knew he was about to die he gave this instruction: ‘When I die you must not move my body for a week; that is all I desire’.
Soon he did die; and his body, wrapped in old clothes, was carried into a small room. The bearers noted that although the old man had been tall his body had already appeared to have grown smaller. On the sixth day when the family peeped into the room they saw it had grown still smaller. On the eighth day when men came to bear the body to the cemetery they undid the coverings they found nothing inside save nails and hair.
When the family reported the event to the local lama he said that this had happened in the past and was a matter of saintly people ending up being absorbed into the Light.
There is a lot of wisdom in the east which can work to remind us of Christian basics. We were made not to be full of ourselves but to lose ourselves to God and other people.
Buddhist teachers of Western pupils complain ‘They are so full of opinions on everything; and so they can never know anything’. This is quite a judgement on the spiritual immaturity of a postmodern, post Christian society.
We reach for our newspapers every morning to fill ourselves with opinions in a society where we once reached out to God every morning. We have plenty of knowledge but so little wisdom we have to turn east to cultures relatively unaffected by the 24-7 information flow.
Our greatest prayer for Zachary and Alice this morning, and for us in their service, is for the capacity to know what’s important – God – and to be made holy as we grow into the divine nature - to live not full of ourselves but of Christ.
As we heard from St Paul in the first reading, a man in prison mind you, to me living is Christ, dying is gain.
We allow ourselves to be saddened over much by our worldly failings. How much sleep we lose over useless things – that promotion we missed, that deal we messed up, the ageing of our bodies, the growing infirmity of our minds.
None of these things are cause for ultimate sadness so much as our failure to live selfless lives.
As Léon Bloy wrote: there is only one sadness, the sadness of not being a saint.
For 30 million years God has prepared us with Alice and Zachary for this day since he made the earth, brought about living beings, conscious and then self-conscious beings.
What we are doing at these baptisms is to announce the final stage of life – to be able to give it away in thoughtful compassion and kindness.
In baptism we announce the principle of drowning to self. In the sacrament we also give and gain the way to accomplish it.
One only has been able to give of himself totally for others in the history of the world. He died in our place to live in our place.
Self-sacrifice is what we’re meant to be about. We were made to lose ourselves in love to Jesus so Jesus could live within us and make us ever more capable of this, and of holiness.
To me living is Christ, dying is gain
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment