Kent Beduhn
August 4, 2013
“Out of infinite glory, may God give you the power through the Spirit for your hidden self [inner being] to grow strong, so that Christ may live in our hearts through faith.” -Ephesians 3
I only have a few things to say, then I’d like to hear some of your reflections on some questions. I’m going to be talking about our hidden self, our True Self.
1. God created us to take genuine risks.
2. We become more like what we focus on.
3. Love is the origin and end, the start and the end point, of the truth.
1. God created us to take genuine risks. Risks take many forms of daring and even foolishness, but perhaps the greatest of risks it so become authentically ourselves, to be our True Self. We set up lots of process in our community to continue to deepen the journey toward knowledge and action from the True Self: doing a spiritual autobiography, sharing your disciplines in a small group and being accountable to spiritual accompaniment on your path. The “I” authenticated by the culture or the world, or the workplace, or family is a False Self, not the True Self. The “True Self,” as Richard Rohr says in his book Immortal Diamond: The Search for Our True Self, “is that part of you who knows who you are and whose you are, although largely unconsciously. Your False Self is just who you think you are—but thinking doesn’t make it so.” We must take the genuine risk of going deeper, beneath our thoughts, our executive decision-making ego, to discern who and whose we are. This is the most worthy and inspirational journey we can possibly imagine and engage over our lives, and in our community.
2. We become more like what we focus on. It’s like our parents said about the friends we hang out with, whose image we surely take on. If we choose to focus on Jesus, and live into that image, life and story, we become as Jesus. How we come to know ourselves, and how we come to know Jesus, will become the same knowing, and we may recognize more of what’s divine in Jesus and in ourselves, as we come to know God more intimately thru knowing Jesus and through knowing ourselves. I believe that is how Jesus came to be known as “Christ,” Messiah, The Annointed One who Saves. This is what I think Paul meant when he said we are “in Christ.”
3. Love is the origin and end, the start and the end point, of the truth. It’s from love and for love that the truth gets recognized and celebrated. There are moments of beauty, goodness & truth that break through, in the presence of love, as Richard Rohr says, that move us to a place of eternal life—beyond our ordinary life experience. Such moments as the birth of a child, the union with our lover, a peaceful death, or stark beauty break through, where “time comes to a fullness” (Mark 1:15), and become moments of eternal life. Without such eternal moments, it will be very hard for you to imagine the breakthrough—or even the possibility—of the True Self, or of Resurrection, or, as Rohr says, “or you will long for it [Resurrection] like no one else, which is the concise meaning of hope.” This Resurrection, breakthrough loving moment reveals the True Self, “who we are and whose we are” and, more importantly, reveals in the image of the Risen Christ our own utterly wounded humanity. It also shows parts of our glorified nature also in the same moment. This is ultimately transformational and culturally subversive. More on that later.
In Colossians 1-3, Paul refers to the “Risen Christ, at the right hand of the Father,” when he says: “Set your mind on things that are above, not on things that are on the Earth…,” and such transcendent moments break us through to the other side of love’s offerings to us, in the very midst of the wounds and wrongs, in midst of Beauty, Goodness & Truth.
Paul goes on to say, “…for you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” Paul shares how the old self needs to die in order to reveal the new self. This revealing takes many forms.
How can we actually live “in Christ”? It’s a popular phrase in Paul’s writings. Being “in Christ” to him was living a “new life,” allowing for a new personality, an original identity. It’s as if the old self we thought we were (or had) becomes re-formed, through the image of God present in Jesus, and becomes a Christ image, a new self, held in the presence of God as whole and complete. This is not an identity spread on the top of a rotten one, like the richest most delicious food (like peanut butter & jelly) spread on top of rotten bread. No, we are not denied or whitewashed out of our old self, but rather, Paul emphasizes, we are made entirely new, in what Meister Eckhart would call “original blessing:” steeped in our unique giftedness & brokenness, humanity and energy, the full light of our True Self, being fully who we were created to be.
“Set your mind on things that are above, not on things that are on the earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.”
There’s a lot to be conscious about here, and the renewal and transformation—through knowledge—Paul points to is key to creating this new awareness. It is a consciousness that is able to understand and accept a new self, a True Self. Paul talks in Colossians about the “new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator.” Paul goes on to say an astounding thing: that the renewal of yourself in knowledge creates NO differences among us of nationality, of physical characteristics, of history or culture, even whether we’re “slave or free,” but that the experience of being “in Christ” transcends all of that, because he remarkably says, “Christ is all in all.” Could the unitary experience in Christ, even among us, be so disarming that all distinctions and differences between and among us we think make all the difference make no difference at all, in our True Self, our new self.
Paul says “stripping off the old self with its practices” is the first step toward clothing ourselves with the new, True Self; and “its practices.” What we do and say, and the Spirit given to us to do it, reveals intimately who we are & whose we are. Love is the most revealing way we measure truth in the self. If we are to actually “love one another as God has loved us,” and the greatest commandments are to “love God above all else,” and “love your neighbor as yourself,” then perhaps we would do well to spend more time learning who this True Self is that God loves so well. Perhaps the True Self is the ONLY barometer by which we can measure our willingness or real capacity to love our neighbor. And perhaps when we cannot love or understand our True Selves as God loves us, it surely becomes the “plank in our eye” that keeps us from seeing “the splinter” in our neighbor’s eye.
1. So, God created us to take genuine risks. Some reflections: I believe one of the ultimate risks is to become and live from a sense of True Self. But this is not about “me & Jesus getting it together to become true & real:” it’s about a whole community of True Selves becoming a force, as a church, to bring God’s Kingdom. It’s about us learning from God and one another to strip away the old self (& all it does takes some doing!), and feels like the risk of entirely losing the self, giving all the self away. And you see how God works this transformation, in and through us, in community, if you stick around, and it is a magnificent blessing to see. How we surround ourselves with stuff, status, titles or history is a form of defense against this True Self. It’s a risk to renovate—either personally or physically, like we’re doing here at the Potter’s House (PH). It’s a risk to strip off the old self of the PH and to see what’s at the core. It raises the real fears that everything we’ve known in this place, this history, this stuff will disappear, and that part of ourselves we associate with it will also disappear, and our old self WILL be naked and exposed. We may ask, “Who was I?” or “Who were we before the PH was part of our lives?” It raises the kinds of fears expressed during our announcements last week, about whether the renovation and changes, in the end, will produce the same kind of place we’ve been used to. This is my prayer: that those working on the renovation learn to strip their old self, just as surely as the walls of the PH, and reveal their own and all of our new self, our True Self. Many of the truly remarkable people that founded and developed the meaning of all the PH has become are not disappearing, but they’re embodied and carried with us in this project: Surely Esther Dorsey, the first manager of the PH, still resonates within the intention of our transformation. Surely the founders, Gordon Cosby and Bill Branner and Mary Cosby are part of the operations and business decisions we will still make about this place—in fact, Mary has endorsed this project with great hope and delight. Surely Meade has embodied the former management styles and finesse of Mary Hitchcock and Dot Cresswell. The resonance of the past was so clear in Elizabeth O’connor’s writings that Tim Kumfer could return to her book, Call to Commitment, and cull the essence of the original Spirit of the call of the PH, and articulate it in our shared call now. All of them, and all of us, are becoming, “in Christ,” a new self, like the PH itself is, and all of us along with it. Surely, Mary Easley, Mary Jr., Joe Wash, Paul, Timmie, and the many other staff and workers who’ve labored here have left their essence here in a way that is indelible. Their Spirit and energy is a critical part of this project, as we’ve affirmed in this month of goodbyes and moving toward closure. Indeed, Rick Fugate’s funeral yesterday marked the end of the era, in the PH Church’s devotion to holding this vision’s fire and regular, day-to-day operations. This rigor and faithfulness is rare, and I am grateful that 8th Day Faith Community sees itself as worthy of such a call.
Further, the Potter’s House, and we ourselves, are more than we think they are. When I reflect on the significance of the PH, I reflect on those moments when I heard a phrase in a sermon that stuck and resonated within when I most needed it. I reflect on the dedication of my children with their grandparents in this room, the many songs I played for the first time here, my first commitment as a covenant member after coming here for 20 years, and my first year committing as a servant leader. I remember kneeling (right there) and asking Carol to marry me, in the announcements of an Easter service. Those moments break through, and in NONE of those moments was I alone, but with a community of True Selves that resonated the Truth, Beauty and Goodness of those moments. And in this community I could risk to grow through grace receive from God. Those moments of receptivity and grace were not without much creative tension and push-back from an old self being stripped away, even defiance. The old self must be stripped before the new self can be clothed in love, especially in community. God created us to take genuine risks. I encourage you to risk deeper, to risk more of your true self.
2. We become more like what we focus on. It’s remarkable to see God working in and through us, among us (and sometimes despite us). It’s like what Ann Barnet said last year in a Covenant Member’s meeting on offering of our gifts, “LOOK how God’s changed us over the years!” How do you know it’s God working? How do you know it’s in the image of Jesus or God that we’re being transformed? A few guideposts may be: Look at the fruits. Look at the changes, when we take the risks to be our True Self and follow Christ’s call on our lives. Look at the perseverance and consistency of many ministries and services provided through the church, and ask yourself, “What sustains them?” Look at how God has changed you, or the community, because it is constant and continuous. Seek to recognize how God is moving you to act out of the new self, the True Self as you pray. And offer thanks and honor for the Lord for making you more into God’s image each day. As we focus on these urgings, and listen more than dampen or dismiss it, our new self, our True Self, emerges and grows, often seemingly unhampered by challenges or fears, moving forward and onward, participating in the exponentially unfolding Kingdom of God. Focus on it, because: We become more like what we focus on.
3. Love is the origin and end, the start and the end point, of the truth. So when you’re a little overwhelmed by something as large as the True Self, simply reflect on where your loving experiences originate and end, where you learned to recognize what’s true in yourself and others. (It also works to reflect on when we reflect on loving experiences of Beauty or Goodness originate and end up.) In the years of being a therapist with thousands of people seeking to become whole (in the midst of every imaginable adversity), my clients have helped me so much more than I could have helped them. I will be forever grateful. They have taught me to help them by lovingly listening for truth, beauty and goodness, the Strengths, and helping them recognize their identity and their direction in love. This often leads us toward the True Self, or something very close. If the True in us is revealed in love, and Jesus and God reflect love in our most extreme & revealing experiences, then it’s not a far leap to consider how we are “in Christ,” and how that love permeates our understanding and our relating with every dimension of our being.
There are so many examples of this among us. I witnessed Barbara O’s increased freedom to share her prayers and pictures and letters with Carol and I over her recent stay. Her capacities and gifts of love go deep, and become moments when I witness her True Self coming alive, as when clapped or danced when we did music together, or when she prayed aloud with Carol and me. She was recently confronted with her limits in her financee’s drinking, and chose to leave the scene and return to home (with us) rather than drinking with him or tolerating any negative treatment. It takes courage to become something different than the old self. Paul is very clear when he says the new self, the True Self, doesn’t abide drunkenness, “anger, wrath, malice, slander and abusive language.” Paul says to “put to death whatever in you is earthly: fornication; impurity, passion, evil, desire, and greed (which is idolatry).” Barbara embraces such a difference, such a goodness. When some may think we’ve been helping Barbara, it’s really Barbara that’s been helping us to become more ourselves, more real, more True. Love is the origin and end, the start and the end point, of the truth.
Let’s take this one step further, then I’ll close. The subversive and transformational nature of this True Self “in Christ” may not be immediately apparent. But I put to you that the True Self “in Christ” is the ultimate whistle blower to all powers and principalities. Paul was articulating the nature of Christ in this process of transformation very clearly. He was using images of the “Cosmic Christ” in Colossians 1 to be the “Head of the body,” the one “thru whom all things were created,” in whom “the fullness of God was pleased to dwell,” and “thru him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things.” Paul goes so far as to say Christ is “before all things” and “in him all things hold together.” This is highly subversive of the Roman Empire of his day, since there is only ONE thing the hearers would know to be true of all of those statements: the “Lord” (kurios) Emperor, Caesar Augustus, of Rome. It was the Emperor who was the one thru whom the entire Empire supposedly stayed together, who was thought to be Divine in his nature, who was to a Roman “above & before” all things. In fact, the Emperor was “above all and through all in all,” to Rome, just as Paul said of the Resurrected Christ. Paul was pointing to the power of the resurrection power of Jesus when he speaks a revolutionary truth: “He [Christ] disarmed the rulers and authorities and made a public example of them, triumphing over them in it [the Cross].” The only thing strong enough to subvert the self-indulgent grip of the allegiance of Empire is the Cross. So it was then, as the Church eventually overcame Empire in its tenacity for the truth in love. So it was, in the fall of the Empire that Augustine affirmed as much in his treatise, The City of God, proclaiming the power and endurance of Christ over all times, places & persons of history. So it is with American Empire, also. It utterly disarms all the “human commands and teachings,” as Paul said, even the seduction of the advertizers who attempt to establish an identity based on STUFF. It calls us to the resurrection transformation of a True Self, clothed in love, practicing compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, forgiveness, peace & gratitude.
So, Jesus closes the Gospel parable with truth of wisdom still hard for us to hear: “And these things you have prepared, whose will they be? So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.” It is hard for us to hear because our old self still wants our piece of the pie, no matter who finally eats it. The authentic or True Self is constantly seeking ways to become “rich toward God.” It truly seeks expressions of love and concern, presence to one another in distress or illness. Witness the kind of presence Erin, Mary Ann and many others have been in visits to our disabled friend, Myrna, this is the seeking of the True Self. Witness the moderate and penetrating dialogue Steve’s facilitated on racial reconciliation evolving online in our 8th Day Faith Community list-serve, this is the seeking of the True Self in love and justice. In Dottie’s sharing of prayer concerns, we all seek a True Self.
All I just shared could be summed in a simple quote from another cosmically focused person: Albert Einstein said “I must be willing to give up what I am in order to become what I will be.”
What I shared hopefully resonates in a recent quote from Inward/Outward that’s worth reflecting on further, when we consider the “Grace Party” our True Selves can create in community, and how the Kingdom of God can erupt with so much “unimpeded love and goodness” we just can let it all in:
“When we hear the invitation to claim our membership in God’s family, it’s like we’ve stumbled onto a Grace Party. We can hardly believe our good fortune. The sights and sounds of it are pure delight. Abundance characterizes the whole shindig. The most delectable manna is falling everywhere, and wine flows as though from an Artesian well. Everyone is eating and drinking endlessly yet not being harmed because this food and wine are not of the world but New Life.
“And get this: everyone’s invited! That’s the really good news. No one has to crash this party, and there’s no limit to how many of my friends I can bring along with me. Or my enemies, for that matter. It’s such a blast that I want everyone to come—those with wealth or not a penny to their name, those who are down and out or who thought they had some power. I do notice, though, that the so-called ‘nobodies’ seem to be having the most fun. It takes the others awhile to lay down everything they brought with them and start to play.
“What are people doing at this party? That’s the funny thing—we’re not ‘doing’ much at all. We’re just BEING. We’re being our real selves, relaxed and eager to help out with whatever the host asks of us. Love is flowing all over the place. Whatever you need, we’re ready.
“• Do you want someone to listen? We’ll hear whatever you need to say.
• Are you bleeding from the wounds of the past? We’ll soothe and bandage your wounds.
• Do you need to be held for awhile, just being quiet in a safe place? Not a problem. We have all the time in the world.
• Looking for respect, even reverence? You’ll get such a dose of it you’ll wonder if you can take it all in.
“In fact, there’s so much peace and joy at this party that it can be hard to absorb. Some of us just aren’t able to let in this much unimpeded Love and goodness. That’s all right. The host isn’t pushy. We can come and go as many times as we need to until we can handle this much joy.
“This is simply the nature of a Grace Party. None of us is here because we deserve to be. We haven’t earned any of it. And although some of us might keep turning down the invitation, the host will never stop inviting. And neither will we who have decided to stay. We’ll be spreading the news of this unbelievable feast everywhere we go. Come to the party! It won’t be the same if you’re not there.”--Gordon Cosby
“Self Hidden in Christ” Reflection Questions:
1. What risks I have taken to release aspects of my old self?
i. How did I take these risks and what did they cost me?
ii. How did the new self become revealed to me or to others?
iii. How did God work through the new self to change things in my life or the life of my community?
2. What are the moments of love, when I have noticed the breaking through of a True Self, “In Christ”, when I am fully able to see & be my best self?
i. What’s different about me during those times?
ii. What gifts shine through and seem more valuable during those times of breakthrough of the True Self?