Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.
This is one of Jesus best sayings.
We need only listen to it.
Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.
Much like last week’s ‘I am with you to the end of the age,’
it has an aura of truth that goes beyond the norm.
I am with you always was a promise, a promise we receive.
Likewise today, but here there is a condition.
Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.
So, what is meant by life?
What is meant by lose?
What is meant by find?
Life here is a decent translation.
The Greek word means either life or soul.
The Greek itself is a translation of the Aramaic.
The word there is self.
Furthermore, the grammar is different.
Closer to what Jesus said is this:
Those whose aim has been to save themselves shall lose themselves,
and those who lose themselves for my sake will themselves.
So Jesus isn’t talking about life, what we do, and the things that we surround ourselves with.
He isn’t talking about our families, as the earlier part of the reading suggests:
Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth;
I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.
For I have come to set a man against his father,
and a daughter against her mother,
and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law;
and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household.
He is talking about the inner part, the soul, the essence,
he is talking about who we really are.
If your aim has been to keep yourself in first place,
to keep yourself as number one,
to put your own interest above all others,
above community,
above God,
you will lose.
This is incredibly countercultural.
It is always has been, but is even more so today.
Our time is incredibly narcissistic.
It is all about me.
It is about what is in it for me.
It is about selfies.
It is about online presence.
All this creates a culture that revels in self importance.
This is isn’t just a problem for the young.
It is engrained in our society at all levels.
When we see ourselves as so important, it is even easier to see others as lesser.
It then becomes ok to look at someone else as not being as significant to society.
It then becomes ok to see others as less important to God.
We can start to see other races as less worthy as our own.
We can start to see people with less money as less.
We start to see young people as wrong and old people as irrelevant.
We can start to see people who arrive on our shores on boats as less than human.
All because we think we are so important.
Our self is central, not God.
Our ego is in charge, and God is put into a tidy little Sunday box.
Our selfishness reigns during the week, and God gets a peek for an hour.
Those whose aim has been to save themselves shall lose themselves
We lose our compassion and empathy in ourselves and in doing so we lose who we are meant to be. We lose our calling from God.
Jesus tells us: Love God, and love your neighbour as yourself.
Love yourself yes, love your neighbour the same.
That takes the self out of it.
And loving God removes the self. It removes selfishness.
Jesus says those who lose themselves for my sake will find themselves.
If we lose our self, we find ourselves.
If we lose our sense of self importance and find ourselves in others and find ourselves in Christ.
This is another part of letting go:
Letting go of what separates us from our neighbour and God.
Letting go of our self centredness, to look toward where the Spirit is guiding us.
And that is how we find ourselves.
We find ourselves when we let go of what we think we need and listen to what God needs from us.
We lose our wants and find the needs of God.
We find them in our neighbour, we find them in the least of humanity.
And it is there that we find ourselves and God.
Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.
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