How you consider yourself

Our sermon to deck text for today is the second reading from Romans chapter 6.

Romans 6 · chapter mention

Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?

We were buried, therefore, with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.

For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.

We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin.

For one who has died has been set free from sin.

Now, if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.

We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again.

Death no longer has dominion over him.

For the death he died, he died to sin once for all.

But the life he lives, he lives to God.

So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

The word of the Lord.

Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Amen.

For some of us, it's only an occasional whisper that's relatively easy to ignore.

Well, for others of us, it's more like a megaphone blaring in the ear 24-7 that can't be tuned out.

But whether it's either of those or anywhere in the middle, all of us have this kind of voice in our inner life that I'm going to refer to as the inner commentator.

And what the inner commentator does is, well, to comment upon our words, our behavior, and just the general state of how life is going for us at any given moment.

Now I'm not talking here about the conscience.

Now, the conscience's role is to call the shots.

The conscience is the one that says, that was right, that was wrong.

But what the inner commentator does is to take those calls and pull them together into a narrative that is then forced upon your consciousness.

So perhaps the voice of the inner commentator might sound something like this.

Well, you sure messed that up again, just like you always do, because you are a failure.

And if words like those sound familiar to you, you're not alone.

Because this inner commentator seems to love negativity.

Now, surely we have all met people who never seem to have any negative thoughts about themselves at all.

In fact, many of them will present themselves as pretty much having everything figured out and knowing more about pretty much any topic than you do, and being quick to jump into the conversation to share their superior knowledge with you.

I suppose it could be the case that there are demented souls out there that have an inner commentator's voice that actually feeds these kinds of thoughts to them.

You are the only person in the world who's got everything straight.

Everybody else is just a fool.

But I wonder if more often behind that overbearing confidence is actually a soul that's looking to make up for a deep sense of inadequacy.

And behind that is the voice of an inner commentator that's saying, you haven't measured up, you're not good enough, you have to keep putting other people down in order to prop yourself up.

Or something like that.

So let's, for the sake of argument, let's take it for granted that this inner commentator's normal modus operandi is to cruise around your life picking up on the things that went wrong, on the places where you made up a mess, and on those portions of your life that you really just wish were going better than they are.

And again, for the sake of argument, let's consider that probably more than just a few of the people in this room struggle with a voice that insists to them over and over and over again: you are worthless, you are a failure, you mess everything up, you're no good, you're a hopeless case.

Let's take those thoughts and draw them out into the light to examine them.

Because if we do, it seems to me that we will discover that these suggestions from the inner commentator are quite potent and powerful because they rest upon truth.

Or to be more precise, they rest upon maybe half the truth.

And the truth that they rest upon is that we are all inheritors of a condition that we call being by nature sinful.

And that this inheritance of ours, this sinful nature that we are born with, expresses itself in sinful actions.

Sinful people sin.

And so, if we are going to examine our lives in light of something like the Ten Commandments, like we heard in our first reading today, if we know what those commandments demand in their full extent, then every single one of us is going to be brought to the recognition.

I have failed.

This is a list that I have not kept.

And because we live in a world where everybody shares this same sinful condition, we often wind up be partaking in the kind of mutual destruction that Jesus speaks of in the gospel today.

And because sin and its faults run through the whole of creation, even in the very best of lives, there are always going to be circumstances and things that are not the way we would want them to be.

So if you have an inner commentator that is looking to pick up on the negative, there's going to be no shortage of things for it to find, to draw together into a narrative, and then to present before you in your attention.

And what are you going to do?

Because that narrative rests upon truth, things that correspond to reality.

But it's not necessarily the whole truth.

And even the world outside of the Christian church recognizes and understands this.

That is why, in the world outside of the church, the prescription to deal with negative self-talk is to reframe.

It's to broaden the amount of information that is being given to that inner commentator's narrative.

It's to push back with on the negative self-talk by adding some positive, by saying, yes, it is true, I messed that up, but nobody is perfect, and therefore it's not reasonable for me to expect that I should be perfect.

And there are also those other things that I did that actually went pretty well.

Now that is certainly better than giving way to total despair and despondency.

It's capturing more of the truth, it's broadening the frame in a way that's helpful.

But our Christian faith offers a far more radical, radical change in perspective.

In fact, in our second reading today, St.

Paul recommends a total overhaul in our way of thinking.

And the way he does so runs like this.

Paul suggests that you can go ahead and let that inner commentator spin out the entire narrative of failure.

Let it rage and rave.

Say to it, yes, all of it is accurate and true.

You are not exaggerating, you're not looking for things to make up that you can then pin against me.

All you need to do is look at my life and you will see the evidence there.

It's all true.

I can own it all.

But there is one problem with your story.

It's spoken of someone who no longer exists.

You've got the wrong person.

Because the person you're talking about is someone who has died.

And you tell me, what kind of sense does it make to tell a corpse that it's worthless or hopeless?

Welcome, my friends, to the radical power of holy baptism.

And welcome to this new way of living to which our God invites us and calls us by virtue of our baptismal joining to Jesus.

Welcome to this baptismal pattern of life that is also a pattern of thinking.

So much so that Saint Paul can give us a command.

He can tell you, you must think differently about yourself.

See, here's the command that he gives in Romans chapter 6.

Romans 6 · chapter mention

He says, You also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

And chew on this.

This is the first command that Paul gives in the entire book of Romans, the first imperative.

In five chapters and change, he has gone to great length to detail the full extent of human sinfulness and failure and wretchedness and brokenness until he comes to the conclusion that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

And then he goes on to describe how that the fact that this is the case is what moved our God to send his Son, Jesus Christ, into this world, to own our failures, to take our sins as his, and to pour out his life as the all-sufficient sacrifice, the one that would atone for our sins and that would bring redemption and justification to sinful people like you and me.

And by the time he gets here in chapter 6, Paul is just beginning to unfold the glorious ramifications of what this means for us in our lives.

And the very first place he goes is to the way that you think about yourself.

The very first command he gives is one that is aimed at that inner commentator's voice.

The very first thing he wants you to see that has changed because of Christ is that you reckon yourself differently now.

You reckon yourself as one who is dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.

And that makes all the difference in the world.

Because again, the the voice of the inner commentator is speaking truths.

It's something we can't avoid.

And yet, Paul says, image it like this, that that failure, you, that old sinful flesh of yours, it is something that has been co-crucified with Jesus, so that you can picture it like your sinful mess and failure is hanging on the cross with the nails through your hand just as surely as they were through Jesus' hands.

And let all of the accusations therefore be hurled at that old sinful flesh.

It doesn't matter because it's dying.

It is sinking down into the grave where it will be buried with Jesus.

But the one that walks out of the baptismal waters walks out of that grave again with Jesus in this newness of life that he has brought by his perfect life, which is now yours, because your life has been so closely folded together with Jesus' life that you have shared in his death and his resurrection.

And therefore, no accusation can stick.

St.

Paul says the life you live now is one that is alive to God in Christ Jesus.

Which is to say that when your God looks at you, he does not see failure, he does not see worthlessness, he does not see hopelessness, he sees forgiven and redeemed, holy and precious in his sight.

He sees you as he sees Jesus Christ, his own and only begotten Son.

He sees you, therefore, as one who is beloved, dear to him with whom he is well pleased.

Do you see, therefore, that the life we live by virtue of our baptism is one where we live by a better narrative, by a better story, by the long, loud, strong, clear voice of the gospel which comes and says, God has rescued you.

So that that fearful voice of despair, or that droning voice of worthlessness, or that accusatory voice of judgment has no power over you any longer.

You live to God in Christ Jesus, and having been joined so closely to Him, well, it means that you think differently about yourself.

That is true.

The challenge, though, I think for us is that this inner commentator is a voice that goes with us anywhere and everywhere and never lets up.

It's our daily and constant companion.

Whereas it seems that sometimes this voice of the gospel is a stranger.

It's not perhaps often a thought that naturally rises in our minds to say, Yes, I have sinned, but God's grace is greater and all-sufficient, and therefore I will own it as mine that I am redeemed and forgiven and holy.

That is sometimes a rare visitor to our mental life.

So, do you suppose that it's one of the benefits that we have in beginning our service every week by the simple practice of confession and absolution?

That every week there is this moment where we gather together and together we own up to the fact that we are failures.

We own up to it.

We say, you know what, if you're gonna point out the negative, there's plenty of it you're going to find in my life.

Yes, I have sinned.

But that's not the end of the story.

For upon our confession comes the strong, clear voice of the gospel, the word of your Savior Jesus, who says, I have forgiven you and washed you.

You are mine, and you live with me and for me, and now and forever.

You are forgiven.

So go and live as one of those who is forgiven.

So you see, when that inner commentator arises in your mind, and when it's pressing upon you and telling you that you're a failure, go back to your baptism and draw from it this power, this strength to say, sure, you can say what you want, and your accusations may very well correspond to reality.

But having died with Christ, I live with him now, and so I consider myself differently.

I think of myself in this way as one who is dead to sin, but alive to God.

Amen.