I Timothy 1.12-19
“WHY SELF-ESTEEM IS NOT ENOUGH”
Am I the only one who still reads the funny papers? They are less glum than the front page. An old Doonesbury comic is the perfect opening for today’s sermon.
Frame one shows parents helping their son unpack in his bedroom. The mother notices him pulling many trophies from his duffel bag: “Wow, honey. You won all of those at camp?” The blushing boy mutters, “Uh-huh.” Frame two, he lifts a massive trophy with a laurel wreath on top: “I got this one for showing up at camp on the right day…” Frame three, the boy lifts more hardware: “…and this one for finishing a lanyard…and this one for remembering my computer password.” Frame four, he lifts an elaborate wood and brass trophy with chrome pennants, “…and this one I got for not missing too many archery practices.” Frame four, Mom offers the comment, “Um…well! You must be very proud, Jeff.” Scowling, the boy tosses aside a small victory cup, “Yeah, right mom.” Final frame shows the parents aside, talking to each other. Mom is upset, “Who knew it was a self-esteem camp?” Dad chimes in, “We gotta read those brochures more carefully.”
Self-esteem is all right as far as it goes. The trouble is our therapeutic culture has anointed it the foundation for full and joyous living. And more than a few want it to supplant the age-old Christian rhythms, such as confession and forgiveness.
Accordingly, Christopher Lasch wrote, “…Self-esteem (is) a national obsession. Otherwise known as ‘empowerment’, self-esteem is held up as the cure for everything that ails us. Legislatures appoint special commissions to study it. Schools promote it by abolishing failing grades or forbidding the word ‘bad.’ And churches redefine sinfulness as the failure to live up to ‘your own potential.’”
Again, as Christians, it’s not like we are against self-esteem. But we know that self-esteem is really more of a by-product of the self-respect born of genuine achievement as well as the hard ongoing work of living in right relationship with God and neighbor. We know that if we expect self-esteem to replace time-honored Christian practices like confession and forgiveness of sins, we end up with cheap and weak grace instead of the costly transforming grace of the cross.
Actually, I remember the day when for me self-esteem fell from the firmament of what our secular world ordains as holy. I was in college. I was a psychology major and took the GRE in psychology fully intending to go on to grad school. With all my new training, I was prepared to trade in all of our antiquated Christian terminology like sin and grace for modern and up-to-date words like self-esteem.
But I recall reading a story about Paul McCartney after the Beatles broke up. He started another band, Wings, and that went up and down. The critics were harsh. McCartney claimed that in back the early seventies, his self-esteem was in ruins. That remark grabbed my attention. Paul McCartney lacked self-esteem. Wait a minute, I thought. Wasn’t this guy part of the greatest song writing team of all time? Wasn’t he a multi-millionaire several times over? And wouldn’t the majority of women trample me like a rug just for the opportunity to get to Paul McCartney?
If self-esteem isn’t working for Paul McCartney, my line of thinking went, then how can it work for
And what is the Christian description of life? Yes, we believe that God created the world and proclaimed it good and that gives us hope. But we also know this life is far too often tragic, violent, and cruel. Our Christian hope is not naďve; it has eyes wide open. So we see that this world is a place of both extraordinary beauty and hideous brutality. Now, because our calling as the church is less to smooth things over to make people feel good and more to tell the whole truth in a world where lies too often carry the day, we hold hope and realism in tension. So our message is paradoxical. Yes, we affirm life as God’s good creation and life as marvelous gift. But the world is also painfully fallen, broken by our sin and evil.
The structure of Sunday morning worship reflects this paradox. We begin worship with a call to worship and hymn that glorify God. Our opening of worship is about adoring God’s pure generosity and selfless goodness, the wonders and beauty of life with God as our Creator and Redeemer. That sets the tone for our unison prayer of confession: depths of mercy and grace we can hardly imagine.
Why do we have a prayer of confession every Sunday except for the Sundays of Eastertide, when we use a prayer of invocation? As the Apostles’ Creed has it, we believe in “the communion of saints” and the “ the forgiveness of sins”. They have been at the heart of Christian worship for 2,000 years for good reason. As Paul wrote to Timothy in our Epistle lesson this morning, “The saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.”
You notice that we have a different prayer of confession every week. We do this to keep our shared confession from becoming rote or wooden. The prayers vary with the season and especially with the day’s text. Today’s prayer of confession plays off the Parable of the Prodigal Son, with our other parables of lost things.
Seldom do we use canned prayers. If I haven’t written it myself, it is a prayer that I have rewritten, nuancing it toward our situation, revoicing it in a way that rings true to who we are and how we sound. The prayers are usually a little formal. That’s because humankind won’t casually admit to usurping God’s prerogatives. The prayers can sometimes be quite direct, especially in the season of Lent.
Sometimes people decry our confessions, “Those aren’t my sins! Why should I confess them?” My answer is twofold. “First, if you haven’t yet done a specific sin, it could be a matter of time. Just wait. You might still get around to it. Think of it as preemptive confession, if you like. Second, people complain about unison prayers, claiming to “take care of that in private“. But sin is not just an individual matter. It is also a corporate matter. The worst things we do aren’t individual, but done en masse-wars and violence, denying the poor a life, segregating our cities.
The common complaint about confessing our sins before God is grounded in our aforementioned preference for self-esteem based outlooks. The objection goes: why be so negative? Why not accentuate the positive? Why tell people they do wrong? Isn’t that an unproductive way to go about building better lives together?
This objection takes us to the heart of what we mean by confession in the first place. We confess sin not to wallow in the mire of despair over how terrible we are as people. We confess our sin so that we might be free of it. Sin is always self-involved, behaving like we are the center of the universe, and expecting all things to array themselves around us and conform to our whims. As we confess, we place God back at the center of all things. As we do, we can’t help but find our rightful place in the scheme of things. I tell you, there is great freedom in that.
Jesus did not want to increase our burdens but to alleviate them. He criticized the religious leaders of the time who piled more burdens upon the common man. He sought to replace burden with blessing. Leaf through the gospels and hear how he proclaims, “Your sins are forgiven.” Jesus said it as blessing, not accusation. He was freeing them, not condemning them. So confession paradoxically works.
Can you see the logic of that? It’s not the world’s logic. Some churches, to better market their church with the sheen of success, entirely skip the tragic side of life. Such churches make me suspicious because partial truths make me suspicious. Kathy and I were sitting together at a recent wedding reception, talking about how couples get through the tough stuff of making a life together and stay strong. It was wise, what she said. That all of us have a darker side we don’t like to show ourselves and we don’t want to see in our partner. But until we deal with that, until we face our darker nature, we can’t create the foundation for a life together.
Psychiatrist Scott Peck rightly says, “evil arises in the refusal to acknowledge our own sins.” We hold with that paradoxical affirmation, that our admission of wrong keeps evil from getting out of hand. It keeps us from denying, scapegoating, rationalizing, projecting on to others, and even destroying them in extreme cases. Poet T. S. Eliot once declared that humankind “cannot stand very much reality.” As Christ’s church, we try for a stronger dose of reality than the rest of the world.
I seldom recite poetry in the pulpit. But I close this poem from Maya Angelou.
When I say... "I am a Christian"
I'm not shouting "I'm clean livin."
I'm whispering "I was lost,"
Now I'm found and forgiven.
When I say..."I am a Christian"
I don't speak of this with pride.
I'm confessing that I stumble
and need CHRIST to be my guide.
When I say... "I am a Christian"
I'm not trying to be strong.
I'm professing that I'm weak
and need HIS strength to carry on.
When I say... "I am a Christian"
I'm not bragging of success.
I'm admitting I have failed
and need God to clean my mess.
When I say... "I am a Christian"
I'm not claiming to be perfect,
My flaws are far too visible
but, God believes I am worth it.
When I say... "I am a Christian"
I still feel the sting of pain,
I have my share of heartaches
So I call upon His name.
When I say... "I am a Christian"
I'm not holier than thou,
I'm just a simple sinner
who received God's good grace, somehow.
Gentle Shepherd, if we like sheep have gone astray, you eagerly seek us out, that not one may be lost. We thank you for such persistent and amazing love, that knows and counts the number of hairs on each one of our heads as though we were your only loved. We are touched by your care and concern, O God. But we acknowledge that the cost of your transforming love is truthfulness. Just as you are keenly aware of the cup of cool water that we give to the parched and the vulnerable, so also you know every wrong we do separating us from you. You await our earnest and humble and contrite approach to makes things right, to cover the distance between us, to reconcile us with you and with one another.
Today we praise you that at the heart of your love, O God, is forgiveness. It is the highest and purest form of your love. We would share that love with a sad and warring world, a place of deep division, where things are not as they should be. We pray that, having gotten right here with you and with those around us, having freed us from our burden, you would ordain us as ambassadors of peace, reconciliation, and relief in the world. So today help us remember who we are. Help us recall who we might be that we might shine your light of blessing as we go. We pray today for your children in need, for Dick Howland after a rough week, for the Bartlett’s friend Mary Ellen and for all who fight against cancer, for Ian and Caroline, wed just yesterday, the granddaughter of our own Sue Day.
