25 February 2024 Lent 2
Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16; Psalm 22:14-32; Romans 4:13-25; Mark 8:31-38
Imagine, if you will, that you were with the disciples this day when Jesus tells them, for the first time, that he must be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again’. Imagine your response, your reaction to these very difficult words. Standing on this side of resurrection history, it is easy for us to miss the bombshell effect these words would have had on the disciples. They have followed Jesus ‘everywhere’ for the past three years, maybe they had even hoped he would lead a military revolution and overthrow their Roman oppressors. They have witnessed him healing those thought unhealable, they have witnessed his charismatic ability to draw large crowds, they have heard him proclaim, loud and clear, the arrival of the new kingdom. In short, he was their longed-for future, their dream. And now they hear him willingly walking straight into a death trap, surrendering without a fight to a common criminal’s death.
And, given all that, it is hard to be critical of Peter’s ‘spur of the moment’ rejection of Jesus’ plan. But, in what appears to be the sharpest and most surprising rebuke in our Scriptures, Jesus puts Peter firmly in his place “Get behind me Satan! You are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things”. And he then turns to the crowds and summarises the essence of his message in two sentences, “if any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and the sake of the gospel, will save it”.
But what does it mean for us to ‘deny myself’. I don’t think it is as simple as ‘I’ll give up xxxx, for Lent’, or I’ll study more, pray more, volunteer more, etc. Nor do I think it means that we have to deny ourselves to such a degree that we become, as the expression goes, ‘so heavenly minded that we are no earthly good’. In a culture that does not imprison or torture Christians for their beliefs, how do I deny myself so that the gospel, the ‘good news’, thrives. How shall I die?
What if it means for me to stop valuing the things I find important and, instead, think about or work toward the things that bring God’s presence in the world to the fore. What if it means that prioritising my ‘self protection’ is not as important as the more ‘meatier’ issues in the world, like social justice, domestic and intimate partner violence, cross cultural and international violence. What if Jesus is calling me to stop holding on to my life so desperately, because when I take up a cross like Jesus did, I will stand, always, in the white hot center of the world’s pain. It is not enough for us to ‘glance’ in the general direction of suffering and then quietly ‘exit stage left’, I need to dwell there and identify myself wholly with those who are aching, weeping, screaming, and dying. Taking up my cross means recognising Christ crucified in every suffering soul and body around me and pouring my energies and my life into alleviating that pain – no matter what the cost. How shall I die?
If I accept – against all the lies of the society in which I live – that I will die, and trust in Jesus’ assurance that I will also rise again, I then have to ask, how will I spend this life. Will I ‘hold onto it’ in fear, or give it away in freedom? Will I protect myself with numbness and apathy, or experience the abundant life that Jesus offers those who ache, weep, and bleed alongside the world’s suffering. These are the questions our Lenten wilderness asks us – how shall I die?
Our Lenten disciplines do not ask or require us to ‘earn’ God’s favour, because that would be unnecessary, and quite frankly it is impossible. Paul reminds us that all life from God is pure gift and grace. We can’t earn it even if were silly enough to try. As we travel our Lenten journey, we can make choices that enhance and enrich true life. We are reminded that we can either accept or reject God’s gifts; we can either cultivate them or ignore them. And during our Lenten journey we can discover where and how life in God’s kingdom differs so drastically from life in the ‘world out there’. We can explore – how self-sacrifice gives life and how self-indulgence brings death. Or we might meditate on the paradoxes found in the Peace Prayer, that ‘it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; it is in self-forgetting that we find; and it is in dying to ourselves that we are born to eternal life’.
Lent is a liberating reminder of ‘I am not stuck’. God speaks in new voices, in different languages, and in unexpected ways; change can come. Renewal is possible. And in the ultimate Christian mystery that awaits us in a few weeks from now, even physical death leads to resurrection life.