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The
Second Sunday of Lent Based on the readings from Genesis 17:1-10, 15-19; Romans 4:16-25; Mark 8:31-38 Last
week we began a journey from ashes to Easter.
Lent always begins with ashes as a powerful reminder of our need
for repentance. Last Sunday, the symbol of water reminded us of the new
beginning we made as we entered the waters of baptism.
Today we add the symbol of salt.
Consider
its purpose. It brings out the flavour of food. It was literally worth its weight in gold in ancient times.
Before the invention of refrigeration it was vital for preserving
food. Once you put it on
food you cannot separate it out again.
It becomes incorporated into the food.
Both the salt and the food are transformed. Through
baptism we become one with the body of Christ.
We become part of the community.
As members we enhance the community without losing our identity.
We are transformed and become part of the wholeness of the
community. We
Christians are to be salt for the world.
As salt flavours and transforms, so the church permeates and
transforms the world. The
initiation of new members into the church strengthens us as the body of
Christ and enhances our mission. Lent
is an opportunity to examine our lives individually and as a community
to see whether the salt has lost its savour or whether it is
transforming the world. Lent
is an opportunity to renew our covenant with God and our commitment to
the faith. What does it mean to believe?
Does it mean intellectual assent without any connection to our
daily lives? Does it mean
never doubting? Faith
involves passionate engagement, relationship with God.
It involves giving one’s heart to belief and holding it
actively with love. It
means having enough confidence in its reality to act on it, incredible
as it may seem. Faith
begins with trusting God’s promises.
That is what brings us to a sense of holiness, of wholeness.
Where do we find that kind of wholeness, of meaning?
How do we achieve a vision that will sustain us through the
difficult choices and tests of life?
We
all undertake many covenants during our lifetime.
We form covenants in marriage, in friendship, in professional
life, in relationships of every kind.
Covenants not only give us a sense of responsibility, they make
us responsible for our actions. When
we make a covenant with another person, we take on a sense of
responsibility and commitment. We carry it through.
When we make a covenant with God we commit to faithful
discipleship. Paul,
in his letter to the Romans, reminds them of the covenant made on their
behalf, of the kind of commitment on which their faith and ours rests,
for we share the faith of Abraham.
Paul reminds them that the unexpected happened to Abraham very
late in his life. God gave
him the promise of a blessing, the promise of fruitfulness.
A fruitfulness which was born out in the birth of their son Isaac
- a child born to Sarah and Abraham in their old age.
That
promise of fruitfulness is born out in our own lives over and over
again. I remember seeing a
wonderful film; it must have been a National Film Board undertaking.
It was about life in the desert.
All you could see on the horizon was sand shifting in the wind.
Then it rained – something that happened if I recall correctly
only about once in seven years. Yet
in no time at all, that barren wilderness was transformed into a
beautiful garden. Plants
bloomed and took root in that wasteland in a way that you could not have
imagined. For seven
years those seeds had lain dormant in the earth waiting for enough
moisture to bring them to life. What
deserts have you seen come to life?
A marriage that seemed to be dead, and grace is given and it
blossoms into a stronger relationship.
A relationship dies; a new one begins.
A life is shattered by illness or bereavement; grace brings about
new life. Someone thinks
that they have no talent; suddenly they discover great personal gifts.
A door closes; another door opens leading in a new direction, to
new opportunities, to new possibilities.
The
life of commitment brings about fruitfulness.
But more important for us to recognize is that the Christian life
requires commitment, more commitment than we can imagine.
Total commitment. Costly
commitment. For anything
good that we set out to achieve has a cost.
Somehow we come to believe that to put our trust in God is to put
an end to all of our problems. If
we believe that then our Christian life is bound to be disillusioning.
I
suspect that was Peter's problem when he rebuked Jesus.
Jesus told his disciples that he would suffer and be rejected and
killed. That could not have
been easy for any of them to hear.
Their leader, the one whom they expect to be their king and lead
them to victory, is telling them instead that he will be put to death.
Suddenly their commitment to their leader takes a turn for the
worse. What are the
implications in their own lives? We like to hear good news.
We like comfortable words. When
it comes to bearing the cross, then we cop out or crawl back into our
kindergarten approach and miss the real point of having faith.
"Commitment
to me," Jesus tells them as he tells each one of us, "means
taking up your cross and following me."
The disciples knew what that meant in a way we can never fathom.
They had all witnessed Roman execution.
They had seen victims carrying their cross out to the place of
execution. To think that
their friend and maybe even they themselves might face such a death was
unthinkable. Yet through
the cross Christ was able to offer real wholeness to the world.
The cross, a symbol of torture, became the way to wholeness.
And
what a symbol it is to the Christian! It helps us to understand that
dying is the step we must take in order to bloom.
What does it mean to “deny ourselves” and take up our cross
and follow Jesus? What self
am I denying? Is it about
giving up something for Lent and then going right back to it as soon as
Lent is over? Is it about
constantly putting myself down? It
is about offering ourselves to be formed by God for God’s purpose.
It is about becoming holy people.
It is about wholeness. It
is about discipleship. It
is about commitment to the faith. Through
self-denial we accept discipleship in a community that lives the way of
the cross. We were signed with the sign of the cross at baptism.
What did that signing mean for us as individuals and as
community? It is at the
heart of our Christian faith. As
Christ bore our sins on the cross, so we find the grace and strength to
live the Christian life. We
accept responsibility for living the Christian life.
Instead of thinking of ourselves we embrace the way of Jesus.
It is above all finding our true selves, becoming all we are
meant to be and understanding in a true sense what it means to be human.
As
Christ bore our sins on the cross, so we find the grace and strength to
live the Christian life. We
trust in God's promises to bring us to a sense of wholeness and allow us
to enter into the life of the community.
We commit ourselves to the gospel message. We commit ourselves to faith in a gospel which calls us to
service, to make a difference through our lives, through love of God and
of neighbour. Our mission is to salt the earth. If we are to be salty people it begins with our own commitment to the gospel. Let us be salty people. Let us make a difference in our needy world. |