St. Andrews by the Lake

First Week in Lent

Dear Friends,

   During the next weeks in Lent, I will offer a short reflection on the upcoming Gospel for Sunday.  I hope it will be helpful to prepare for our weekly time of worship together, and to encourage you in your own Lenten Journey.

    “Calling the crowd to join his disciples, Jesus said, “Anyone who intends to come with me has to let me lead. You’re not in the driver’s seat: I am. Don’t run from suffering; embrace it. Follow me and I’ll show you how. Self-help is no help at all. Self-sacrifice is the way, my way, to saving yourself, your true self.  What good would it do to get everything you want and lose you, the real you? What would you ever trade your soul for?”  (Mark 8: 34-37 The Message)

     During this Lenten season, one question should dominate our thinking: “What does it mean to be a faithful disciple of Jesus?”  Frederick Buechner suggests that after his baptism, Jesus spent forty days in the wilderness asking himself the question of what it meant to be Jesus and that during Lent, Christians are to ask in one way or another, what it means to be Christians.

     A focal symbol to reflect upon, for us, is the Cross. Jesus had much to teach is disciples about what he must face: betrayal, denial, suffering, death, and finally, and most mysteriously, resurrection.   He tells his most intimate disciples and the larger crowd that if they want to be his disciples, they too, are going to have to take up their own crosses and follow him - paradoxically losing their lives in order to gain them.  These are not comfortable circumstances to think about — for them - or for us now.

     Opportunities are before us daily, times when we may give our lives sacrificially to acts of love, compassion, justice and peace — even in the face of the same imperial forces of sin and death that confronted Jesus.

     To be a Christian is to be on a journey - a journey not unlike that of Jesus. It is a journey of following Christ toward union with God. Following Christ involves daring to float on the dark river of unseeing that leads to the Kingdom of Light. It demands that we have the courage to set out on a path that is not only narrow, but also far from straight. No matter how much we crane our necks and attempt to see ahead of us, we simply cannot know where it will take us.  That is why it is a journey of faith. Jesus does not tell us where to go - he simply asks us to follow him.

     The gospel for this coming Sunday asks two profound questions for us to ponder - and live into:

     What good would it do to get everything you want, and lose the real you?

     What would you ever trade you soul for?

     That in itself is enough to ponder this week.

      May you have a holy Lent.

            Blessings,   Cindy+