Collect for Lent:
Almighty and everlasting God,
you hate nothing that you have made
and forgive the sins of all those who are penitent:
Create and make in us new and contrite hearts
that we, worthily lamenting our sins
and acknowledging our wretchedness,
may receive from you, the God of all mercy,
perfect remission and forgiveness;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Collect of the Day:
Almighty God,
you show to those who are in error the light of your truth
that they may return to the way of righteousness:
Grant to all those who are admitted
into the fellowship of Christ's religion,
that they may reject those things
that are contrary to their profession,
and follow all such things
as are agreeable to the same;
through our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Someone once asked me why I follow Christ. Why would I choose to do this? It was a person who was struggling with church and faith, perhaps wanting to believe but not quite willing to commit. I think the person recognized that faith and religion were important to me and was curious what had made me take this path.
I was surprised by the answer that automatically came out of my mouth. I said, “Because Christ rescued me.” I had not thought about it in those terms before. I don’t think I had ever before used the word “rescue” to describe the effect Christ has had on me and my life, but it still is what came out of me automatically. In the Bible we are told, both by Jesus and by the Apostle Paul, not to think about what we are to say when we are called upon to testify to our faith, because the Holy Spirit will speak through us. I believe that happened in this case.
And it is true. I believe I truly was rescued by Christ — and I continue to be rescued. Now we associate the word “rescue,” I think, with life-saving, such as by lifeguards or EMTs, people who save us from drowning, or resuscitate us when we’ve had a heart attack, or any other such disaster.
Those are all examples of being rescued from physical danger. But that’s not what I mean in this case. I mean that Christ rescued me from a life that was not really life. He woke me up to see and know that God is present with us in each and every moment, offering us life and joy and a new start, and that the Kingdom of God is within us and around us.
The Gospel reading says something about this. In fact, this particular passage from Mark’s Gospel is one that ran through my head a lot when Christ really got a hold of me. Jesus says to his disciples,
“For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life?”
Now this passage can be massively misunderstood. We might think it means that if you follow Christ, you have to die — like one of the early Christian martyrs, persecuted for their faith. No, you don’t. That might be easier, more straightforward, but that’s not the dying that Jesus is necessarily talking about.
“For those who want to save their life will lose it.”
That means if you try to make your life easy and predictable and safe, you won’t be living — not really. You’ll be going through the motions, but there will be no verve, no true life behind it. I’m reminded of a poem by an American named Wendell Berry, who is both a poet and a farmer. The poem is called, “Manifesto: Mad Farmer Liberation Front.” Here’s how it begins:
Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.
So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.[1]
And it goes on from there.
But there’s an alternative. Jesus goes on to tell his disciples, “those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.”
Lose your life for Jesus’ sake, and for the sake of the gospel. What does that mean? It includes what Wendell Berry is talking about. It means to commit yourself heart and soul to following Jesus, to take the risk that it might just be worth it. It means not to be embarrassed about believing in him. It means to risk joy and gladness and gratitude. It means to take the chance that what you read in the Bible and what we say in worship might just be true and could make a difference to your life, that it could even transform your life if you believe it.
And to do all this? It means to give up, to let go, of all the things that make your life neat and safe and predictable. (As we have all learned this past year, life is not at all predictable anyway.) That is why it feels like dying. When Christ got a hold of me, and this passage was running around in my head, I ended up giving up a good and respectable position in a job, giving up friends and colleagues, moving to a new place and a new life, and starting all over again, this time with the hope of being ordained an Anglican priest — which, thank God, I eventually was. I say this not to applaud myself — I felt that I didn’t really have a choice in it — but to say that it can feel like dying, but dying to a life that is not life at all, and instead waking up to real life.
One writer comments that this Gospel passage appears in all four of the Gospels in some form or other. But only in Mark do we hear that we will “save” our life. It means that “we are hopelessly lost without God, and when we lose our life for Christ, we will save it…. Spirituality is not something we dabble in for personal enlightenment; for Christians, a relationship with Jesus is a matter of life and death.”[2]
Do we want this? This writer continues, “If we’re honest, many of us really don’t want this kind of saving. We’d like to continue living as we currently do, just happier—more faithfully would be fine, so long as we stay comfortable. We’d rather not be transformed, but we’re willing to be improved. We’re not sure about being saved, but enhanced? Yes, please.”
Well, you know, in these days we have had to give up our old way of life anyway, like dying to what was. Why not let Christ remake us entirely? Why not let him rescue us?
Christians say all the time that Jesus is the Savior, but what does it mean? You might say that Jesus is the spiritual EMT, come to rescue us in soul and spirit. He comes to revive us from spiritual heart failure, by turning hearts of stone into hearts of flesh so that we can love God and our neighbors. He comes to awaken us to the wonders of God’s presence in our lives and in the world around us. He comes to heal us of diseases of body, mind, and spirit. He comes to set us free.
Praise be to God.
[1] https://cals.arizona.edu/~steidl/Liberation.html
[2] MaryAnn McKibben Dana, “Living by the Word” column for Lent 2B, in Christian Century, 2 Feb 2021.