LENT is a season of forebodings. We began as we faced the faced the fact of our humanity and mortality on Ash Wednesday. That was followed last Sunday with facing our temptations and shortcomings in a wilderness of our own making as Jesus did in that wilderness of Judea. Today we hear a very difficult passage (Luke 13:31-35) unique to Luke’s Gospel that brings us to a foreboding of the Cross.
The Pharisees came to Jesus and warned Him to leave the region because Herod wanted to harm Him. In truth, the Pharisees aren’t there out of the goodness of their hearts! They want to discredit and humiliate Jesus and, most of all, make Him go away! Jesus’ reply shows His courage and His dedication to doing the work of the One who sent Him. Most of all, He wants to make clear that the work He is doing for the souls and bodies of people will continue “today and tomorrow” and “on the third day” will reach fulfillment.
At the end of the day, this passage is about how Jesus will live His life and how He will live out the mission and commitment of His baptism after having faced Himself in the wilderness.
This again leads each of us back to look at our own lives during this LENTEN season. So the question before us is this: How will you life the life you have been loaned? A number of options are available for consideration. – some good and some will lead us away from our journeys f faith. The most important thing to be said is that whatever our choice, we must be prepared to deal with the consequences.
We could choose to live life. We can try to see how fast we can live, how much we can get done and how many roads we can travel at break-neck speed. All of this leads us to moves without giving any though or value to what we are doing.
Or, we could choose to do only the things we want to do. The things that will make us feel comfortable. We would put ourselves and our wants first, with the priorities of others being far down the list of own priorities.
We could choose to define life. We could spend our time searching for the “meaning of life.” We could watch the television feel good preachers who promise wealth and success with easy answers. We could read the latest “inspirational” books. We could search but, in the end, find no direction because there is no commitment.
We could choose to endure life. For some, life holds little meaning. People find themselves in a job that they hate or being tossed away from the career they have built. For some others, life is a daily struggle trying to find meaning and direction. This can be true, too, for older persons who are lonely because friends have died or they have been left with no one to care for them. For others, pain and depression are their daily companions.
In all of these options, none are “Christians lives.” None of them relate to God in a way that will cause spiritual growth. The life Jesus points us to is to be committed to the will of God and His leading as we experience it in our lives. The life Jesus points us toward means resisting the temptations that confront us daily, abandoning our private idols and living our lives for something.
That’s the message of LENT. It is our call to be faithful, to be committed to spiritual growth and to look for God’s direction as we live out our lives day by day. It is determining to do the right things for the right reasons.
Our Gospel reading tells us someone asks Jesus: “Sir, will there only be a few saved?” Jesus does not honor the question. Pontificating about matters better left to God alone involves us in the practice of judging others. Jesus only answers tersely: “There are those now last who will be first, and those now first who will be last.”
And we are back to where we began. How will you live the life you have been loaned? This is another of Jesus’ surprises for us. It is the classic reversal of everything we think we know about being religious; being pious and being right. Many who appear first by the world’s values and standards will end up last by Heaven’s tally and vice versa. The answer is found in how much quality there is in our lives and how well we live the commitments we have made to God through Jesus Christ.
The message of LENT is foreboding. It says we must look carefully at how well we live our lives against what we say about our faith. We must live in light of the example of Jesus. Life must be abundant in that there is time to rejoice, to be thankful and to be glad. Our journeys of faith need to be nurtured by the community and fellowship of the Church.
This is LENT. Think about your life. Pray about it. But most of all, live it.
Source: © The Rev. Peter Groschner, February 21, 2016. Luke 13:31-35. Reprinted with permission from the author.
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