Lent 2010 #8

PHILIPPIANS 3:2-12 (NRSV)

²Beware of the dogs, beware of the evil workers, beware of those who mutilate the flesh! ³For it is we who are the circumcision, who worship in the Spirit of God and boast in Christ Jesus and have no confidence in the flesh— ⁴even though I, too, have reason for confidence in the flesh. 

If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: ⁵circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; ⁶as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. 

⁷Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. ⁸More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ ⁹and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith. ¹⁰I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, ¹¹if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead. 

¹²Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.

THOUGHTS:

Some people seem to have it all.  They come from the right families, attend the right schools, choose the right majors, land the right internships, make the right connections, and for them the sky seems to be the limit.  Yes, some people seem to have it all.  And some others try to get for themselves as many of the "right" things as they can.

At one time, Paul was one who certainly seemed to have all the right stuff.  He had a resumé of rightness, or of righteousness, that his friends would have looked at with envy.  But then he encountered Jesus Christ and Paul's eyes were opened to seeing that all of what he did, and knew, and achieved, was not enough to put him right with God; that no matter what, he would always come up short because he was a flawed, frail and finite human being.  Through his encounter with Jesus Christ, Paul learned the good news that he didn't have to rely on his own attempts at achieving rightness, and instead could count on the rightness of a relationship with God made possible to him through his faith in the crucified and risen Christ.  And so it is for us.

Like Paul, this Lenten season we can take heart in knowing that for us, it isn't about what we do, but about what God has done, is doing and will do for us.  That frees us to do what we do, know and achieve, not because we have to (in order to prove our worth, our value, our importance, our lovability), but because we want to.  Doing so not for our sake, but for the sake of others out of our love of God and our neighbor in response to what God has done for us in Christ Jesus.


PRAYER:

Gracious God, as we continue on our Lenten journey, help us always to remember that we love and serve you, and our fellow human beings, not to try to make us worthy of your love and forgiveness, but in response to the love and forgiveness that you have first showed us through your son, Jesus Christ.  Amen.

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Thoughts by Rev. Mark W. Olsen, Director of Admissions and Enrollment Services, Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg

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These devotions for young adults are provided by:

Lutheran Campus Ministry at George Mason University http://www.gmu.edu/org/lutheran

Lutheran Student Association at the University of Maryland http://terpconnect.umd.edu/~lutheran/lsa/

DC Young Adults http://www.dcyoungadults.org/

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