Second Sunday in Lent; Sunday, February 25th, 2024
GENESIS 17:1-7, 15-16; PSALM 22:22-30; ROMANS 4:13-25; MARK 8:31-38

It will be reckoned to us

“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 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.”

I’m starting here, with Mark’s Gospel, for two reasons. First reason: this saying is important, especially in Lent. Second reason: I’d also like to point out the ways it can be misunderstood.

So! If you want to be a follower of Jesus, deny yourself, take up your cross. It sounds a bit like an exercise program, and it probably should sound like a Lenten Spiritual Exercise Program. It sounds a bit like a program, a set of instructions  that we can follow.

“If any want to become my followers.” So it’s not an exercise program intended to finally give you those washboard abs and or a good cardio workout. This Lenten Spiritual Exercise Program is about learning to follow Jesus. There are a good many good reasons why you find yourself here, on this Sunday morning. It’s a good bet that you are here because you are at least curious about how to follow Jesus. Good! We can be curious together.

So how do we follow Jesus? Step one: Deny yourself. Step two: Take up your cross. This is how you follow Jesus—no Peloton subscription, no nagging app on your phone. Just deny yourself and take up your cross.

There are a lot of ways we might understand this first step, to deny yourself. Sometimes it’s easier to say what it doesn’t mean than what it does mean, so let’s start with what it doesn’t mean. It does not mean thinking of yourself as worthless; it does not mean that you should make yourself a wallflower just to blend into everyone around you; it does not mean twisting your personality into some misshapen thing in an attempt to be someone other than who you are.

We know that denying yourself isn’t like that because we know that the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Good News, is always ultimately about human thriving, it is about living life to the fullest. And thinking of yourself as worthless, or hiding yourself from others, or deforming your personality? This does not sound like human thriving to me.

I will ask, though: are there things you do, are there parts of you that are unhealthy? Are there parts of you that cause you to sin, to hurt others, to think of yourself first in such a way that you are not taking into account the real needs of others? Deny yourself those things—unhealthy compulsions, sinful behaviour, hurting others. Deny yourself that. Pray to God, confess you sin, repent as needed. Become who you truly are—the beloved of God.

And pick up your cross—picking up your cross is part of dying to yourself in such a way that you can be open to others. It is to live a cruciform life, to learn how to die to yourself, it is a life of sometimes joyful, and sometimes tearful, openness to God and others.

And if you deny yourself and die to yourself in such a way that you are more open to God and others? This is beginning to follow Jesus. How does Jesus put it? This Exercise Program isn’t suffering for the sake of suffering, but suffering for the sake of life. “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.”

Ok. So that sounds like a good Lenten Spiritual Exercise Program. The benefits are clear! You will save your life. But … listen to the collect. “God of Sarah and Abraham, long ago you embraced your people in covenant and promised them your blessing. Strengthen us in faith, so that, with your followers in every age, we may proclaim our deliverance in Jesus Christ to generations yet unborn.”

It’s a lovely collect, and it speaks to the rest of the readings more than it does the gospel. God made a promise to Abraham and Sarah when their bodies were as good as dead, as Paul puts it in Romans. They were used up in the eyes of the world, is what Paul is trying to say; but God has a way of turning what is discarded by the world into the prize and treasure of the Gospel.

God promised to Abraham and Sarah that they would be the father and mother of nations, of the nations that will eventually come to dance together at the feet of Jesus. And Abraham and Sarah believed, and as Paul puts it when he speaks of Abraham, because of Abraham’s faith in the face of an entirely uncertain future, his faith, his trust in God, was reckoned to him as righteousness. It was Abraham, and Sarah’s yes to God, it was their trust in God in the face of extraordinary uncertainty that saved them. And Paul says that of us, too—when we trust God, it is reckoned to us as righteousness too.

And this is the curious thing—there is no mention of a Lenten Spiritual Exercise Program for Abraham or Sarah. In fact there’s a bit of an insinuation that they were way too old to get onto a spiritual Peloton at all. It was their faith, their trust in God, that was reckoned to them as righteousness.

And get this: going back to the collect, there is little concern for any individual person becoming spiritually stronger. The promise is that in Abraham and Sarah every nation of the world that comes from them and after them will dance at the feet of Jesus on the last day. And it is reckoned to us as righteousness when we proclaim all that God has done for us—and our proclamation of God’s generosity towards us is not for ourselves, but for the sake of generations yet unborn.

 So I wanted to start with Mark because I really do want you to exercise yourself this Lent. Do deny yourself; do pick up your cross; do follow Jesus. Because in there lies not the life of lies we all create about ourselves and tell ourselves; in there, in denying yourself and picking up your cross and following Jesus lies your true life.

But don’t get caught up in that as though it was work that you would do to save yourself. God in Christ, on the cross, has accomplished your salvation; and trusting in God’s promise—that in the cross and the resurrection our lives are already made good and well, and that by the Holy Spirit our lives are good and well now—this is to live in the sort of trust that is reckoned to us as righteousness.

So don’t get caught up in your Lenten Spiritual Exercise Program for your own sake, but make it an opportunity to grow in the trust of God. Abraham and Sarah’s trust in God was reckoned as righteousness; and this divine goodness was shared with them not for their own sake, but for the sake of those who come after them.

Similarly, our trust in God is reckoned to us as righteousness, a share in God’s goodness not for our sake only, but for the sake of generations that follow us.

Our trust in God, our share in God’s goodness, is something that we would share for sake of all those future generations who, despite the uncertainties of our future, will in some way shape or form nevertheless be worshipping God in the Parish of St. John the Evangelist;  we tell of God’s goodness shared with us for the sake of all those who will come after—generations yet unborn.

That is to say, our faith is reckoned to us as righteousness when we trust God; and to trust God is to open ourselves to others; and to be open to others is to be open to the fullness of God’s love and care, to full human thriving, and not just our own—but open also to the faith and thriving of those who come after us.