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Lenten Devotionals 2007
TODAY'S SCRIPTURE
18 Run from sexual sin! No other sin so clearly affects the body as this one does. For sexual immorality is a sin against your own body. 19 Don’t you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourself, 20 for God bought you with a high price. So you must honor God with your body.
*I Corinthians 6.18-20 (NLT)
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A little boy was happy and felt a sense of accomplishment, as he picked up his new boat. He made it out of wood. Most of all the boat was his. He launched it onto a brook. It sailed well.
One day the boy forgot his boat beside the brook. Later, looking for his precious boat, he could not find it.
Another day the boy was walking by the barter store in town. He stopped when he saw his boat. He checked the price. He ran home to scrape together enough of his earnings to buy his boat back.
He ran back to the store. Breathlessly, he handed money to the clerk. Taking his boat, he hugged it to his breast. "Now," he spoke to the boat, "you are twice mine - first I made you, then I bought you!"
*Story taken from Wayne E. Miller. "God's Workmanship." Day 2. In Beside the Still Waters. Ed. Henry Yoder. Sample Issue.
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St. Paul writes of sexual sin being literally an embodied sin, a sin against the Holy Spirit's dwelling. Most striking, he states something that contradicts our individualistic society. You know, claims like, "It's my body, and I can do with it what I want to."
Scripture says to the Christian, "No, your body - it's not your body. You're not your own at all. What you do with your body, indeed, your whole self, is not just your business."
Why are we to honor God with the body? God bought it. God gave a "high price." What was that price? Christ.
No, we will not fathom the mystery of Christ's Passion. We do not have to read literally "price," as though God had His Son killed as a ransom price. Yet, in some way mysterious, the idea of ransom speaks of the power of Jesus' death to effect a result of freedom and healing within us.
The cross can be seen through different lenses. Yet, the idea of a costly price is in any Christian view of the cross.
Gandhi, in An Autobiography, wrote of his inability to accept anything mysterious about Jesus' death:
I could accept Jesus as a martyr, and embodiment of sacrifice, and a divine teacher. His death on the cross was a great example to the world, but that there was anything like a mysterious or miraculous virtue in it, my heart could not accept.
We can contrast this with Malcolm Muggeridge, in Jesus Rediscovered:
I would catch a glimpse of the cross - and suddenly my heart would stand still. In an instinctive, intuitive way I understood that something more important, more tumultuous, more passionate, was at issue than our good causes, however noble they might be.... I should have worn it.... It should have been my uniform, my language, my life. I shall have no excuse; I can't say I didn't know. I knew from the beginning, and turned away.
Timothy Keller, in The Reason for God, argues that the cross is a logical fact. In his statement he writes:
"Why did Jesus have to die? Couldn't God just forgive us?" This is what many ask, but ... no one "just" forgives, if the evil is serious. Forgiveness means bearing the cost instead of making the wrongdoer do it, so you can reach out in love to seek your enemy's renewal and change. Forgiveness means absorbing the debt of the sin yourself. Everyone who forgives great evil goes through a death into resurrection, and experiences nails, blood, sweat, and tears.
Should it surprise us, then, that when God determined to forgive us ... for all the ways we wronged him and one another, that he went to the Cross in the person of Jesus Christ and died there?
We close with wise words from St. Paul, remembering that what the Divine does is at times against what is apparently common sense:
18 The teaching about the cross is foolishness to those who are being lost, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 19 It is written in the Scriptures:
"I will cause the wise to lose their wisdom;
I will make the wise unable to understand." — Isaiah 29:14
*I Corinthians 1.18-19 (NCV)
SPIRITUAL EXERCISE
1) What are different ways we can view the cross meaningfully?
2) Why do you think some persons believe the teaching of the cross is foolishness?
3) Are there areas of your life where you need to give up your supposed independence, remembering you no longer belong to yourself?
4) Is God calling you to suffer the cross for someone else who has hurt you? What does this mean to you?
5) Have you ever chosen to suffer emotionally for the good of a person who could be called your enemy?
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*OneLife Ministries is a ministry of Brian K. Wilcox, of SW Florida. Brian is pastor at Christ Community United Methodist Church, Harbour Heights, FL, and Senior Chaplain for the Charlotte County Sheriff's Office, Punta Gorda, FL.
*Brian welcomes responses to his writings or submission of prayer requests at barukhattah@embarqmail.com .
*Contact the above email to book Brian for Spiritual Direction, retreats, or workshops. You can order his book An Ache for Union at major book dealers.
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