I have spent several years trying to live a rule of life inspired by a rule that St. Francis created for people living out in the world. Francis didn’t live the life he lived out of some sense of self importance, but rather because he felt that it helped him to be closer to Jesus. There are many stories of Francis thinking that he wasn’t living his rule well, or that he somehow missed an opportunity to live it better… he developed a rule for people who live their life in the world, some as married people, some as single people, all of whom are attempting to live in the world as disciples who want to live a life closer to Jesus…
Rules of life are great, so long as they actually help us to do what we have hoped; all the discipline in the world is really pretty worthless if the focus becomes the action and not the fruit of the action… which is one reason it’s good to review a rule of life every so often to make sure that it fits, that the actions help us to maintain a relationship to Jesus, and don’t just become things that we do that either have no purpose or whose purpose has become misplaced somehow…
Lenten disciplines function much the same way, and as we start to head into the home stretch of the season, it might be a good time for each of us to evaluate how our disciplines are going… what did we give up or take on? Why did we choose it? How does it help us to get closer to God? And certainly if you haven’t done something, it’s not too late to start… these next two weeks are fairly intense in the life of the church and can be for our individual spiritual lives as well…
It’s important for each of us to remember why we do these things; and if we need some help remembering why, maybe we should each think about what we would say to someone if they asked us… lots of people don’t understand why we take on these practices… and sometimes I think WE don’t understand… For myself, I can get so bogged down in the task and forget the purpose of the task, then what ends up happening is the task becomes a chore rather than something that is supposed to help me to connect in a meaningful way…or even worse it can become a reason to brag… which really is not helpful for the spiritual life.
Paul certainly tries to make this point in his Epistle this morning… Paul has much to brag about. His credentials are impressive, and he is at the top of his class when it comes to being a religious person… at least if credentials are what people are judging him by… I’ve always kind of enjoyed Paul’s words here and in other places where it seems like he’s making a big deal out of his accomplishments. It always sounds so over the top… Paul, the super apostle is at it again…
But it’s important to see that even Paul in all of his bragging about what he has done realizes that none of it matters. He realizes that he can do all sorts of “religious” things but without a meaningful relationship to Jesus, it means nothing. What Paul knows is that there isn’t anything he can do to make himself more important in the eyes of God; Jesus has made Paul his own, and that is where Paul’s sense of worth comes from.
It is the same for us… no matter who we are, what our education level is, our economic status… no matter what we take on, how much we read the bible, none of that gives us status in the Kingdom of God… and if those activities don’t help us to learn about Jesus, and to allow us truly know him, then they aren’t worth doing. As disciples, Jesus is our life and our purpose… all that we do points towards him… when our actions point towards us, then we’ve got it wrong… and ultimately, we will be disappointed because we cannot maintain our own sense of greatness. We WILL fail… how many of us have been able to maintain the disciplines we set out to do 5 weeks ago? And even if we have been able to, have we found them to always be what we need them to be? Have we gotten bogged down in the activity without really focusing on the purpose? If we live a rule of life, has it become more of a rule of drudgery?
Relationship with Jesus and with each other is what truly sustains us… we are coming into the holiest time of our church year, and I recommend, if you haven’t taken on a discipline of prayer for lent, now would be a good time….We are entering into a time of seeing Jesus at his most human, his most fragile, his most vulnerable. It’s a good time to renew and refresh our relationship with him if it seems like it has gotten to be more of a chore… and I know that it’s also a hard time to get close to him… when we see his humanity, it makes us frightfully aware of our own. His story is our story… and as we get even closer to Jerusalem, the darkness will seem overwhelming… but that is where he is found… in the darkest places of human life. In poverty, in weakness, in pain. And as we look toward his journey there, it is time to make it our journey as well. He is calling us to be with him. And since he is always with us, we should walk with him, all the way to the cross.
I invite all of us to a holy Lent again.., our relationship to him and to each other is the most important thing we have right now, and if our prayer life and spiritual disciplines aren’t helping us get there, then they are not really prayer and not truly spiritual…
Like Paul, we are faced with the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ… as it was for Paul it is filled with risk… it is also filled with joy; the joy of knowing the love of God for each of us in the life of Jesus… will we discover that love in what we do? Will we take the risk of getting closer? Jesus has taken the risk… I pray that we will too.