First Sunday of Lent: What could we give up?

 Let the same mind be in you

    that was in Christ Jesus…

who emptied himself,

  being born in human form. (Philippians 2:7)

When Simeon blessed baby Jesus; he told Mary that “a sword will pierce your own soul too” (Lk 2:35)—that the Blessed One would be “pierced.” The whole of Jesus’ earthly life is marked by suffering, pathos and even dread—as in the journey to Bethlehem, and Herod’s killing of the children, and the Holy Family’s flight into Egypt. Hurt is always about. That’s Lent.

Jesus never glides above it all. He suffered. He suffered because, as the early church hymn goes: “Though he was in the form of God, …He emptied himself, taking human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death— even death on a cross” (Phil 2:7-8). The Apostle quotes the words of the hymn not simply for theological reasons; but, as a model for how we should think—our Lenten behavior. That is, we should not stand above it all; or, make big claims about who we are or what we have accomplished; but rather, empty ourselves of pretense and become like Jesus. “Out of love,” the Apostle calls us “to do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves” (Phil 2:2-3). That would be a good Lenten sacrifice—“to count others as better than ourselves.”

I suppose such teaching could be psychologically damaging if we didn’t know the whole of Jesus—if we didn’t know the second stanza of the hymn about Christ’s exaltation: his resurrection and ascension. Because we are nestled in Christ, we no longer have to prove our own righteousness—that we are right. Our rightness comes from Christ our Righteous One. That is why we are free to “humble ourselves and count others as better than ourselves.” What could we give up for Lent? Maybe we could give up insisting on our own rightness and hear others out as if they might be on to something.