During this Holy Week, we are drawing near to the time when we must face the reality of seeing Jesus on the cross. In today’s lectionary reading from John [12:20-36] we read of Jesus predicting his own death. Let us not gloss over verse 32 “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw ALL people to myself.” I’m sure that some reading this will find a way to justify that Jesus didn’t really mean ALL, there must be some conditions, and that is where we can all find text to justify just about anything to support our notions in the Bible. But let’s not get distracted by that. Near the end of this text we are called to become children of light, so let’s focus on that call upon our lives. In Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis challenges us with these words:
“But there must be a real giving up of the self. You must throw it away “blindly” so to speak. Christ will indeed give you a real personality: but you must not go to Him for the sake of that. As long as your own personality is what you are bothering about you are not going to Him at all. The very first step is to try to forget about the self altogether. Your real, new self (which is Christ’s and also yours, and yours just because it is His) will not come as long as you are looking for it. It will come when you are looking for Him. Does that sound strange? The same principle holds, you know, for more everyday matters. Even in social life, you will never make a good impression on other people until you stop thinking about what sort of impression you are making. Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it. The principle runs through all life from top to bottom. Give up your self, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favourite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end: submit with every fibre of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will ever be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.”
Bottom line, we need to get over ourselves, and our ambitions, and our self-serving narcissism. We are called to completely submit ourselves; our entire lives to be used by God for God’s purposes. Period. That’s it. When we do this we become children of light that will shine in the world and by doing so we will draw others into the light.
Shalom y’all,
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Claire – What Are We to Give Up for Eternal Life
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https://capitaldistrictnc.org/claire-ificaton/
