“What’s in it for me?”
I hear this question being asked a lot these days. I hear it from individuals. I hear it from congregations. I hear it in the media. And, I must confess, I’ve heard it fall from
my own lips a time or two. “What’s in it
for me?” I suppose we could blame the
prevalence of this question on our cultural emphasis on the individual as the
measure of all things. One of the universities where I served used the tag line
“It’s All About U” for a while. It made
me cringe. Self-preservation could also
be driving the question. By nature, we
become protective and defensive when we feel threatened, or afraid, or
vulnerable or uncertain about the world around us. Digging a foxhole and climbing in seems
prudent when the bullets are flying. I
frequently see this kind of self-focused thinking and behavior in congregations
and other organizations struggling with financial and other challenges.
Against this backdrop of cultural values and human nature,
Jesus’ statement in Mark 8:35 sounds radically counter-intuitive, “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.” Jesus suggests that asking “What’s in it for
me?” is absolutely the wrong question to be asking if we want to know the
fullness of life. Instead, we should be
asking, “What’s in it for YOU?” That is,
we need to ask how we use our lives to serve others in the name of Christ. Life is not meant to be hoarded, it is meant
to be shared. This is the heart of the
Gospel; demonstrated most fully when Jesus gave his life for the world on the
cross.
But Jesus not only suggests that we should give our lives
away. Even more, he suggests that, in
doing so, we will actually discover life. If we risk giving ourselves away, we will
discover a joy that the one who hoards life will never know. When we adopt the servant lifestyle, we
discover God in the face of the other and meet fellow travellers who accompany
us as we accompany them. When the
challenges of life come our way (and they always do) we will have friends who
can carry us, just as we once carried them.
When we give our lives away we experience in concrete ways the breadth
of God’s mercy, the depths of God’s compassion and the reconciling power of
God’s love for us all.
The life of faith is not about our personal relationship
with God in Christ. The life of faith
frees us to live the abundant life God created us to live for others. We were not saved for ourselves. We were saved for the sake of the world God
loves.
Peace,
Bishop Mike
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