loss, gain

Monday of Holy Week, April 6, 2009

[If I haven't heard from you that you read this blog, or visit it, I'd like to hear from you. It's meaningful to me, and helpful, but I'm evaluating whether I'll keep doing it after Lent. I'd especially like to hear from Church of the Apostles people. Thanks. markjdicristina@yahoo.com]

Jer. 12:1-16; Phil. 3:1-14; John 12:9-19

whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. 8 Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ... (Phil. 3:7-8)


Here again is that gospel theme we considered in the Passion Narrative yesterday of
"power through powerlessness," or
"life through death"
"life through rightly ordered love"
"life through service."

Three times Paul speaks of "loss." He counts his gain, indeed everything, as loss for supreme worth of knowing Messiah Jesus. He has "suffered the loss of all things" in order to gain Christ.

To trust in and rely on anything inherent in me, or that I have gained through inheritance, through study or training, through being where I have been blessed and gifted to have been at every stage of my life, is ultimately to miss out on huge areas of knowing the life and grace and presence of God. To aim for my good, or what I consider my best life, or to have as the end for which I am working, posturing, or hoping the enlargement or security of myself, is to be actually undermining the whole security, good, and "best life" that God has for me in Christ. Rather, I pray for the end of myself, the grace to truly consider as loss all the many, many things that are a "lesser good" than in fact knowing God intimately in Messiah Jesus.

In each area of my life I would aim for the end of myself - the end of myself as both resource (that on which I rely) and as goal (that for which I am aiming and living).


I am thankful for this Holy Week, for the gift and opportunity to
know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead. (vs. 10-11)

Through faith in Christ (v. 9), or through the faithfulness of Christ, through relying on and trusting in him and his work alone, we are to share his sufferings and become like him in his death... that is, I think, to suffer the loss of everything in order to know him, to know his power at work in and because of my powerlessness, and to know his victory, his life, and the fellowship of all the "much fruit" of his dying and rising.

One way we can do this is by remembering him, uniting with him in his passion, through Bible reading and prayer, and through liturgy. Maundy Thursday and Good Friday services are gifted to us for this - to share with him in his suffering and to become like him in his death. I am looking forward to these times as this forty day journey nears its end and its destination.

Have a blessed and Holy Week. Peace.