"This is what the season of Lent is about, about being born again, about following the path of death and resurrection, about participating in Jesus’ final journey. To become somewhat more concrete, some of us may need to die to specific things in our lives–perhaps to a behavior that has become destructive or dysfunctional, perhaps to a relationship that has ended or gone bad, perhaps to an unresolved grief or to a stage in our life that it is time to leave, perhaps to our self-preoccupation, or even to a deadness in our lives (you can die to deadness.) It is possible to leave the land of the dead. So, the journey of Lent is about being born again–about dying and rising, about mortality and transformation. "
-Marcus Borg
This is day two of Lent. Today I am reflecting on dying to the old order of being. I was reading some of Marcus Borg’s work today as well as a book of John Shelby Spong. Both authors are controversial and both are very progressive. They both have a great maturity of faith and because of that are capable of expanding the horizons of what they believe and challenge us all to examine more closely what we believe. In both cases I have been reading about new ways of being, of understanding, of believing, and professing. Most intriguing today was a sermon Marcus Borg’s Ash Wednesday Homily. In it, Borg speaks about the notion of being “born again.” In this sermon, delivered on Ash Wednesday in 2002, Borg mourns the fact that conservative Christianity has laid claim to the phraseology “born again.” In his sermon, he very much claims it back for the entire church and reminds us about what Lent can be for us.
Lent is, Borg asserts, when we “die to specific things in our lives–perhaps to a behavior that has become destructive or dysfunctional, perhaps to a relationship that has ended or gone bad, perhaps to an unresolved grief or to a stage in our life that it is time to leave, perhaps to our self-preoccupation, or even to a deadness in our lives (you can die to deadness.)” He is dead on – no pun intended! We all have things in our lives we need to address. We all have issues that we need to resolve. We all have sins that need forgiving. We all have a need to forgive those who have sinned against us. We call all stand to focus a little less on the dead land of our past. We all have a capacity to be better people, and better Christians. We all have a need to for healing and wholeness.
My prayer on this second day of Lent is that I might be mature enough in my faith and spirituality to allow myself to die the deaths that I need to die. My prayer is that on this journey of Lent I might heed the words of Marcus Borg and leave the land of the dead. I pray that I might be able to be born again. I want to put to its final rest my insecurities, my sinfulness and faithlessness. I want to rise, transformed. I want to seek to be alive in faith, secure in faith, free in faith, forgiven and forgiving in faith, healed in faith, and I want to be a part of God’s new creation. I journey with you all – Let us build the City of God by transforming the landscape of our lives.
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