The Church
of the Ascension
Fifth Avenue at Tenth Street
New York City, New York

Mailing address:
12 W. 11th St
New York, NY 10011

v: 212-254-8620
f: 212-254-6520

Worship schedule
Sundays: 9am, 11am
Monday–Friday: 6pm

Thursday, February 22, 2007

Thursday after Ash Wednesday

Psalm 1
Deuteronomy 30:15-20
Luke 9:18-25

"See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity…Choose life."

Deuteronomy 30:15-20

"For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it."

Luke 9:24

The Old Testament lesson and the Gospel reading for today at first seem somewhat at odds. The former exhorts us to "choose life" while Jesus says we need to give up our life in order to save it. Choosing life would seem an easy enough proposition. Confronted with the options offered in the lesson, who wouldn't pick life and prosperity over death and adversity? On deeper reflection, though and speaking only for myself, I find that it is often easy for me to confuse choosing life with being acquisitive, trying to grab on to as much as I can. The phrase "retail therapy" comes to mind. How easy it is when we're down in the dumps to believe that a shiny new toy will cheer us up, enrich our lives, make us feel more, well, alive. I think at least part of what Jesus is saying is that that kind of materialism can blind us to the real life we should be choosing to live. If we can let go of some of the things we think are so important, we will likely find that we get along just as well, if not better, without them, which I suppose is one of the main purposes of Lent. Call it "spiritual therapy."

Vin Knight

posted by AscensionNYC @ 11:31 PM  |  link  |