SECOND SUNDAY IN LENT DEVOTIONAL

“But our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Savior…” These are unexpected words from a man who was said to be a citizen of Rome, the greatest city of the known world at the time whose Empire was arguably at its height. But Paul was not any Roman citizen but Jewish Christian and one commissioned to preach the good news of that expected Savior, Jesus the Christ. Many of us who will be reading these words on this Sunday are citizens of a world power also and privileged beyond the imagining of the richest Roman. And yet even as the Christians in Philippi our hope is not in the world that humans make for ourselves. Perhaps we are beginning to see inklings of this as the illusion of security that we used to enjoy is receding. This pandemic has been our companion for the last two years and we cannot say that sickness and death are strangers to us. The words at the imposition of ashes we cannot dismiss as quaint old and symbolic words but truths we have had to reacquaint ourselves with. “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.” Political leaders have failed to bring a coherent and reasonable response, and even if they did so it would amount to no more than managing sickness and death. Our healing can only come from outside ourselves, and our true belonging is to that reality from which our wholeness proceeds. The good news is that we await a Savior that we already know, one who loved us to the very end, to death and beyond. Jesus, our salvation is no stranger to our finitude and limitations but embraces us as one of us. Our very dust dwells in the heart of God.