“If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life maimed, rather than having two hands, to go to hell…” – Mark 9:43a
The Lenten season is all about repentance. During this season we look inward to examine our lives and root out sin no matter the cost. Our Lenten practices tend to be personal in nature. We read the Scriptures, pray, and fast in the closet. While this is all good practice, Lent can often be a time of too much ‘me’. What are our prayers, fasting, and repentance for? Of course, they are offered up as spiritual sacrifices to God from whom we receive the forgiveness of sins. But our prayers, fasting, and repentance are also for one another.
I remember preaching on Mark 9:42-50 about two years ago. As I prepared to preach on this well-known passage, I had sermons rolling through my head that I had heard throughout the years. They all focused on the personal nature of repentance and avoiding temptation. “If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off! Do whatever it takes! If your T.V. causes you to lust, throw it away!” But this is a misreading of the passage. The context of this passage is social, not individualistic. Of course, applied consistently, it does speak to personal struggles and living holy lives, but it is primarily about church discipline and removing sin amid the Church. “But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble…” (v. 42a).
There is a social dimension to repentance within the Church. The Church must purge herself of those who wish to divide and hurt the flock or cause her little ones to stumble. But if we were to work this idea positively, our personal repentance is for the health of the whole. It strengthens the faith and love of our brothers and sisters within the body of Christ. Personal repentance is our spiritual antibody, and repentance done together with the rest of the Church is our corporate antibody.
The Lenten season is a time for the Church to practice this corporate inspection. In our personal devotions, we are to examine ourselves in relationship to the whole Church. We are not isolated individuals that just happen to have something in common. We are united by the same Spirit, knit together into one body, and all serve the same Father in heaven.
Lent is not just the practice of individualistic prayer, but fervent prayer for one another – for healing, faith, needs, and comfort. It is not just the practice of fasting, but the giving up of something so that we might give more to each other – our time, help, food, and clothing. It is not just the practice of personal repentance but solving disputes, restoring relationships, asking others for forgiveness, and extending that forgiveness freely. Lent is not so much about giving up but giving more.
This is because Lent is preparation for resurrection life. We not only prune ourselves but prune each other so that we might grow in the faith and life of our Lord Jesus. Repentance is a death, it is a cutting off, but it is a cutting off so that the life of the body may be preserved. Your personal devotions this season should be toward those ends, not just for your health but the health of your brother and sister. Your practices of prayer, fasting, and repentance should be used like food for others. They should strengthen, nourish, and give joy to the body. May you season the sacrificial body of the Church with the salt of faith and repentance so that we all might be conformed more and more into the image of our resurrected Lord and have peace with one another.
