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.
On
Ash Wednesday, we Christians are traditionally reminded of our
own mortality in a very vivid way, as the ashes are marked on
our foreheads in the sign of the cross. In the sign of the cross
we hear the words spoken over us, "Dust thou art and to
dust thou wilt return." This is a reminder not just of our
physical mortality, but of the very path of Lent itself. We begin
this season of Lent not only reminded of our death but marked
for death, and that path of death is about our transformation.
The
journey of Lent is about being born again by participating in
the death and resurrection of Jesus, about that journey from
Galilee to Jerusalem. The journey of Lent with its climax in
Good Friday and Easter, is about embarking
on the way of Jesus on that path of mortality and transformation that
is at the very center of the Christian life. When you think of
it, who of us does not yearn for this? Who of us does not yearn
for a fuller connection to life? Who
does not yearn for an identity that releases us from anxiety and self-preoccupation? To
be born again, it seems to me, corresponds to our deepest yearning.
May we this Lent experience that internal transformation that is at
the center of the Christian life. May we experience being born again.
Copyright ©2002
Dr. Marcus J. Borg
--from "Born Again" by Dr. Marcus Borg
Read "Born
Again" in its entirety.
