Oh Lent...

Our quest for salvation, redemption, and unconditional love comes to a head as we begin our individual and communal Lenten journeys. Everyone knows how Lent ends: Jesus is crucified, our deep-rooted and innate original sin is forgiven, and we feel a sense of relief from the sacrifices that have been self-imposed for the previous forty days in solidarity with the sacrifice of Jesus in the desert.
Our awareness of this assured redemption, though, hinders the manner in which we carry ourselves day-to-day. Jesus died for our salvation, leaving us the ability to act however we choose, or at least that would be the easy way out.
I have recently been trudging through “The Cost of Discipleship” by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Lutheran theologian, and he distinguishes between cheap grace and costly grace. He says that so many people use the isolated incident of the crucifixion as their solitary point of salvation, rather than constantly living their lives as if they must earn their seat in Heaven. Their reckoning has already been achieved and therefore there is no inherent need to live their lives in a way that is worthy of the title “Christian.”
He challenges his audience to look beyond the cheap way out. When we are faced with the opportunity for sin, knowing that we are redeemed (because we know how the Jesus’ story ends), it makes the choice easier because we know we will be forgiven, better, that we already have been.
Despite that one death on a cross, our Christian identification should be a constant effort, a constant call, and an honor for which we must continuously strive. So as we begin Lent this year, our challenge comes in pretending that we do not know how the story ends, that we live each day enveloped by costly grace, bearing the cross of original sin. It’s painful, it is certainly costly, and it requires a prodigious amount of sacrifice, but it seems that if somebody could do it for us, the least we could do is try.