Wednesday of the Second Week of Lent

Lectionary: 232

Jesus said in reply, "You do not know what you are asking. Can you drink the chalice that I am going to drink?"
They said to him, "We can."
He replied, "My chalice you will indeed drink, but to sit at my right and at my left, this is not mine to give....

Recently I spent much time with a mortally ill friar, and I listened to his deciding over many days to let it go. He was drinking deeply of the Lord's chalice of suffering, and I wondered how willing I might be when that day comes. As sympathetic friends asked about him, I reminded them of the same choice. Given the American way of dying, which involves a cycle of repeated, frequent trips to the emergency room, most of us will face that decision. And we'll also make it for family members as they linger on death's threshold. 

But, as the Lord speaks of death, we realize it's also a metaphor for how we live. And those innumerable choices made over the course of life are far more important than any advanced directive.  Am I willing to die to myself; that is, to my opinions and beliefs, my preferences and desires, and my needs, both apparent and real? Am I willing to let others go first, to receive better treatment than I get, and enjoy the fruit of my labor? Am I willing to suffer their indifference? 

The real death doesn't come in a hospital, hospice, or nursing home. Death comes when I disappear and the Lord appears in my place. Or in what I mistakenly thought was my place. 

The clueless disciples in today's gospel are practically comical in their efforts to secure powerful positions in the Lord's kingdom. They think of kingdom and power in the same breath. But the day will come when they see the Lord seated on his throne between two "revolutionaries, one on his right and the other on his left." And they will ask, "What were we thinking?" In the meanwhile, they cannot imagine how they must follow the Lord. 

Deep in the season of Lent, with four weeks yet to go, we ask the Lord to show us how we must die to ourselves. We pray for that ready willingness to follow him to Jerusalem, Calvary, and Easter. The disciplines of Lent are a simple test, and they often prove more difficult than we expected. It's not because fasting, prayer, and almsgiving are so hard; it's because we don't want to die.