"Into"

Those who try to make their life secure will lose it, but those who lose their life will keep it.  ~ Jesus, Luke 17:33

Our Lenten Pilgrimage of Prepositions brings us to a threshold.  Just as Jesus in the passion narratives of the Gospels goes into Jerusalem to face the darkness that awaits, we too stand at myriad thresholds in our lives.  Time and again throughout life we are invited into the shadows of our lives.

In the various biblical accounts of the final week of Jesus' life we see him playing a deadly game with the fate that awaits him.  As mentioned in the previous blog, once he leaves the safety of the Palestinian countryside on what we now call Palm Sunday and enters Jerusalem his life is endangered. Throughout the week he goes in and out of the city until finally on Thursday he steps completely into the darkness of death. 

The game he plays is one we often find ourselves playing as we stand on the thresholds of the situations and circumstances in life we fear. The ultimate threshold is of course the same one which Jesus steps through, the door of death.  

In many ways the season of Lent and the week we Christians call "Holy" is our annual pilgrimage to death's door.  It is our annual reminder of our mortality when we are invited to mentally, emotionally, and spiritually rehearse our death.  Much like Jesus going in and out of Jerusalem, we face death without dying, knowing fully well that one day we will step into what seems to be final darkness.

The good news in all of this is also the ultimate Good News - by going into and through death's shadow, we discover life's light.  On a smaller more practical level we now know that all of life's shadows are also thresholds into life's light. Perhaps this is why we can call the pain, suffering, death and darkness of Friday "Good."