Third Sunday of Lent, 2023 - Deny Self

What did you give up for Lent? 

The season of Lent is commonly associated with giving up something we enjoy – caffeine (coffee), sugar, chocolate, soft drinks, alcohol, etc. The Catholic tradition of eating fish on Friday during Lent is rooted in this practice of giving up something for Lent – in their case, meat. As for me, I traditionally give up rhubarb. 😉 The thinking behind this practice is that the inevitable desire for what we give up becomes a prompt to desire God – to think about God, to turn to God, to pray.

This Lenten practice is based upon Jesus’s teaching, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves,” Mark 8:34. In my mind, the practice is based on a misunderstanding of this teaching.

The phrase “deny themselves” is one of three that Jesus used to describe what is involved in being his follower. In my last blog, I addressed the other two phrases: “take up their cross and follow me.” To be a follower of Jesus is to live as an insurrectionist (take up your cross), rejecting the way the world trained us to think and live. It is to walk in relationship with Jesus (follow me), learning the ways of God he taught so that our thinking and living are shaped by the character of God and the ways of God.

In this description of what it means to be his follower, denying self has to do with identity, not things we enjoy.

When we reject the way the world trained us to think and live, we give up the identity we created based upon what the world said we needed to be and do if we wanted to be accepted and valued. I call this identity our constructed self. We built this identity based upon what we, through self-effort, accomplished and achieved. This identity is tied to how we measured up to the expectations of the world in which we grew up – family, society, church, culture. This identity is not our authentic or true self. It is a persona we present to others.

This constructed self is an ego-centric self. It is me-focused, hence the term ego-centric. It operates out of a self-serving, what’s-in-it-for-me spirit.

Comparing and competing feed this ego-centric identity. At the core of this manufactured identity is the thought “I’m not like that. I’m better than them.” Judging and criticizing others reinforces the sense that we are better than “those other people.” An unrecognized spirit of arrogance lives at the core of our ego-centric identity.  

To be a follower of Jesus is to give up this manufactured identity – the persona we created in order to be valued and accepted by the world. It is to discover our true self – the person God created us to be – as we walk in relationship with Jesus, learning and living the ways of God he taught.

As we walk with Jesus, a servant spirit – the spirit of Jesus – grows in us (Mark 9:33-37). The servant spirit is the opposite of the self-serving, what’s-in-it-for-me spirit of the ego-centric, constructed self. As the servant spirit grows in us, we surrender comparing and competing, criticizing and judging along with the better than-less than thinking that props up the ego-centric, constructed self. As long as we cling to the identity of our constructed self, we cannot genuinely serve others. We will be caught up in protecting and propping up the identity we manufactured - our ego-centric, constructed self.

To follow Jesus is to die to the ego-centric identity we created in order to be accepted and valued by the world. This false identity is what we give up for Lent. It is what we give up as a follower of Jesus.