January 19

2 Corinthians 5:14-20

This is the annual Week of Prayer for Christian Unity.  This year the prayer sheet I received lists this passage as the guiding Scripture for the week, using one verse each day as its theme.  Elizabeth and I are reading it together each day.  Today, day 2, the verse is 5:15: "And he died for all, so that those who live might no longer live for themselves, but for him who died and was raised for them."  There's a lot of ideas packed into that one sentence.  What does it mean to die for us?  For all?  And what does it mean to live for him?  I don't have all the answers (or even many), but I have a few thoughts.

Living for Christ doesn't mean getting a church job or becoming a professional missionary.  One thing it means for me is that we don't have to continually start from the beginning and draw only on our resources.  We are in Christ, our lives have meaning as part of the larger healing of the world.  We receive energy and power and hope through this context.  In turn, we spread this context - we live in the reign of God, here and now.

On another level, I think we live "for" Christ, in place of Jesus the human who lived in a particular time and place.  A prayer attributed to Teresa of Avila names us as the hands and feet of Christ in the world.  We are charged with doing the work of Christ - healing, freeing, proclaiming, forgiving.  As later verses make clear, this is the work of reconciling humans with God.  It's not a one-time deal.  Each day we begin again, looking for the life that fills and guides us and looking for where to carry that to others.

I no longer live for myself.  That's a relief.  Living for myself is lonely and barren.  Living for others can verge into codependency and control.  Living for Christ means my concerns don't have to be the center even of my own life.  I have a bigger picture and bigger possibility.  The one who showed me the way through death to life is enabling me to show others.

Where are you aware of living for Christ today?