WEEK TWO
March 5 - March 11
COSTLY DISCIPLESHIP (PART I)
The notion of self-sacrifice, self-denial and putting others ahead of your own interests, are not character qualities highly valued in our culture. In fact, excessive self-centeredness appears to be winning the day. Nearly a century ago, scholar Frederick Robinson wrote, “Sacrifice alone, bare and unrelieved, is ghastly, unnatural, and dead; but self-sacrifice, illuminated by love, is warmth and life; it is the death of Christ, the life of God, and the blessedness and only proper life of man.” Christian self-sacrifice is an essential component of becoming mature in Christ. Spiritual formation (cultivating various spiritual disciplines), has played a significant role in the lives of believers from the beginning of the Christian era. Texts such as John Climacus’ Ladder of Divine Ascent (600 AD), Ignatius of Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises (1548), Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s The Cost of Discipleship (1937), or Dallas Willard’s The Spirit of the Disciplines (1999), are books that speak to the process of  sanctification. Willard wrote that “Spiritual formation for the Christian basically refers to the Spirit-driven process of forming the inner world of the human self in such a way that it becomes like the inner being of Christ himself.” For the next two weeks we will be examining some of these virtues and disciplines in relationship to Christ’s sacrificial life.

Day 5 - Sunday, March 5
The Sacrifice of True Repentance
Scripture: Psalm 51:17
The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.

Poetry:
"Magdalene (I)"
by Boris Pasternak
With the night, my demon appears,
The price I pay for my past.
They come and gnaw at my heart,
Those memories of vice
When I, a slave to male whims,
Was a frenzied fool
And the street was my home.

A few minutes are left,
Then a quiet like the grave will fall
But before they pass, I,
At the limit of my life,
Will shatter it, like a vessel
Of alabaster, in front of You.

Oh, where would I be now,
My Teacher and my Saviour,
If Eternity weren’t waiting for me
In the nights, at the table,
Like a new guest enticed
Into the net of my trade.

But explain to me the meaning
Of sin, death, hell, brimstone,
When, in sight of all, I have grown
One with You, a vine and its tree,
In my yearning that has no bound.

When, Jesus, I clasp Your feet,
Supporting them on my knees,
Perhaps I’m learning to embrace
The squared beam of the cross,
In a trance, straining for Your body,
As I prepare You for burial.

COMING TO JESUS
She knew what she was; one characterized by that in which she had been entangled. And there was absolutely no way to roll back time, and undo the first propulsory deed; recover the first misstep. Was there an initial misstep? Likely she could never work it out. Then came Jesus. She would have had to approach Him; or allow Him to approach her in her dismal state; risk losing control of herself. There would have been nothing for it. He was the only glimmer of hope, of possibility. I have identified with this woman—owning sin; exposed in broad daylight: caught; undone.

I turned my heart to sin,
my soul swinging as on a hinge.
I felt the slip,
from divine care, into Satan’s grip.

Repentance is the first sacrifice; the sacrifice made when there is nothing to give; when unholiness has stolen everything, when one is prostrated abjectly. And when Magdalene returned that evening to her house, did all seem like a dream, her encounter with Jesus some hallucination? Was she wakeful through the night in trying to comprehend the deliverance which had come to her at His word? Oh the demons approached—surely—furious to have been evicted from their comfortable, long-time abode. But she made a choice. We know she did. She believed in the One who had set her free.

What was her second sacrifice of repentance; which likely cost her last coin—maybe coins accrued in some dismal trade, but which secured her future? Did she leave everything behind, for some other tenant to dispose of? Everything, but the money? Was this the direction of a new Spirit? She abandoned herself wholly to Jesus (for she was to follow and support Him) because apart from Him, well, apart from Him, she had nothing.

He rescued me!
We met out sins consequence
And I was freed!

My first born child was an offering; born to me outside of marriage. I placed my son in an adoptive home with a good family. It seemed that was the best I could provide for him. It was what I heard in my spirit--what I was strengthened to do; a costly sacrifice; the depths of my soul plumbed.

These sacrifices of repentance are the sacrifices of no turning back; the offerings of whatever we grasped in our hands, which had fixed our gaze--the approach towards God, eyes now lifted to His face, hands open. These singular acts Jesus dignifies, as He accepts them, and ordains them to stand.

We like the idea that the repentance of a woman bound, gained her the garden conversation—the very first interchange—Magdalene with the risen Jesus. It expresses the spirit of the fruit of true repentance. For Jesus gives us Himself, and begins to manifest Himself in us in light and life and love—the eternal process that shall never cease conforming us to His very image.

Magdalene—changed, transformed from darkness to lucidity, in the garden—stunningly, ‘scandalously’ miraculous. We all receive miracles though. I have seen countless. One in particular was exceptionally sweet. It was the day I met my son whom I had released for adoption. He was twenty years old. His life and the life of my second son (not yet seventeen) were about to intersect as students attending the same university, Biola University. So a meeting was scheduled. Oh glory! Oh undeserved gift! Our families enlarged so that we have now been a part of one another’s lives as long as not.

Words seem to pale in the effort to express the freedom, the release, the all-consuming joy one experiences in the sacrifice of repentance; the coming to Jesus!

O to be bereft of myself
O to repent again
To meet afresh the Goodly Fere*
To become his companion and friend.
For the Goodly Fere is a lover most fair
He ‘as wooed my longing heart
And naught can keep me from his love
He ‘as accomplished all His part.
He is the bonny bridegroom prince
The equitable on His stallion white
Sweeter than Solomon, He’ll receive His bride
His reward for the goodly fight.
*Fere: friend—a term used by Ezra Pound in his poem The Ballad of the Goodly Fere

PRAYER
O Lord our God, good and merciful, I acknowledge all my sins which I have committed in thought, word and deed; in body and soul alike. I am heartily sorry that I have offended You, and I sincerely repent; with tears I humbly pray to You, O Lord: of Your mercy forgive me all my past transgressions and absolve me from them. I firmly resolve, with the help of Your Grace, to amend my way of life and walk in the way of the righteous and offer praise and glory to the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Amen.

Barbara Mancini
Author and Biola Parent