Thinking Anew – Moving beyond appearances

We hear a lot about self-denial during Lent not only in church circles but in wider society where it is often discussed in trivial terms. But if we unpack the idea a little we discover it can be part of a process of self-discovery, a coming to terms with fundamental truths about ourselves.

This is important because we live in a world where image is everything and we feel the need to give impressions of ourselves that are not necessarily true.

Identities

The BBC Television comedy

Keeping Up Appearances

makes the point. Hyacinth Bucket – pronounced “Bouquet”, according to her –is a snobbish housewife determined to climb the social ladder despite her family’s working-class background represented by her string-vested brother Onslow. Hilarious but true in real life.

Let's look further at the suggestion that self-denial could be a path to self-discovery. In his book The Power of Now, German/Canadian writer Eckhart Tolle queries the things we use to bolster what he considers our superficial identities: "Possessions, the work you do, social status and recognition, physical appearance, special abilities, relationships, personal and family history . . . None of these is you". He goes on to suggest that we have to relinquish all of these things eventually: "Death is a stripping away of all that is not you. The secret of life is to die before you die – and find that there is no death."

In tomorrow’s epistle reading St Paul says something similar when he talks about stripping away all the ethnic and religious advantages he used to rely on as a learned Pharisee: “I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ.”

Bethany

In the reading from St John’s gospel, Jesus has returned to Bethany where he is among friends: “There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair.”

The house is filled with the powerful aroma of the perfume that Mary used, a rare and expensive cosmetic produced in India or China that a woman would normally use sparingly.

In this incident, however, a whole flask was used. This extraordinary gesture is an expression of Mary’s gratitude to Jesus for what he had done for her. Elsewhere in the gospels we are told she was “a woman in the city, a sinner” but Jesus forgave her – “her sins which are many are forgiven, for she loved much.”

Mary’s gratitude is retrospective, an expression of gratitude for what had been done for her. It reminds us that our love for God is always a response to his love for us; it never begins with us.

We sometimes speak about “living a lie” and there is a sense in which that is true of all of us. The image we present in public isn’t always a perfect match for who we really are.

Through his passion we see Jesus humiliated, mocked and stripped of every human dignity – and eventually life itself – but despite all this he becomes the most powerful symbol of hope for humankind. The same can be true for us – it may seem that we have lost everything we value and yet discover that we have retained everything that matters. Those words of Eckhart Tolle again: “Death is a stripping away of all that is not you. The secret of life is to die before you die – and find that there is no death.”

Faith journey

It’s a faith journey that none of us easily undertakes but as tomorrow’s reading from Isaiah suggests the journey to where we want to be is through the desert, a place apparently without resources. Yet there, and especially there, God makes a way out of no way. The gift of true life is found in unexpected places.