Look into this Mirror: the first Sunday in Lent

"For he is the brightness of eternal glory,
he is splendour of eternal light,
the mirror without spot."
--St. Clare of Assisi

In mirrors I see myself. But in mirrors made of glass and silver I never see the whole of myself. I see the me I want to see, and I ignore the rest.

Mirrors that hide nothing hurt me. They reveal an ugliness I'd rather deny....But this is the hurt of purging and precious renewal--and these are the mirrors of dangerous grace.

The passion of Christ, his suffering and his death, is such a mirror....The pain in the face of Jesus...is my self in my extremest truth. My sinful self. The death he died reflects a selfishness so extreme that by it I was divorced from God and life and light completely: I raised my self higher than God! But because the Lord God is the only true God, my pride did no more, in the end, than to condemn this false god of my self to death. For God will be God, and all the false gods will fall before him.

So that's what I see reflected in the mirror of Christ's crucifixion: my death. My rightful punishment. My sin and its just consequence. Me. And precisely because it is so accurate, the sight is nearly intolerable.

Nevertheless, I will not avoid this mirror! No, I will carefully rehearse, again this year, the passion of my Jesus--with courage, with clarity and faith; for this is the mirror of dangerous grace, purging more purely than any other.

For this one is not made of glass and silver, nor of fallen flesh only. This mirror is made of righteous flesh and divinity, both--and this one loves me absolutely....

This mirror is not passive only, showing what is; it is active, creating new things to be. It shows me a new me behind the shadow of a sinner. For when I gaze at his crucifixion, I see my death indeed--but my death done! His death is the death of the selfish one, whom I called ugly and hated to look upon.

And resurrection is another me.

--Walter Wangerin (American Lutheran pastor, novelist, essayist, 1944--)
from Reliving the Passion

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the next posting: Sunday, March 4