A World Worth Saving
Philippians 2:5-11
February 24, 2015
During the Season of Lent, our Monday night Bible Study is reading a book by George Hovaness Donigian entitled A World Worth Saving: Lenten Spiritual Practices for Action. Donigian wrote this book as a call to action--to put our Lenten spiritual disciplines "into action that demonstrates God's love and mercy for the world." (p. 19).
Donigian's point is certainly Wesleyan. John Wesley taught the importance of engaging in both deeds of piety and deeds of mercy in our spiritual journeys. But Donigian really caught my attention with the rationale he used for using Lent as a call to action. Donigian asserts that "God believes the world is worth saving; the world is worthy of redemption." (p. 18). To support his point, Donigian quotes from John 3:17: "God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him."
I have been letting those words sink into my consciousness during the past twenty-four hours. It can become so easy to grow despondent over the current situation in the world and to wonder why God doesn't just chuck it all and start over yet again. But Donigian reminds us that God believes that the world is worth saving. God didn't just stop with wishing that the world would change. God took action--action so beautifully expressed in an early Christian hymn recorded in Philippians 2:5-11
Let this same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,
who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death--
even death on a cross.
Therefore God also highly exalted him
and gave him the name
that is above every name,
so that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bend,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue should confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
God took action, and God invites us to take action too. But first, we assert the basic premise: God thinks that the world and everyone in it is worth saving. Look at the news and name the issue and the person, no matter how offensive, no matter how much their values conflict with ours, no matter how much they seem to threaten us and our way of life. Jesus died for them, because He believed that they were worth saving. Jesus died for members of ISIS, for revolutionaries fighting in Syria, for tough-talking leaders in North Korea, for politicians on both side of the aisle, for thugs on the street, for homeless huddled around a camp fire. He thought that they were worth saving.
He died for you and for me too, because he thought we were worth saving.
In our Bible study, we will be talking about ways that we can put our spiritual disciplines into action. You can join us, if you like--we meet on Mondays at 7:00 pm (we also start with a Fellowship Supper at 6:15 pm, if you are available). But our task this week is to pray--to pray with the news in front of us, to make a list of the situations in the world that distress us, to pray for God to show us the ways he is present even in the middle of the chaos, and to show us how we too can love those for whom Jesus died.
Donigian closes his first chapter by inviting us to meditate on the words of a hymn. It seems like a good way to close today's devotion:
What wondrous love is this, O my soul, O my soul,
what wondrous love is this, O my soul!
What wondrous love is this that caused the Lord of bliss
to bear the dreadful curse for my soul, for my soul,
to bear the dreadful curse for my soul.
[USA folk hymn, "What Wondrous Love is This," in The United Methodist Hymnal, (Nashville: The United Methodist Publishing House, 1989), 292.
Donigian's book is published by Upper Room Books, Nashville, TN. (c) 2013.]
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