We All Fall Down

Beth's devotion for our church to complement the Sunday sermon. 

We All Fall Down

By Beth Stroble

In this year’s Lenten season, we are called to “live inside out.”  What does that mean? I think it means that we will first engage in the kind of introspection and soul-searching that deepens our understanding of our fallen and flawed nature. Traditional Lenten spiritual practices call for prayer, fasting, a denial of the world’s temptations as we give something up. Taking that awareness outside our own sense of repentance and remorse, we then are called to reflect on how our brokenness affects our interactions with those in the world—family, friends, neighbors, coworkers, community. This year at Webster Hills we are being called to embrace fully our identity as God’s people through Acts of Kindness and serving others. 

This call to action based on our strong sense of whose we are finds inspiration in Matthew’s (4:1-11) account of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness.  After the Spirit descends upon Jesus at the baptism in the River Jordan, Jesus is then led to the wilderness to withstand three temptations.  As Leslie described them, each took the form of serving self and abandoning the larger purpose of the sacrifice Jesus would make for our salvation.  Whether to feed himself, to take a fall to prove his identity, or to bow down for worldly dominion, Jesus shunned the teasing and tempting choices to elevate self and stayed true to God’s plan and purpose to serve humankind through his own death and resurrection.  Jesus did not fall. 

We all fall down. We fall down in our ability to be honest with ourselves about our fundamental nature. We fall down when we fail to live in and extend God’s grace. We fall down when we depend only on ourselves and after a fall, fail even then to call out for the Lord to lift us up. We all fall down.

Remember that child’s game, Ring Around the Rosie? I recall this version: ”Ring-around-the-rosie, A pocket full of posies, Ashes! Ashes! We all fall down.”

While many claim that the game originated during the 17th century bubonic plague years and references the symptoms and treatments for plague victims, there is no definitive proof of its origin other than in children’s games dating to the 1800s. Interestingly, a version that appeared in a collection of Mother Goose’s nursery rhymes ended with, “We’re all tumbled down. We all fall dead.” 

And indeed we do.  And while that is the end of the rhyme, it is not our end.  Because Jesus the Christ took the fall for each of us and showed God’s power over death, we need fear death no more. 

Through the Lord’s death and resurrection, we are redeemed. And not for ourselves alone. May we, living life as God intended, serve others with acts of kindness and compassion. May God’s Kingdom on Earth be made real as we live our saved selves inside out.

Amen.