Open My Life, Lord

Rebecca Sheridan
Wednesday, April 9, 2025
Galatians 2:15-21

“I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live but Christ lives in me!  The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loves me, and gave himself for me, Galatian 2:20, Galatians 2:20!”  This was our theme verse when I worked as a counselor at Ingham Okoboji Lutheran Bible Camp in the summer of 2004, and here I am, 21 years later.  I still know that verse by heart!  It’s a pretty good theme verse, when you think about it.  As we get ready for Holy Week, Paul sums up the Christian faith here – God loves us so much that he sent his only Son to give up his life, to be crucified for us, so that we share Christ’s same resurrected life.  At our baptisms, we were crucified with Christ – we died to our old selves, to the way of the world, to trying to make ourselves right with God by following the law, and rose to a new way of living by grace through faith.  This is what we say we believe, basically.  Especially as LUTHERAN Christians, knowing that we are saved by grace through faith apart from works of the law is so so so so so important.
But…But!  This is what we say we believe, but do we really believe it?  CAN we believe that Christ actually lives in us?  I remember as a twenty-year-old camp counselor doubting that Jesus actually lives through me.  I was a pretty good kid but you know when you’re twenty years old you don’t make the best decisions all the time.  Now we know from brain science that your frontal lobe which helps people make rational decisions isn’t fully developed until you’re 25 or so.  So believe me, I was not seeing myself as living like Christ all the time back in the day.  I knew full well that my “old self” was alive and well.  This summer of camp was actually a crucial year for me of spiritual development, as I was also just starting to say out loud to other people that I was thinking about being a pastor.  I was growing to understand that Christ could still live in and through me even if I wasn’t a perfect person.  
I would guess, because of the many hang-ups and self-doubt that most of us struggle with, that some of you, also, even though you are much older and wiser than a 20-year-old, wonder about what Paul is saying here, that Christ lives in you.  In the extreme, isn’t that also a psychological disorder, a “messiah complex?”  Especially in Lent, it’s important for us to recognize our need for Jesus, our failure to live as God wants us to live, to confess our sins and repent, turning back to God.  However, wallowing in our guilt is not God’s will for our lives.  Paul asks us to trust that through faith, Christ lives in us, each one of us, actually!  We are God’s Easter people, which means we are called to strive to live like Christ and to see Christ in others.  Because he lives, we live, also!
So we’re wrapping up our series on asking the Lord to open us up to Christ’s way of life, and to recommit ourselves to living Jesus’ way.  As Deacon Jim pointed out last week, without the heart, we have no hands, eyes or ears to use, and without Christ’s living in us, from Paul’s perspective anyway, we are walking dead.  Because he lives, we live also.  All over the gospels is the good news that Christ came so that we might have life and have it abundantly and eternally.  Not the life that the world wants us to have, overfocused on wealth, materialism, and pleasure.  Rather, Jesus shares his life with us that is abundant with the fruits of the Spirit – peace, joy, love, patience, kindness, and so on.  Whenever we’re able to share this way of life, when we find ourselves being more patient, kind, or loving than we’d thought we’d ever be able to be, well, that’s Christ living in us.  When we experience peace in our world or in our community or even just in a broken family relationship where we’d never thought we’d see peace, well, that’s Christ living in us.   When we are able to give generously – more of our time or our money perhaps than we thought possible, well, that’s Christ living in us.
You might know that our Synod’s mission is to “Live Like Christ in Our Communities.”  Paul encourages us that we already have Christ living in us – when we pray, “Open My Life, Lord,” we are asking Christ to take the lead, to guide us in our living.  In this particular prayer, “open my life, Lord,” we ask God how we might specifically live like Christ in our particular community.  Do you have a lonely neighbor, or know of a struggling small business that could use your support?  Is there a caregiver who needs respite, or a colleague at work who needs prayer?  Let’s take a moment to think of particular needs in out community, and how we might respond, knowing that Christ lives in us.  Since Jesus already lives through us, he’ll help us answer these questions.  May God open our eyes to see, ears to hear, hands to serve, hearts to love all so that we can live like Christ in our communities.  Thanks be to God, Amen.