The message of Lent is not that we need to do a better job managing our sin. The message of Lent is that we need to do a better job of recognizing how our sin is dealt with.

As we gaze in the face of the beloved son of God, our character is changed. His likeness becomes our likeness. His light becomes ours.

We, who are Christ’s body, eat the mystical body of Christ and we are transfigured into his likeness. What is true of us in eternity is made available to us in this transfiguring moment at the table. We have been given a glimpse of a greater reality and we know that we are a part of it with God.

It makes all the difference that Christ was raised after being crucified rather than coming back to life after dying of natural causes.

Do you understand what happens when you die? The hope of the resurrection does not have as powerful a place in our thinking today as it had for the early Christians. We have a messed-up understanding of our physical bodies in the age to come. We tend to conceive of heaven as a faraway place filled with non-material, disembodied spirits, but we too will receive resurrection bodies just like Jesus’s.

Is there more to life than this? For the church in Corinth, many of its members were living for this life only. The encouragement is to see beyond the “now” to the “not yet” of eternal resurrection life. Living with a larger perspective impacts everything from our morals, to our view of wealth and poverty, to our understanding of the problem of evil in this world.

Resurrection faith may not change the outcome of events we all experience – like sin and death. But resurrection faith changes our relationship to what happens. Ultimately, it is all taken up in the resurrection of Jesus.

The Good News, that Jesus died for our sins and was raised to new life, continues to save us so that we can join God, as Christ's resurrected body, in this great project of love.

Chapter 13 of First Corinthians is perhaps the most important chapter in the Bible. It is a poetic explanation of the meaning of love that Jesus shows us on the cross. Let the words of Paul speak as a vision for how to live your life grounded in the transforming love of Jesus.