Living in the Bind

There are moments lately when I feel caught in a bind.

I live in a beautiful home, and I am deeply grateful for it. At the same time, I know that the mortgage I pay feeds systems that generate enormous wealth for people who already have more than enough. My retirement savings grow in markets that expand through mechanisms of extraction and exploitation. The phone in my pocket connects me to you and to the wider world, yet it depends on global labor chains, rare earth minerals, and carbon-heavy infrastructures. Air travel allows me to see my family, and it leaves its mark on the planet.

I am grateful, and I am uneasy.

That tension feels especially sharp in this Lenten season we are calling Between Ashes and Alleluias. On Ash Wednesday we heard, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return” (Genesis 3:19). Ashes tell the truth about our limits and our participation in systems we did not design but nonetheless inhabit. And still, we dare to sing Alleluia, because resurrection is not naïve optimism; it is God’s refusal to let death have the last word (Luke 24:5–6).

To live between these two truths is to feel the bind.

We are shaped by a world in which wealth and power set the terms. Success is treated as proof of virtue. Influence is mistaken for wisdom. Those at the top are assumed to have earned their position. Over time, this story forms us more deeply than we realize.

Sometimes I wonder if we defend the powerful, less out of admiration and more because we have been formed to identify with them. We absorb the narrative that wealth proves worth and that those who rise must deserve their place (therefore, we deserve ours). The system appears not only inevitable but just. We protect it not merely out of fear, but out of hope—hope that if we work hard enough and remain loyal enough, we might one day rise into its security.

To question the system can feel like questioning our own imagined future. To insist on accountability can feel like threatening the ladder on which we believe to be climbing. So, we hesitate. We rationalize. We say this is simply how the world works.

That hesitation reveals how deeply we have been formed by what Jesus calls Mammon.

“You cannot serve God and Mammon” (Matthew 6:24). Jesus is not offering financial advice; he is naming a rival allegiance. Mammon is an Aramaic word that means wealth or riches, but in Jesus’ teaching it functions almost like a rival master; a system of trust built on accumulation, security, and control. It is not simply money itself, but the power money claims over our loyalties.

When Jesus says, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them… It will not be so among you” (Mark 10:42–43), he is not denying how the world operates. He is forming a different kind of community. Among you, he says, the pattern changes. Authority in the kingdom of God looks like service, not insulation.

That is where discipleship becomes both de-formation and re-formation.

De-formation is Ash Wednesday work. It is the steady unlearning of what Mammon has taught us; the reflex to equate wealth with virtue, the instinct to defend institutions before listening to the vulnerable, the admiration of dominance disguised as strength. When we remember that we are dust, we are reminded that none of us stands above accountability and none of us is sustained by accumulation alone.

Re-formation is Easter work. It is learning to see people not as resources but as neighbors. It is discovering that greatness is measured by service (Mark 10:43–45), that blessing belongs to the poor and the merciful (Matthew 5:3–7), and that love, not leverage, is the mark of faithful community (John 13:34–35). Re-formation reshapes what we admire and whom we trust.

The truth is, we are unlikely to dismantle every system that entangles us., and we cannot withdraw from the modern world without withdrawing from one another. But we can refuse to baptize what harms us. We can refuse to call domination wisdom or accumulation righteousness. We can refuse to worship what binds us.

Lent is not an escape from the world. It is training in how to live within it without being owned by it. It is the renewed invitation that invites us to participate in an imperfect economy without surrendering our allegiance to Mammon which teaches us how to inhabit systems of power without mistaking them for the kingdom of God.

Between Ashes and Alleluias, Christ is at work forming us. Slowly and patiently, he loosens the grip of rival allegiances and teaches us a different way to measure worth. We remember that we are dust, and we dare to sing Alleluia anyway, trusting that the One who was crucified and raised is still shaping a community in which Mammon is no longer our master.

With unbound love,

Pastor Robin

---

Robin Lunn on Substack

Are you enjoying my writing?

You can find more on my Substack page.