Reflection for Holy Week

I wrote this for our church family’s Lenten devotional.  I thought I would share it as we reflect on Jesus’ path to the cross this week:

“And when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour.  And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, ‘Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?’ which means ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’” Mark 15: 33-34 ESV

In his prayers and meditations, “On the Passion of Christ,” Thomas a Kempis writes, “Lord Jesus Christ, beloved son of the Father’s special love, I bless and thank you for your overpowering lone dereliction on the cross.  In your most difficult hour you were abandoned by God the Father, by the entire heavenly host, and by all creatures of this earth.  You felt as if you were a stranger or someone unknown, as if you were not the true Son of God, but one who was powerless and worthless.”

This commentary searches the depths of the Gospel.  Jesus’ love for us is impossible for us to even comprehend.  Jesus carried all our sin to the cross, and in the time that he hung there he felt our shame and our separation from God.  As Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:21, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”  That is the definition of grace: being given something that we clearly do not deserve.

Each day we are called to die to ourselves and to our sin anew.  When we die to this sin by repenting of it, we are forgiven because of Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross, allowing us to live freely, fully devoted to God.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer is famously quoted as saying, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.”  Being a Christian is not easy, but the reward is the riches of Christ.

Prayer: Father God, this Lent we recall Jesus’ passion and dwell there with him to feel the weight of this burden you carried for us.  It is only through this pain that we can experience the joy of the resurrection on Sunday morning.  Thank you.  Thank you.  We cannot thank you enough.  Transform us.  Sanctify us as your children that we may walk humbly before you, doing justice and having mercy.  In the precious grace-filled name of Jesus.  Amen.

“And who is my neighbor?”

There is a difference between being nice to our neighbor and loving our neighbor.  Jesus commands us to love our neighbor.  In fact this command is only second to loving God with all of our being (heart, soul, mind).  He tells us that all of the Law and Prophets “hang” (NIV) on these two commandments.

Loving our neighbor is messy, difficult and hard.  It requires that we are much more involved as opposed to just being nice.  Being nice to our neighbor involves the standard pleasantries: waving, saying hello, asking how he/she is doing even though we really don’t want to know.  Loving our neighbor means being there for them when then their world falls apart.  It means helping them through problems.  It means celebrating with them.  It means caring for…no…LOVING them.

But it does not stop there.

We are not only called to love our neighbor, but to love him/her as ourselves.  How do we love ourselves?  We do not like to admit it, but we love ourselves an awful lot.  Don’t agree?  How much of your day is focused on providing for yourself/taking care of yourself?  Food, shower, clothing, comfort.  What would it look like if we committed that much love to our neighbors?

“And who is my neighbor?”  The lawyer, “wanted to justify himself.”  It seems he had ulterior motives.  In fact the ESV commentary says his intent was to exclude some from his responsibility to love by asking this question.  Jesus’ example of a Samaritan, forces us to answer this question by imagining  someone who our culture tells us we should despise and shun; even an enemy.  I hate to admit it, but often times I find myself in the shoes of the lawyer.  Why?  Because it is hard to love like this.  It is a whole lot easier to pull away before it gets uncomfortable or messy or difficult.  That is why following Jesus is not easy.  He calls us to tasks and gives us responsibilities that are above and beyond our natural abilities.  In order to follow Jesus, we need his help.  And he is willing to give it.  In fact he promised his followers that he would send the Holy Spirit to lead and guide them, remind them of his teachings and helping them to be his hands and feet to a world in need.

As with most of my posts that are challenges, they start with me.  Please know that I would not challenge you/others to something that I would not challenge myself to.  This is no exception.  This is extremely hard for me, but learning how to do this and fleshing it out in community is so important.  We need to learn in community so we can support each other.  When we do life together, we can share all of it with each other.  The ups and downs.  The successes and failures.  And we can celebrate them together, because the more we reflect and learn from these experiences, the closer we can follow Jesus.

May we grow into this radical love.

a challenge

I read this passage this morning and was challenged.  And so, I pass along this challenge to you. How will we respond?

But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.
If anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this person’s religion is worthless. Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.
(James 1:22-27 ESV)

roots by the stream…

I have found myself in these verses quite a bit the last few months:

“Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord,
whose trust is the Lord.
He is like a tree planted by water,
that sends out its roots by the stream,
and does not fear when heat comes,
for its leaves remain green,
and is not anxious in the year of drought,
for it does not cease to bear fruit.”

Jeremiah 17:7-8

My friend, Rebeca, took this picture that I am now using as my header for the blog (in a cropped format).  I asked her to take it because I felt the image really summed up this verse.

psalm 8

God, brilliant Lord, yours is a household name.

Nursing infants gurgle choruses about you;
toddlers shout the songs
That drown out enemy talk,
and silence atheist babble.

I look up at your macro-skies, dark and enormous,
your handmade sky-jewelry,
Moon and stars mounted in their settings.
Then I look at my micro-self and wonder,
Why do you bother with us?
Why take a second look our way?

Yet we’ve so narrowly missed being gods,
Bright with Eden’s dawn light.
You put us in charge of your handcrafted world,
repeated to us your Genesis-charge,
Made us lords of sheep and cattle, even animals out in the wild,
Birds flying and fish swimming,
Whales singing in the ocean deeps.

God, brilliant Lord, your name echoes around the world.

The Message

YouVersion…

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