Lent's Lonely Road

ONE OF THE UNANTICIPATED effects of our health-care technologies is that we expect to live relatively pain-free lives, physically speaking. In the West, we do not imagine a physician saying to us “this will hurt” before cutting in. We expect to be anesthetized to avoid pain. In the same way we struggle with a biblical pathway to God, like Lent.

In Lent, we put ourselves on a lonely road with Jesus—40 days in the wilderness, struggling with hunger, thirst, loneliness, doubt, fear. In Lent, we put ourselves in a 40-year journey in the wilderness with the people Israel, wondering when, if ever, God will make good on the promises of a land flowing with milk and honey. In Lent, we do business with repentance.      

Whatever else the church may say about repentance, we certainly say, “This will hurt. And not just a little.” Repentance means “turning around.” It also means dying, biblically speaking. We are drowned in baptism and raised to new life; we go to extremes in the wild until an entire generation dies off (the exodus) and until we are reduced to one searing set of emotions (the crucifixion). Jesus’ cross wasn’t light. Why should we expect ours to be?

Then there’s the good news. A resurrection is on the far side of that cross. Its blinding light pours around the edges of the stone rolled before the tomb. Resurrection is not in Lent, but it’s coming. In the meantime, in the words of John the Baptist, “Prepare the way.”

IT'S ONLY THE second Sunday of Lent and resurrection already peaks around the edges of our texts. The God who always works wonders promises to bless Abram and Sarai, to make royalty come from them, to be God for them unendingly. What’s cut out from these verses is what God wants to cut off from Abram. I imagine Abram responding, “You want to cut my what?” Israel will be a people peculiarly marked.

And not only Israel. Psalm 22 describes a man brutalized to death, informing the gospel writers’ depiction of Jesus’ crucifixion. The psalmist shifts from lament to worldwide global praise. We glimpse the church, born through the man of sorrows, drawn from all nations, where “the poor eat and [are] satisfied” (verse 26). Romans 4 makes the same move, describing blessing offered through Israel to the whole world. Paul takes circumcision and makes it a sign of the faithfulness of the God of all.

“Six days later,” Mark 9 begins, signaling the days of creation before the Sabbath; an incompleteness that’s a tragic day short of the Sabbath banquet. “Eight days after these things,” Luke 9 opens the same story. Christians have historically understood the eighth day of creation to be Easter. In that transfigured reality all the saints are present, Jesus is host, and all things reflect his light.

[ March 8 ]

Submit to the Law?

Exodus 20:1-17; Psalm 19;1 Corinthians 1:18-25; John 2:13-22

POPULAR CONCEPTIONS of the Ten Commandments would not include the psalmist’s description of “delight.” “Thou shalt not” thunders and we shudder. But the psalmist exults. The poetry shines through in translation: “The fear of the Lord is pure, enduring forever; the ordinances of the Lord are true, and righteous altogether” (19:8-9).

One sign that we don’t typically delight in the Decalogue is how few commandments we know by heart. Famous surveys of ordained ministers suggest we can remember maybe six of them, at most. Our loss. C.S. Lewis commented that our entire economy in the West is built on violation of the 10th commandment against coveting—where would advertisers be if anyone followed it?

What sort of foolish God gives commands, sees the people disobey, and then forgives? The same sort of weak and foolish God who would take flesh, suffer, and die for those same creatures. The same sort who would enter the temple and turn over the sources of income. Scholars think this event likely happened at the end of Jesus’ life. John has moved it to the beginning, bookending Jesus’ career with the demonstration in the temple. This lawgiver submits to the law and will die trying to get us to share his delight in it.

[ March 15 ]

Handling Snakes

Numbers 21:4-9; Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22; Ephesians 2:1-10; John 3:14-21

SOMETIMES, WHEN God’s people murmur and complain, God responds with patience and grace. Sometimes, not (“Then the Lord sent poisonous serpents among the people,” Numbers 21:6). The death-dealing serpent returns.

This sits ill with most modern Christians’ notion of the gospel. Our boilerplate gospel is too thin. Scripture doesn’t preach “I’m ok, you’re ok” pablum. It preaches that, left to our own devices, we are totally sunk.

But we are not left to our own devices. God’s word resurrects as the psalmist reminds us: “God sent out the word and healed them, and delivered them from destruction” (Psalm 107:20). Ephesians is perhaps one of the most singularly clear notes of grace in the symphony of scripture: “By grace you have been saved through faith” (2:8). When we had no reason to expect life, when the dirt is on the grave and we are dead gone, then, God’s resurrecting word works.

Jesus compares himself to, of all things, the snake in the wilderness. Jesus becomes an object of horror, an image of death-dealing, a source of derision. This becomes life for the world.

“Fear teaches you what you must do,” a wise person said. Jesus, God among us, meets the worst form of death at our hands, then returns to us with grace and forgiveness. This is spectacularly good news for those who despair the future of the planet. The worst may come. Yet God can do great work with our worst.

[ March 22 ]

Delight Is Contagious

Jeremiah 31:31-34; Psalm 119:9-16; Hebrews 5:5-10; John 12:20-33

HOW DO WE HUMAN beings learn anything? For St. Augustine, what teaches best is the desire of the teacher. He must have taken cues from Psalm 119, a lyric poem in praise of God’s law that uses verbs such as “delight” and “treasure.” Delight is contagious—we catch it by noticing what others whom we admire delight in. The monks at the monastery I visit chant pieces of Psalm 119 every day. They want to catch delight in God’s law.

We can also learn through suffering. Hebrews has the highest Christology of any New Testament book. Yet it clearly portrays Jesus as learning obedience through what he suffers. Apparently being fully God doesn’t mean you can’t learn. In fact godliness and learning may be twins.

We can learn by being turned away. In John, some Greeks want to see Jesus (plaques used to adorn pulpits quoting their request). He ignores them. It’s not yet their time. God can say no to us. There may be a yes hidden in the no. But it can hurt first.

And we can learn by not learning. Jeremiah’s promise is that we will no longer have to teach and learn, but all will know the Lord.

Christians too often use the law as a foil for grace, as if it were a wicked gift of a malicious God. Scripture is richer than that. We are to delight in it, as Jesus does.

[ March 29 ]

Cosmic Consequences

Isaiah 50:4-9a; Psalm 31:9-16; Philippians 2:5-11; Mark 14:1-15:47

IT IS STAGGERING to me that we still have Christians who believe “bad things” are God’s curse and “good things” are God’s blessings. Have they read the Bible?

Wait, have I? Unless I stop to think, I too reduce God to what God can do for me. Jesus’ cross shows things turned the other way around. The more faithful we are, the worse it may go for us. Why do bad things happen to good people? I don’t know, no one does, but the worst thing happened to the best person.

Scripture is not scandalized by that. Isaiah reminds us of the person of many sorrows, acquainted with grief. Philippians shows the cosmic consequences at stake. The Word is in the very nature of God, leaving equality with God, coming among us, and dying a slave’s death. Then the Word ascends, taking the name above every name, that all will one day worship. When Jesus descends from above to the depths below and back, he leaves a staircase assembled for us.

His own life shows the way. His passion is a descent, from being denied, betrayed, arrested, tried, denied again, sentenced, tortured, crucified, killed, and buried. On Passion Sunday and Good Friday, it is good to leave Jesus dead. There will be more than enough celebration soon enough. For now, no one can be so crushed as to be unable to look over and not see that there lies the man of Galilee.