The Lenten Journey Day 29

G.K. Chesterson writes today of the isolation that Christ took on in the garden and while on the cross. He writes with an almost eerie reverence of the forsaken Christ who passes not only through death but his own earthly doubts.

Chesterson makes an interesting connection, in joining an atheistic perspective with the experience of Christ. He says that Christ is the only divinity that “uttered their isolation.” Referencing those who have not found or refuse to believe in the existence of God. As much as we talk about Christ’s death reaching to the very depths of human loss we rarely talk about how the earthly life of Christ reaches all human experiences. For just a moment Jesus wondered where God was. For all those who have or do wonder the same thing, Christ reaches out, empathizes, and offers the hope of God’s existence and activity.

The Lenten Journey Day 28

It’s amazing what a little information can do. As I read Dag Hammarskjold’s short essay today I have a sense of familiarity and of freshness. The story is of Jesus and His preparation for and realization of his crucifixion. But it is written about “the adamant young man” preparing for His seemingly cruel destiny of sacrifice. The “young man” remains focused in spite of the ignorance and unwillingness of his closest friends. The essay ends with a challenge for followers of Jesus to embrace sacrifice with the same faith that is exemplified and strengthened by the work of Christ.

The informing part for me was a quick google search of Hammarskjold. It revealed that he was the youngest person to ever serve at the UN Secretary Journal. An economist who was committed to public service. Not necessarily profound but it made me think how our life experiences are both informed by and informational in our reading of Scripture. The essay and the google search hint at the possibility that Dag found in Christ a purpose to serve and a drive to keep going even when outer skepticism and inner doubt may creep in. May we be driven like Christ for Christ.

The Lenten Journey Day 27

Author and professor of Philosophy Peter Kreeft writes a flowing essay on the wonder of the cross and the consistency of Christ’s suffering. Wonder in the depths of His love that Christ would die for us, that He would give Himself for us, dead in our sin but alive because of Him. Consistency in that Christ continues to suffer in empathy with the suffering today, we find Christ in our own and with others who are hurting. Kreeft ends with a call for followers of Christ to follow Him in suffering and ministering to those who are hurting.

My thoughts come from Kreeft’s first line after an extensive quote from John Stott. He says, “the Cross is judo.” He means by this that the death of Christ is using the cruel evil of this world to conquer the cruel evil of this world. Judo, as a martial art, focuses on using the opponents own strength against them. That is it, that’s what I know about judo. Yet, I know even less about the cross. I have studied, taught, and read often on the cross of Jesus, but do I really understand it? I praise God for its reality and hope to spend my life seeking the cross. Kreeft summarizes the paradox and joyful reality, “ It (the cross) is, of course, the most familiar, the most often-told story in the world. Yet it is also the strangest, and it has never lost its strangeness, its awe and will not even in eternity, where angels tremble to gaze at things we yawn at. And however strange, it is the only key that fits the lock of our tortured lives and needs.”

The Lenten Journey Day 26

Martin Luther writes of what he calls God’s hidden sorrow. It is God’s sorrow over sin and it is hidden, says Luther, in the incarnate Christ. It is no outwardly apparent because the deep anguish over sin is a divine characteristic and cannot be known apart from God’s revelation. Luther argues that Christ’s greatest suffering on earth was inward and was over the sin of the world.

In the light of Christ the awareness of sin’s darkness comes to those who believe and follow. When we are observing life, when we are looking in on our own lives, it is good to ask the question, “is there sin.” That answer comes from the Holy Spirit and is revealed in a myriad of ways. But if the answer is “yes” then we know two things. First, we know that God has blessed us with Divine insight. Second, we know that forgiveness, repentance, and resistance to temptation is possible. Christ suffered because and for our sin. Sorrow over sin then leads not to the doldrums of our own inability, but to praise of God for His great ability to heal and forgive.

The Lenten Journey Day 25

Today’s reading entitled “Prisoner of Hope,” is from the work of Jurgen Moltmann. He takes the abandonment of Christ that began at Gethsemane, found its fruition on the cross, and is foundational for the hope we have in Christ. Christ being forsaken by God the father is the greatest suffering that Christ endured according to Moltmann.

“At the center of the Christian faith is the history of Christ’s passion. At the center of this passion is the experience of God endured by the godforsaken, God-cursed Christ.”

Moltmann paints a beautiful, enduring picture with his explanation of why Christ had to face God forsaking Him. For Moltmann Christ outcry on the cross leaves death behind Him, He has gone through it and come out on the other side. He did that for the sake of humanity on our behalves. In His “Why?” we have the answer, and that answer is hope. The hope of Christ’s death is in His selfless endurance. Christ is seemingly trapped in the garden, conquered on the cross, and yet emerges alive. We must embrace the death of Jesus because He embraced it. He suffered so we might have hope.