Lead Me To The Cross

Today is Ash Wednesday, the first day of the Lenten Season.  What I really enjoy about today are the worship opportunities available to go and be humbled with other people of God.  Lent is all about humbling.  Lent is about realizing other people come before you.  Lent is about understanding that the poor will be rich and the last will be first.  

Repentance is a beautiful and wonderful thing.  I say that like that because I feel as though repentance has been misunderstood or gets a bad rap.  The Greek word for repentance is "metanoia."  It means to "have a change of heart, turning from one's sins, to change one's ways."

It is about humbling yourself before a God who sent His only Son on His own Lenten journey. We are human, admitting we have faults is a no brainer and it is therapeutic, because following repentance is the glorious proclamation of the forgiveness of sins.  THAT never gets old, it only gets sweeter and sweeter each time it is proclaimed.  Follow Jesus to Jerusalem this Lent.

Readings:

Jonah 3:1-4:11

Hebrews 12:1-14

Luke 18:9-14

"Be still and know..."

Psalm 46:

¹ God is our refuge and strength, 
       an ever-present help in trouble.

 ² Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way 
       and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea,

 ³ though its waters roar and foam 
       and the mountains quake with their surging. 
       Selah

 ⁴ There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, 
       the holy place where the Most High dwells.

 ⁵ God is within her, she will not fall; 
       God will help her at break of day.

 ⁶ Nations are in uproar, kingdoms fall; 
       he lifts his voice, the earth melts.

 ⁷ The LORD Almighty is with us; 
       the God of Jacob is our fortress. 
       Selah

 ⁸ Come and see the works of the LORD, 
       the desolations he has brought on the earth.

 ⁹ He makes wars cease to the ends of the earth; 
       he breaks the bow and shatters the spear, 
       he burns the shields with fire.

 ¹⁰ "Be still, and know that I am God; 
       I will be exalted among the nations, 
       I will be exalted in the earth."

 ¹¹ The LORD Almighty is with us; 
       the God of Jacob is our fortress. 
       Selah

What is your identity?

Romans 6: ¹What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? ²By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? ³Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? ⁴We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.

 ⁵For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. ⁶We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. ⁷For one who has died has been set free from sin. ⁸Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. ⁹We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. ¹⁰For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. ¹¹So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

 ¹²Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions.¹³ Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. ¹⁴For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.

Our identity, as baptized Christians, is intrinsically bound up in Jesus.  St. Paul outlines pretty clearly what happens when one is baptized.  They are tied into the death and resurrection of Christ.  A tough concept to gather without question, although Luther's Small and Large Catechisms do a pretty good job.  It is a concept that is foreign to a world that is all about building up the self.  It is also a foreign concept to American Christianity and religious thought that has us gaining our way in.  Some would even mistakenly interpret the Apostle's words to mean that our sin no longer exists as that, sin.  Grace can never abound by sin, because that would be a way to earn our way, so to speak.  Nor can grace ever abound because we are "good" or have earned favor in God's eyes for our works.  Grace can and will always abound because of the One who earned it Himself, Jesus Christ.  

In the darkest moments of our lives, for whatever reason we are there, there is no more comforting a concept then that no matter how wretched I am when God looks at me He does not see my sin but He sees Christ's righteousness.  Martin Luther has a great quote that brings light to all this and really speaks to the power of what God accomplished on the cross through the Son.  Luther said, "So when the devil throws your sins in your face and declares that you deserve death and hell, tell him this: "I admit that I deserve death and hell, what of it? For I know One who suffered and made satisfaction on my behalf. His name is Jesus Christ, Son of God, and where He is there I shall be also!"

Where Christ is, there we shall be also.  This does not mean, as St. Paul writes, that we sin so that grace my abound but that in our struggles and our toils and our hardships we rejoice ever more knowing that Satan has no power over us.  Sin and death are things of non consequence because Jesus has conquered them.  And in our baptismal identity we are right there with Him.  The more alone you feel the more you should know that God is there.  Jesus Christ made satisfaction on our behalf and no matter how ugly we perceive ourselves to be when God looks at us He sees nothing but pure beauty because we belong to Christ.  

To a broken world of hopelessness and despair there is no greater hope to bring to them.  It is a hope that goes above and beyond political mantras of hope and extends itself to offer a real answer to fallen humanity.  Life may be tough and cruel but God did not just fix things and leave the arena.  He remains with us the entire way.  That is a message that will ring true forever, and it is certainly a message the broken hearted yearn to hear.