March 5, 2025: The beginning of Lent 2025

GOD’S WORD FOR TODAY:

“Therefore, I will give Him a portion among the great and He will divide the spoils with the strong. [He will do this] because He poured out His life unto death and was numbered with the transgressors. For He bore the sin of many and made intercession for the transgressors.” (Isaiah 53.12)

REFLECTION ON GOD’S WORD FOR TODAY:

I enjoy the movie The Princess Bride. It is one of those “fun” movies that takes you away from the burdens of the world and allows you to laugh and to think of “true love.” What would we do and what would we give for “twue wuv“? Whatever it is we think we would do or believe we have done, it does not equal what God and God’s Son have done. If we will be honest, it doesn’t even come close. Whatever sacrifice we believe we have made or will make (consider those wedding vows as poignant as the Pauline description of the nature and character of love to the Corinthian faith community), it doesn’t compare to what has been done for us by them, nor can it. This is no laughing matter. This is serious business. The walk of Christ we are called to share is a demanding and heart-wrenching endeavor. We get close to understanding that walk when we recite the words which Jesus used to describe true love to His disciples. He said, “No greater love is there than this that a person would lay down their lives for another.” (John 15.13) Say those words slowly and fill your mind with the images that you have of those who laid down their lives for you or someone else. Think of how Jesus laid down His life for the sake of the whole world.

Stop and think about where we are going in this season of Lent. Each year, the world around us is similar as the last according to the season of year in which Lent occurs. Today begins the season of Lent. We are only a little over two weeks from the start of Spring. The earliest Lent can start is February 5 leaving Easter to fall nearly on the first day of Spring. Whether early or late, the forty days of Lent (a Church celebration and not a biblical mandate) are mostly in winter. They are not in the “dead middle” of winter though some years it may certainly feel like it. It is a time of waiting and preparation for the new life which is to come. In our discipleship, I believe, that is the way we ought to see it and experience it. So chronologically, the Lenten season “feels” about the same. But what about physically, psychologically, emotionally, theologically and spiritually? Each year brings a different, and in some cases- similar while not the same, understanding of “living in these days.” The culture and climate of humanity ebbs and flows. There are years when the tide of life rises and falls just as the ocean tide does under the influence of the moon. What outside forces surrounding us are influencing our experience of “preparing for the new life which is coming”? As believers in Christ and mighty ones of God, the voice of Easter gives us hope for that new life. We may experience it as that proverbial “already but not yet.” We know our symbolic resurrection which comes with our baptism. We affirm that we are to be dead to our sins and “go, sin no more” so that we may walk in the newness of life which is bestowed on us by the mercy, grace and love of God. We are not quite successful in that endeavor. There are those who are better at it than others. They are able to hold their faith in such a way so that the propensity to sin is nearly muted. For others, it is a mighty struggle and would seem virtually impossible if not “for the love of God in Jesus Christ.” Even all this feels different on the spectrum of more or less depending on our own life situations. But it will never be different for God and God’s Son.

What makes their expression of love so great, so powerful and so overwhelming (if we allow ourselves to truly dwell on it) is the extreme sacrifice by which they “laid down their lives for others.” God sent His Son into the world to die. There could only be ONE true Lamb of God to take away the sins of the world. Those sins would be forgiven and lives redeemed regardless of what the people would say, do or believe. Taking ownership of such forgiveness and spiritual freedom to gain eternal life falls on us. We did not ask Him, Them, to do what they did. Nor could we stop Him, Them, from doing what they did. He, They, did what was done because of true love. No one will be able to duplicate it. As I said, it was extreme. He, They, didn’t just go part of the way. He, They, went all the way. God did not stay the hand of the crucifier of His Son as He did for Abraham and Isaac. It was his, their, willingness (though I am not sure how “willing” Isaac truly was) to walk by faith and not by sight which God saw as their redeeming faith factor. God provided a ram to take Isaac’s place. He commanded a lamb but provided a ram. Most theologians and biblical scholars will see a foreshadowing of the adult Jesus who would be sacrificed for the sins of the world. We know of the “sacrifice” of God’s little “lambs” in Bethlehem on Jesus’ second birthday as the hand of Herod “the Great.” They did not die, however, for the remission of sins. Herod had no intention of honoring God or declaring mercy and grace. Their blood was on his head and his hands. Sadly, so was the blood of many including his own family. It is the act of conducting the sacrifice we must be attuned to. The practice was to make the sacrifice a truly kosher one. Not only was the lamb, or ram, to be unblemished or visually perfect, it had to be bloodless. It was not just a partial sacrifice or a sacrifice of partial effort. The blood had to be drained from the body and spilled on the altar for the sake of all the people. It had to be a total and complete sacrifice. The same would have been true of Jesus on the cross. The path He was led upon from His arrest in Gethsemane to His crucifixion on Golgotha included many events which helped to empty Him of His life’s blood. The wounded side caused by the Roman Centurion to validate the death of Jesus resulted in the evidence of pulse, fluid in the lung, which had no blood in it. Jesus was physically drained when He breathed His last. Breathing His last, surrendering His Spirit into the hands of God for safekeeping, brought the finality of death and the ultimate declaration of love for God, His Father, and for us. This is where the true difference lies. When Jesus died, He was not mostly dead. He was fully and completely dead. The evidence was clear that “there was no greater love than this, that a man would lay down his life for another.” Jesus did willingly what none of us can do so that we might “save ourselves or another.” What we can do in part, Jesus did in whole. This is why we need Jesus. This is why we follow Him now in preparation of the “new life which is to come.” His death was our salvation. His resurrection our hope and confidence in “new life.”

TODAY’S PRAYER IN RESPONSE TO GOD’S WORD:

Father, in these days we are finding the need to believe even more than ever before. We all have known trouble, some in greater ways than others, but You are offering us the assurance that we will not be consumed by it forever. Regardless of the “time” we are in and the “time” we have been given, we ask for Your Holy Spirit which Jesus asked You to share with us, to lead and guide and direct us in the paths we should go. Teach us what we still need to learn. Empower us to put that learning into action. Bless our actions not as a works righteousness which we know is folly but righteous works which declare Your glory and further witness the truth that can set all who believe free from death. So may we live by the name of Jesus our Christ. AMEN.