The Lenten Journey Day 7

I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me” Galatians 2:20

“These words mean the breaking of my own independence with my own hand and surrendering to the supremacy of the Lord Jesus. No one can do this for me, I must do it myself. God may bring me up to the point three-hundred and sixty-five times a year, but he cannot put me through it. It means breaking the husk of my individual independence of God, and the emancipating of my personality into the oneness with himself, not for my own ideas, but for absolute loyalty to Jesus. There is no possibility of dispute when once I am there. Very few of us know anything about loyalty to Christ.” - Oswald Chambers

Where do my loyalties lie? This is a question of the depth of my surrender to Christ. One obstacle, among many, is what does loyalty to Christ really look like. Is it defending or opposing certain things? Is it the use of certain phrases and the abhorrence of cultural trends? Is loyalty to Christ aligning myself with a certain leader or group? The real problem is those are all the wrong questions. Loyalty to Christ is much more pointed and central than those other things. Loyalty is surrender, surrender is loyalty. It means bowing low at the cross and identifying with Christ, then letting go from there. Real independence, freedom is found in the freeing dependence on our relationship with God. There is sin in the areas of our lives where Christ wants to live, they have to go and He will come.

The Lenten Journey Day 6

Today’s reading comes for Jean-Pierre de Caussade, an 18th century Jesuit priest. He writes of complete surrender from us in light of God’s rich grace and mercy. He describes God’s love as “unalloyed".” Not an adjective I have ever heard attributed to the everlasting love of God and it really made me think a minute. The Oxford Dictionary has two definitions for “unalloyed.” One is when it speaks of metal and simply means pure. The other definition is said to be used typically when describing emotions and means “complete and unreserved.”

Though the Divine love is not exclusively emotional, the second definition really fits well. As we journey towards repentance, may we remember that God’s unalloyed love is “complete and unreserved.” It is without measure and never runs out. Now I think most of us know this in a sense but sometimes we live and look upon others lives as thought we or them are just one step away from God’s love running out. That is not possible, that is not an apt understanding of His love. It reminds me of a song I first learned at Cross Timbers with some of our UBC kids, “His love never fails, it never gives up, it never runs out on me.”

The Lenten Journey- Day 5

I cannot decider whether Edna Hong’s short essay “A Look Inside” challenges me because it makes me uncomfortable or because I disagree with some of her wording and conclusion. It is probably a little bit of both. I am challenged by what she finally calls the “downward descent” where we truly find ourselves at the cross. Where we get past the superficial and into the sinful depth of ourselves, that our confidence in God may grow. However, I disagree with her use of guilt as leading to genuine contrition and forgiveness. It may just be semantics but I don’t see guilt as an apt description of how God truly, lovingly, graciously convicts us of our sin. There is much in the essay to challenge and that is where the focus should remain.

“Lent would indeed be a futile liturgical farce if the redeemed were henceforth sinless and if the tides of human nature were not always moving even the twice-born, who have not shed their human nature, in the direction of complacency and taking it all for granted”- Edna Wong. There is a legitimate risk we take in observing Lent that it actually leads to complacency instead of repentance, gratitude, and growth. We must allow our staring into the crucified face of Christ to have the full work of exposing our sin and making plain our need for forgiveness. This is necessary for the new believer and the seasoned saint.

As we make our “downward ascent” may we remember that humble Christ calls us heavenward through the same state of humility with which He lived and died.

The Lenten Journey Day 4 2021

Today’s reading is entitled “Living Lent’ and written by Barbara Cawthorne Crafton a well-known Episcopal Priest from the Manhattan area of New York. The reading is a pointed, bare confession of how the excesses of life can creep in and dominate our lives. Crafton talks of overwork and excess of appetite as creatures that we at some point realize become our motivations, we don’t control them they control us.

This spiritual diagnosis is crystal clear in our lives and a Biblical principle that we see throughout Scripture of how seemingly good things, hard work, food, entertainment can dominate our lives if we let them. She writes of what she calls the self-contempt that falls upon us as we realize that these things have come to have this dominion over us. Often we just grow callous and lament that this is just the way it is. We are controlled by stuff and we just have to live with it. This is where what Crafton calls a “collision” happens. A life event that can jolt us into the realization of our needs over and against our wants. This is an act of the grace of God.

I do not think that the grace of God demands a total ascetism, getting rid of any and every “thing.” It comes down to relationship. Is our relationship with our stuff overshadowing, pushing aside our relationship with God? Our lives can really only have one master, and the fragile mastery of stuff can subtly yet pervasively overtake us if we are not careful.

Crafton’s ending prayer is poignant and helpful, “ Refresh us. O homeless, jobless, possession less Savior. You came naked and naked you go. And so it is for us. So it is for all of us.”

The Lenten Journey Day 3 2021

“Mirrors that hide nothing hurt me. But this is the hurt of purging and precious renewal-and these are the mirrors of dangerous grace” Walter Wangerin

Wangerin’s reflection is the reading for today and he uses the image of mirror to display the ugly beautiful truth of Christ on the cross. The reality of Jesus dying on the cross reflects our selfish sin in all of its hurtful ugliness. But graciously Christ takes our sinful selves and promises renewal and the beautiful life.

I am often put off by mirrors that show me what I and others clearly know is there. But to think of a mirror that exposes what I have supposedly kept hidden is terrifying. But out of this terror comes what Wangerin calls “purging grace.”

“The mirror is not passive only, showing what is; it is active creating new things to be. It shows me a new me behind the shadow of a sinner.” Walter Wangerin