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.

The Lenten Journey Day 24

As we enter the second half of lent, the readings now center on the passion week leading up to the cross. Today’s reading is from Blaise Pascal in which the author centers on what he details as the Divine agony that Jesus goes through. He heals through his suffering and our suffering will be healed through him.

One comparison that intrigues me from Pascal is the garden of Eden and the garden of Gethsemane. Pascal brings it up in this way, “Jesus in a garden, not of delight, like the first Adam, who there fell and took with him all mankind, but of agony, where he has saved himself and all mankind. He suffers his anguish and abandonment in the horror of the night.”

One man enters into a garden of harmony and emerges shamed. The other man enters a garden shrouded in secrecy and sleep, emerging arrested yet ultimately victorious. Adam’s shame is covered by God and He is preserved. Jesus, not because of shame, but because of purpose and love is covered as well and in His suffering provides a redemptive covering available to all.

The Lenten Journey Day 23

Today’s reading by Kalil Gibran looks at how the day of Christ’s crucifixion is often treated with passing notice. Gibran builds the argument that modern humanity treats Christ’s death with a temporary sorrow and then goes about their business. He calls the reader to truly lament and associate with those who were deeply and permanently moved by the death of Jesus such as Mary his mother, Mary Magdalene, and those who truly heard Christ pronounce forgiveness.

Gibran efforts to show the perceived weakness of Christ’s death was actually a display of His divine power. This point is well made but gets close to equating power with a worldly definition of dominance. Ultimately the author’s point seems to be that the crucifixion looks weak but is actually God’s way of power.

Whatever the intention it does bring up another in a long line of apparent paradoxes of Jesus. The strength on the cross is not something that I have really thought about. I have heard the “power” of the cross as it applies to the means of salvation. But, I don’t know that I have ever considered that Christ is a picture of strength hanging on the cross atop Golgotha. This is strength from God’s perspective. The strength to persevere, the strength to forgive, and the strength to demonstrate love when evil seems so overpowering. The strength is not only in the empty tomb, true strength is on display in the lonely, disturbing cross.