Read Matthew 17:1-13.
OK. Let me set the scene for you.
For me, it all started one day when my brother Andrew and I were out fishing. We see this young preacher named Jesus come walking down the shore. Andrew and I start talking about him. He’s been making quite a stir, preaching “Repent, for the Kingdom of heaven is near.” Something about him just makes sense.
Well, lo and behold, when he gets close to where we were fishing, he gets our attention and says, “Hey, Peter, Andrew, come follow me. I’ll make you fishers of men.” I’m not sure I can explain why, but Andrew and I both knew we had to go with him. It was like our life was changing right that moment. We left our boats, the nets, everything and just followed this traveling preacher.
Pretty soon, Jesus wasn’t just preaching. He was healing people. He was healing people left and right. He was preaching and healing, healing and preaching. He was preaching what we later called “the good news of the kingdom,” and people were bringing him all kinds of sick people to get healed (Mt. 4).
Jesus even healed my mother-in-law when he came over to my place for a visit. She got up and made him cookies (Mt. 8:14-15).
We still weren’t really sure who Jesus was. He was obviously a gifted preacher and a faith-healer. No one around here had ever heard teaching that cut to the heart like his, and nobody sure ever saw anyone heal people like he did. Jesus was obviously blessed by God to do great things. He had our attention. We believed in him – well, sort of.
Before too long, our faith was put to the test, and we didn’t do so well. We were out on the Sea of Galilee together with Jesus. Out of nowhere, this huge storm comes. The waves are crashing into the boat. We’re starting to collect water. In the midst of all of this, Jesus is sleeping! Can you believe it? Sleeping. Well, I send someone to wake him up, “Tell him to do something, or we’re all going to drown!”
Jesus gets up and says, “You of little faith, why are you so afraid?” I’m thinking, “Waves taller than me are crashing over my head into my boat. Why do you think I’m afraid?!”
But then he starts talking to the wind and the waves, telling them to quiet down. Instantly, it was completely calm. All we could do is ask ourselves, “Whoa, who is this guy?! Even the wind and the waves obey him?” (We didn’t understand yet that he made the wind and waves.) (Mt. 8:23-27)
Jesus kept stretching our belief. He kept teaching us little by little more of who he is. One time Jesus fed 5,000 men, not counting the women and children, with only five loaves of bread and two fish (Mt. 14:13-21). It never occurred to us that Jesus could do something like that. We knew he could heal people, and he calmed the storm, but this was new.
Right after that, Jesus sent us out onto the lake in the boat, and he stayed with the crowd. By night time, we had rowed against the wind a long ways, but the wind and waves were starting to wear us down. All of the sudden, we see Jesus walking to us on the lake. I mean, he was walking on the water. We thought for sure, we were seeing a ghost, and we were scared to death. Jesus called out to us, “Easy boys. It’s just me. Don’t be afraid.”
Now, I don’t know why I did what I’m about to tell you. Maybe it was Jesus’ calming the storm earlier, or maybe it was his feeding all those people. But something just came over me, and I got this big burst of courage. I hollered out, “Lord, if it’s really you, tell me to come to you on the water.” I almost couldn’t believe I said it. Maybe I just wanted to be with him wherever he was. Maybe I was trying to have faith.
He said, “Come on out,” so I did.
I can’t believe it, looking back on it, but I actually got out of the boat and walked toward Jesus on the water. I did pretty well for a few steps, but then I started looking around at the wind and the waves. I thought, “This stuff almost sank my boat a little while back. I must be crazy!” Then, I started sinking. I knew I was in trouble then. I cried out, “Jesus, help me!”
He reached out his hand and caught me. “You still have little faith,” he said. When we got into the boat, the wind stopped, and we just started worshipping Jesus. (Mt. 14:22-33). We knew he was the Son of God! But we didn’t really know what that meant yet.
After a while, Jesus took us on sort of a leadership retreat. He asked us who people were saying he was. So we told him all the rumors that were going around. Then he said, “But what about you? Who do you say I am?”
Well, that was getting personal. We’d been following him for months or maybe years at that point. But when it came right down to it, it was hard to say exactly who he was. Well, in another one of those bursts of inspiration and courage, I answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God.”
I got that one right. Jesus said, “God sure has blessed you Peter. You didn’t figure that out yourself. God showed it to you! And I’ll tell you something else, my church is going to be so strong and powerful that it’s going to bust open the gates of hell!” (Mt. 16:13-20)
I was feeling pretty good. We were with the Messiah – the long awaited Messiah, the righteous King who is going to set everything right, the one who would set Israel free from our long years of oppression. Now that’s all true, but I was still thinking of it in terms of a military take over, an armed rebellion. Everybody thought of it like that back then.
So when Jesus started talking about going to Jerusalem and being kicked around and killed by the religious leaders, I figured we needed to have a talk. I took him aside and said, “Umm, Jesus, I know you’re the Messiah and all, but, well, that’s what we need to talk about. You can’t go around saying you’re going to get mistreated by the chief priests and killed. That kind of stuff doesn’t happen to the MESSIAH. God would never let that happen to you. And if you keep talking like this, it’s really going to hurt our approval ratings and recruitment efforts.”
Jesus didn’t like that too much. He shouted, “Get away from me, Satan! You are a dangerous trap to me.”
Not exactly the reception I was hoping for. Looking back, I guess my objection hit a little too close to home. It would be easier to go in with all his power and take over. That would be a lot easier and a lot more fun than sticking with the plan and going to the cross. That’s what I wanted. That’s what all the disciples wanted. But that’s exactly what Jesus was telling us he wasn’t going to do.
“You don’t have any idea how God works,” he said. “Don’t run from suffering; embrace it. Follow me, and I’ll show you how. Self-help is no help at all. Self-sacrifice is the way, my way, to finding yourself, to finding true life. I’m going to the cross. Are you coming with me?” (Mt. 16:21-28)
Well, that really confused me. One minute Jesus says I’m blessed by God because I say he’s the Messiah. The next minute he says I’m just like Satan for telling him he needs to act like the Messiah. I had a thousand questions rolling around my head, “Is Jesus really the Messiah? He has to be, but he can’t be. How can Israel’s Messiah talk about dying at the hands of the leaders of Israel? How can the Messiah talk about crosses and loosing one’s life to save it? This is not Messiah talk. This is the talk of a martyr, and whatever the Messiah is, he is definitely not a martyr. But I believe in Jesus; look at all the miracles. He is at the least a great prophet of God, and when I said he is the Messiah, the Son of God, he did not rebuke me. He said I was right. He said the Father in heaven revealed that to me. He must be the Messiah, right? But what kind of Messiah is this?”
He let us think about that one for awhile. About a week later, he takes James, John, and me up on a high mountain for a prayer retreat.
All of the sudden, something wild happens to Jesus. Light starts coming out of him, just like someone turned a lamp on inside him. It’s still Jesus, but his face is glowing like the sun at noon, and his clothes are like a flash of lightening. It hurts to look, but he’s so mesmerizing. He’s so beautiful. In the light we see his joy and kindness and love. His peace emanates out to us. As we watch his light penetrates our souls. He is King. He is incredible.
Then we saw Moses and Elijah with Jesus. Don’t ask me how I knew they were Moses and Elijah. I’d never seen a picture or anything. It was just them, OK. Anyway, they were talking with Jesus about how he was going to fulfil God’s plan by dying in Jerusalem (see Luke 9:31). So here were Moses, the greatest law-giver in the Old Testament, and Elijah, the first of the great prophets, talking to Jesus when he’s all lit up, and they seemed to be all in favor of Jesus’ going to the cross. It was like the whole Old Testament, the Law and the Prophets, spoke through those two guys to say, “Yep, this is the plan God’s been working out all along. Go on to the cross, Jesus.” It was sort of like his own private pep talk.
Well, you know me. I can’t not talk. It’s like I have diarrhea of the mouth or something. Whatever I think just comes right out. “You are the Messiah. He is the Messiah. I was right. I mean, you were right. Let’s build a monument so we will never forget this moment. Shoot, let’s build three, one for each of you.” It was like I could hear myself talking, but I couldn’t make myself stop talking. Mark and Luke felt the need to apologize for me when they wrote their gospels. Mark said I really didn’t know what to say, and Luke said I didn’t even know what I was saying. I guess they were both right.
Anyhow, God didn’t let me go on for very long. While I was still talking, I don’t even notice it at first and keep on talking, but then it is all around us. I can still see James and John and Jesus, Moses, and Elijah, but it is through a dense fog. But this isn’t just any fog. It glows. It’s like floating light. It is a “bright” cloud. I remember that the cloud represents God’s presence, and I am in awe. That’s when I shut up.
For a second or two, there’s this eerie silence. Then God speaks! It was definitely a strong voice, but it wasn’t like I would have expected. It wasn’t angry or thundering. It shook through my body but not necessarily because of volume, more because of force. He wasn’t shouting, but the force of his voice was so strong that I felt it in every part of me.
God says, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!” I could hear the love in his voice when he was talking about Jesus. He sounded like my dad sounded when I caught that huge fish, “This is my boy. I’m proud of him.” He is a proud Father. He’s really happy about Jesus.
So you already know I was starting to wonder, what with Jesus talking about dying and all. I thought Jesus might be getting something wrong. Anyway, God is well pleased with him, so that settles it. “Listen to him!” God said. OK, OK. Like we weren’t going to listen to him after this. But that last part came with a little more force than the rest. This is important.
We heard, and we tried to listen, but it was like it just wasn’t getting through. We had too many preconceived notions about the Messiah. Jesus had a lot of static to shout over. “Listen to him!” OK, we’ll listen. We don’t get how it all works, but we’ll follow and we’ll listen.
When we were coming down the mountain, Jesus swore us to secrecy. “Don’t breathe a word of what you’ve seen to anyone until after I’m raised from the dead.” We obeyed, but we didn’t understand. Now, I see that we were still thinking about Jesus all wrong. Yes, we knew that he was the Messiah and the Son of God, but we didn’t understand what that meant. There was no way we could really get it until after the cross.
Well, even the cross didn’t do it for us. We all pretty much scattered when Jesus was arrested. I denied Jesus three times when he needed me most. We just didn’t get how this could actually be happening to the Messiah.
Even after the resurrection, we still didn’t get what he was all about. Not long before he went back to heaven, we asked him, “Lord, are you going to free Israel now and restore our kingdom?” We were still thinking in terms of politics and military and worldly power. Jesus just said, “Look, leave that stuff up to God. I’m giving you my Holy Spirit, and he’s going to give you a different kind of power, the power to tell everyone everywhere about me” (Acts 1:6-8).
When the Holy Spirit did come on us in that room at Pentecost, it was like a thousand puzzle pieces came together in one instant. On that day I shouted out to a great crowd of people from lots of different countries, “So let it be clearly known by everyone in Israel that God has bade this Jesus whom you crucified to be both Lord and Messiah! … Each of you must turn from your sins and turn to God, and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. Then, you too will receive the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:36, 38).
Well, after that, we had a lot of time to keep putting pieces together. We started to figure out that Jesus had to die. We started to understand that the Law and the Prophets all explained that the Messiah would suffer like this and be raised from the dead. We started to figure out that Jesus didn’t come for a political revolution but for a spiritual revolution. We started to figure out that we couldn’t understand Jesus as Lord until we understood him as the Crucified Lord.
The truth is that all Christians in every time have to wrestle with that issue. It’s always easier to think of Jesus in conquering terms. Sure you may not think of Jesus as starting a worldwide political takeover, but there are other ways to misunderstand what it means for Jesus to be the Suffering Messiah. Sometimes people think of the gospel in other terms of power, convincing people they are wrong, gaining respect in society, building bigger churches, establishing our own little kingdoms, adding trophies to our shelves. Sometimes people tend to think or act like Jesus came primarily for the rich or for people like us or to help us have a better more pleasurable life. Sometimes people just sort of go on their merry way with the gospel and forget about the rest of the world.
Yeah, there are lots of ways to forget about the cross and how the cross shapes our understanding of Jesus. But there are some other ways to remember the cross, to rediscover Jesus’ journey to the cross, to re-examine our understanding of Jesus in the light of the cross.
The Season of Lent is one of those ways. It wasn’t long in the Christian church until Lent developed. It started out as a way for us to help people prepare for baptism, but pretty soon we realized that we all need to go down the Lenten road. We all need to walk with Jesus to the cross. We need this time every year when we surrender all of our preconceived notions about who Jesus is and what it means to be a Christian, and walk that long slow road into the depths of human suffering with Jesus.
We can’t understand Easter until we go with Jesus into the dark places to hear the doubters of the world. We can’t understand Easter until we hear Jesus talking with Samaritan sex-addict. We can’t understand Easter until we feel the spit and mud Jesus used to heal the blind man. We can’t understand Easter until we cry with Jesus at Lazarus’s tomb. We can’t understand Easter until we let Jesus wash our feet. We can’t understand Easter until we are arrested with Jesus and feel the punches that he felt and hear the bitter ridicule that he heard. We can’t understand Easter until we walk with Jesus all the way to the cross on Good Friday. We cannot understand Easter without Lent. We cannot understand Jesus without the cross.
Church, Lent begins this Wednesday, Ash Wednesday. Let us go to Jerusalem together with Jesus and die with him there.
For me, it all started one day when my brother Andrew and I were out fishing. We see this young preacher named Jesus come walking down the shore. Andrew and I start talking about him. He’s been making quite a stir, preaching “Repent, for the Kingdom of heaven is near.” Something about him just makes sense.
Well, lo and behold, when he gets close to where we were fishing, he gets our attention and says, “Hey, Peter, Andrew, come follow me. I’ll make you fishers of men.” I’m not sure I can explain why, but Andrew and I both knew we had to go with him. It was like our life was changing right that moment. We left our boats, the nets, everything and just followed this traveling preacher.
Pretty soon, Jesus wasn’t just preaching. He was healing people. He was healing people left and right. He was preaching and healing, healing and preaching. He was preaching what we later called “the good news of the kingdom,” and people were bringing him all kinds of sick people to get healed (Mt. 4).
Jesus even healed my mother-in-law when he came over to my place for a visit. She got up and made him cookies (Mt. 8:14-15).
We still weren’t really sure who Jesus was. He was obviously a gifted preacher and a faith-healer. No one around here had ever heard teaching that cut to the heart like his, and nobody sure ever saw anyone heal people like he did. Jesus was obviously blessed by God to do great things. He had our attention. We believed in him – well, sort of.
Before too long, our faith was put to the test, and we didn’t do so well. We were out on the Sea of Galilee together with Jesus. Out of nowhere, this huge storm comes. The waves are crashing into the boat. We’re starting to collect water. In the midst of all of this, Jesus is sleeping! Can you believe it? Sleeping. Well, I send someone to wake him up, “Tell him to do something, or we’re all going to drown!”
Jesus gets up and says, “You of little faith, why are you so afraid?” I’m thinking, “Waves taller than me are crashing over my head into my boat. Why do you think I’m afraid?!”
But then he starts talking to the wind and the waves, telling them to quiet down. Instantly, it was completely calm. All we could do is ask ourselves, “Whoa, who is this guy?! Even the wind and the waves obey him?” (We didn’t understand yet that he made the wind and waves.) (Mt. 8:23-27)
Jesus kept stretching our belief. He kept teaching us little by little more of who he is. One time Jesus fed 5,000 men, not counting the women and children, with only five loaves of bread and two fish (Mt. 14:13-21). It never occurred to us that Jesus could do something like that. We knew he could heal people, and he calmed the storm, but this was new.
Right after that, Jesus sent us out onto the lake in the boat, and he stayed with the crowd. By night time, we had rowed against the wind a long ways, but the wind and waves were starting to wear us down. All of the sudden, we see Jesus walking to us on the lake. I mean, he was walking on the water. We thought for sure, we were seeing a ghost, and we were scared to death. Jesus called out to us, “Easy boys. It’s just me. Don’t be afraid.”
Now, I don’t know why I did what I’m about to tell you. Maybe it was Jesus’ calming the storm earlier, or maybe it was his feeding all those people. But something just came over me, and I got this big burst of courage. I hollered out, “Lord, if it’s really you, tell me to come to you on the water.” I almost couldn’t believe I said it. Maybe I just wanted to be with him wherever he was. Maybe I was trying to have faith.
He said, “Come on out,” so I did.
I can’t believe it, looking back on it, but I actually got out of the boat and walked toward Jesus on the water. I did pretty well for a few steps, but then I started looking around at the wind and the waves. I thought, “This stuff almost sank my boat a little while back. I must be crazy!” Then, I started sinking. I knew I was in trouble then. I cried out, “Jesus, help me!”
He reached out his hand and caught me. “You still have little faith,” he said. When we got into the boat, the wind stopped, and we just started worshipping Jesus. (Mt. 14:22-33). We knew he was the Son of God! But we didn’t really know what that meant yet.
After a while, Jesus took us on sort of a leadership retreat. He asked us who people were saying he was. So we told him all the rumors that were going around. Then he said, “But what about you? Who do you say I am?”
Well, that was getting personal. We’d been following him for months or maybe years at that point. But when it came right down to it, it was hard to say exactly who he was. Well, in another one of those bursts of inspiration and courage, I answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God.”
I got that one right. Jesus said, “God sure has blessed you Peter. You didn’t figure that out yourself. God showed it to you! And I’ll tell you something else, my church is going to be so strong and powerful that it’s going to bust open the gates of hell!” (Mt. 16:13-20)
I was feeling pretty good. We were with the Messiah – the long awaited Messiah, the righteous King who is going to set everything right, the one who would set Israel free from our long years of oppression. Now that’s all true, but I was still thinking of it in terms of a military take over, an armed rebellion. Everybody thought of it like that back then.
So when Jesus started talking about going to Jerusalem and being kicked around and killed by the religious leaders, I figured we needed to have a talk. I took him aside and said, “Umm, Jesus, I know you’re the Messiah and all, but, well, that’s what we need to talk about. You can’t go around saying you’re going to get mistreated by the chief priests and killed. That kind of stuff doesn’t happen to the MESSIAH. God would never let that happen to you. And if you keep talking like this, it’s really going to hurt our approval ratings and recruitment efforts.”
Jesus didn’t like that too much. He shouted, “Get away from me, Satan! You are a dangerous trap to me.”
Not exactly the reception I was hoping for. Looking back, I guess my objection hit a little too close to home. It would be easier to go in with all his power and take over. That would be a lot easier and a lot more fun than sticking with the plan and going to the cross. That’s what I wanted. That’s what all the disciples wanted. But that’s exactly what Jesus was telling us he wasn’t going to do.
“You don’t have any idea how God works,” he said. “Don’t run from suffering; embrace it. Follow me, and I’ll show you how. Self-help is no help at all. Self-sacrifice is the way, my way, to finding yourself, to finding true life. I’m going to the cross. Are you coming with me?” (Mt. 16:21-28)
Well, that really confused me. One minute Jesus says I’m blessed by God because I say he’s the Messiah. The next minute he says I’m just like Satan for telling him he needs to act like the Messiah. I had a thousand questions rolling around my head, “Is Jesus really the Messiah? He has to be, but he can’t be. How can Israel’s Messiah talk about dying at the hands of the leaders of Israel? How can the Messiah talk about crosses and loosing one’s life to save it? This is not Messiah talk. This is the talk of a martyr, and whatever the Messiah is, he is definitely not a martyr. But I believe in Jesus; look at all the miracles. He is at the least a great prophet of God, and when I said he is the Messiah, the Son of God, he did not rebuke me. He said I was right. He said the Father in heaven revealed that to me. He must be the Messiah, right? But what kind of Messiah is this?”
He let us think about that one for awhile. About a week later, he takes James, John, and me up on a high mountain for a prayer retreat.
All of the sudden, something wild happens to Jesus. Light starts coming out of him, just like someone turned a lamp on inside him. It’s still Jesus, but his face is glowing like the sun at noon, and his clothes are like a flash of lightening. It hurts to look, but he’s so mesmerizing. He’s so beautiful. In the light we see his joy and kindness and love. His peace emanates out to us. As we watch his light penetrates our souls. He is King. He is incredible.
Then we saw Moses and Elijah with Jesus. Don’t ask me how I knew they were Moses and Elijah. I’d never seen a picture or anything. It was just them, OK. Anyway, they were talking with Jesus about how he was going to fulfil God’s plan by dying in Jerusalem (see Luke 9:31). So here were Moses, the greatest law-giver in the Old Testament, and Elijah, the first of the great prophets, talking to Jesus when he’s all lit up, and they seemed to be all in favor of Jesus’ going to the cross. It was like the whole Old Testament, the Law and the Prophets, spoke through those two guys to say, “Yep, this is the plan God’s been working out all along. Go on to the cross, Jesus.” It was sort of like his own private pep talk.
Well, you know me. I can’t not talk. It’s like I have diarrhea of the mouth or something. Whatever I think just comes right out. “You are the Messiah. He is the Messiah. I was right. I mean, you were right. Let’s build a monument so we will never forget this moment. Shoot, let’s build three, one for each of you.” It was like I could hear myself talking, but I couldn’t make myself stop talking. Mark and Luke felt the need to apologize for me when they wrote their gospels. Mark said I really didn’t know what to say, and Luke said I didn’t even know what I was saying. I guess they were both right.
Anyhow, God didn’t let me go on for very long. While I was still talking, I don’t even notice it at first and keep on talking, but then it is all around us. I can still see James and John and Jesus, Moses, and Elijah, but it is through a dense fog. But this isn’t just any fog. It glows. It’s like floating light. It is a “bright” cloud. I remember that the cloud represents God’s presence, and I am in awe. That’s when I shut up.
For a second or two, there’s this eerie silence. Then God speaks! It was definitely a strong voice, but it wasn’t like I would have expected. It wasn’t angry or thundering. It shook through my body but not necessarily because of volume, more because of force. He wasn’t shouting, but the force of his voice was so strong that I felt it in every part of me.
God says, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!” I could hear the love in his voice when he was talking about Jesus. He sounded like my dad sounded when I caught that huge fish, “This is my boy. I’m proud of him.” He is a proud Father. He’s really happy about Jesus.
So you already know I was starting to wonder, what with Jesus talking about dying and all. I thought Jesus might be getting something wrong. Anyway, God is well pleased with him, so that settles it. “Listen to him!” God said. OK, OK. Like we weren’t going to listen to him after this. But that last part came with a little more force than the rest. This is important.
We heard, and we tried to listen, but it was like it just wasn’t getting through. We had too many preconceived notions about the Messiah. Jesus had a lot of static to shout over. “Listen to him!” OK, we’ll listen. We don’t get how it all works, but we’ll follow and we’ll listen.
When we were coming down the mountain, Jesus swore us to secrecy. “Don’t breathe a word of what you’ve seen to anyone until after I’m raised from the dead.” We obeyed, but we didn’t understand. Now, I see that we were still thinking about Jesus all wrong. Yes, we knew that he was the Messiah and the Son of God, but we didn’t understand what that meant. There was no way we could really get it until after the cross.
Well, even the cross didn’t do it for us. We all pretty much scattered when Jesus was arrested. I denied Jesus three times when he needed me most. We just didn’t get how this could actually be happening to the Messiah.
Even after the resurrection, we still didn’t get what he was all about. Not long before he went back to heaven, we asked him, “Lord, are you going to free Israel now and restore our kingdom?” We were still thinking in terms of politics and military and worldly power. Jesus just said, “Look, leave that stuff up to God. I’m giving you my Holy Spirit, and he’s going to give you a different kind of power, the power to tell everyone everywhere about me” (Acts 1:6-8).
When the Holy Spirit did come on us in that room at Pentecost, it was like a thousand puzzle pieces came together in one instant. On that day I shouted out to a great crowd of people from lots of different countries, “So let it be clearly known by everyone in Israel that God has bade this Jesus whom you crucified to be both Lord and Messiah! … Each of you must turn from your sins and turn to God, and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. Then, you too will receive the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:36, 38).
Well, after that, we had a lot of time to keep putting pieces together. We started to figure out that Jesus had to die. We started to understand that the Law and the Prophets all explained that the Messiah would suffer like this and be raised from the dead. We started to figure out that Jesus didn’t come for a political revolution but for a spiritual revolution. We started to figure out that we couldn’t understand Jesus as Lord until we understood him as the Crucified Lord.
The truth is that all Christians in every time have to wrestle with that issue. It’s always easier to think of Jesus in conquering terms. Sure you may not think of Jesus as starting a worldwide political takeover, but there are other ways to misunderstand what it means for Jesus to be the Suffering Messiah. Sometimes people think of the gospel in other terms of power, convincing people they are wrong, gaining respect in society, building bigger churches, establishing our own little kingdoms, adding trophies to our shelves. Sometimes people tend to think or act like Jesus came primarily for the rich or for people like us or to help us have a better more pleasurable life. Sometimes people just sort of go on their merry way with the gospel and forget about the rest of the world.
Yeah, there are lots of ways to forget about the cross and how the cross shapes our understanding of Jesus. But there are some other ways to remember the cross, to rediscover Jesus’ journey to the cross, to re-examine our understanding of Jesus in the light of the cross.
The Season of Lent is one of those ways. It wasn’t long in the Christian church until Lent developed. It started out as a way for us to help people prepare for baptism, but pretty soon we realized that we all need to go down the Lenten road. We all need to walk with Jesus to the cross. We need this time every year when we surrender all of our preconceived notions about who Jesus is and what it means to be a Christian, and walk that long slow road into the depths of human suffering with Jesus.
We can’t understand Easter until we go with Jesus into the dark places to hear the doubters of the world. We can’t understand Easter until we hear Jesus talking with Samaritan sex-addict. We can’t understand Easter until we feel the spit and mud Jesus used to heal the blind man. We can’t understand Easter until we cry with Jesus at Lazarus’s tomb. We can’t understand Easter until we let Jesus wash our feet. We can’t understand Easter until we are arrested with Jesus and feel the punches that he felt and hear the bitter ridicule that he heard. We can’t understand Easter until we walk with Jesus all the way to the cross on Good Friday. We cannot understand Easter without Lent. We cannot understand Jesus without the cross.
Church, Lent begins this Wednesday, Ash Wednesday. Let us go to Jerusalem together with Jesus and die with him there.
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