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March 6 - April 14, 2022
For Jesus’ disciples then and today, mercy is inherent within Jesus’ rebukes because to hear them is to still have breath to respond to them with repentance.
Obedience is not a moment: it is a process connected by countless moments.
And in the midst of Jesus’ journey, He felt troubled. Clearly, then, a troubled soul is not always the sign of a faith deficit. A troubled soul is sometimes the signature of obedience-in-the-making. The obedience of Christ that set us free on the cross was the closing parenthesis on earth of a long process, not of a sudden decision. Likewise, when we hear Jesus’ “Come, follow Me,” our opening “Yes!” and the Father’s closing “Well done!” are connected by countless moments in which we discern and reconfirm our decision to follow over and over and over again.
As fruit of Jesus’ resolve recorded in John 12, Father’s voice reaches our very depths. Sometimes God’s voice sounds like thunder, at other times like angels; almost always for me it sounds like silence as I open the Scriptures. Others’ inability to hear it cannot invalidate it. Our inability to understand it cannot void it. God’s phōnē sounds within His Son’s followers, saying, “You are known. You are heard. You are loved. You are mine. I, your heavenly Father, keep My promises.”
“Absent God, all other desire, by necessity, will
fail to fully satisfy us.” —JAMES DAVISON HUNTER4
At the table, Jesus washed the feet of a betrayer, a denier, and ten deserters. Pause to place yourself in this scene. Think of someone who has betrayed you, denied your love, or run away in your time of need. What would it take, what would it mean, for you to wash their feet?
Disciple after disciple, Jesus took their dirt and left them clean. And then one day most—though sadly not all—looked back and understood that with every rinse of the water and every pat of the towel, Jesus was saying, “I forgive you in advance for your upcoming epic fail. Though it will surprise you, remember that it does not surprise Me. My love will still be here when you return.”
“There is no one-size-fits-all crucifixion. Jesus said each one of us must pick up our own cross, and pick it up each day. For some, martyrdom might be fame. For some, martyrdom might be anonymity. Regardless of what it is, first followers ask daily, ‘Lord, what is my cross today, and where shall I carry it?’ ” — LEONARD SWEET2
ward is a commitment that passion may make but that only love can keep.
Deny self or deny Jesus: this is the crux. Remaining neutral is not an option. We have to choose a side. Today, fast neutrality. In the small, undocumented details of life, choose Jesus over self and recommit to living cross-ward. The cross is the ultimate call to decrease. The cross is a call not to forget our own names but to live and die for the Name of Another. The cross is a call to renounce self-direction and shift leadership loyalties from our selves to our Savior.
From Jesus’ example, it is clear that a misalignment between our desires and God’s will is not sin. Jesus was victorious not because He lacked uncooperative feelings but because He affirmed and reaffirmed His commitment to honor Father’s will above His emotions.
“He did not want to be that alone.” Jesus requested the disciples’ companionship: their alert presence could have been a comfort to Him. We know that Jesus’ presence is valuable to us, but we rarely consider the possibility that our presence is valuable to Him.
We expect satanic opposition from the world. But when it comes from around the table, it takes our breath away. For three years, Judas and Jesus walked, talked, and served together. For three years, the Eleven trusted Judas with the moneybag. Judas saw the same miracles and received the same authority. Judas ate the same bread and drank from the same cup. And now, Judas kissed the King with blood money in his hands.
Betrayal of this degree is a toxic mixture of rejection, disregard, and narcissism. A betrayer sacrifices someone else for their own gain. As a result, many who have been betrayed experience anger, a sense of worthlessness, self-doubt, and soul-deep pain. Though Scripture does not disclose Jesus’ emotions as He looked into Judas’s eyes, we do know with confidence that Jesus understands betrayal.
“If every annoyance can be made to remind me to turn and grip Your hand and ask You, ‘What are you saying through this vexation?’ then I can turn life’s rough spots into Your vocabulary. If I can
do that perfectly, nothing can defeat my soul.” —FRANK LAUBACH (1884–1970)
Timidity is fear-driven. Hesitation is doubt-driven. Restraint is obedience-inspired.
The crowds thought themselves the victors as they led their prisoner out of the garden. In truth, prisoners were escorting the Victor to a triumph that would shake the gates of hell.
During the trials, Jesus’ words were manipulated, His faith doubted, and His character slandered.
“The final step on the way to holiness in Christ is then to completely abandon ourselves with confident joy to the apparent madness of the cross.” —THOMAS MERTON
Peter wept because Peter loved. Peter’s illusion was not that he loved Jesus. Peter’s illusion was that he loved Jesus more than he loved his own life.
“The triumph of grace is that we accept the humiliation of failure, which is indeed a triumph, a greater triumph than external success. In actual fact, the experience of failure in ministry teaches us in the long run how to do it, which is with complete dependence on God.” —THOMAS KEATING6
Our Lenten abstinence does not imply a rejection of God’s creation . . . to fast is not to deny this intrinsic goodness but to reaffirm it.”
we, like Annas’s official, are more concerned with saving face than honoring truth.
He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. —ISAIAH 53:3
actual events were sometimes listed in an order consistent with a theme as opposed to chronologically. Such is the case in the Gospels when Matthew and Mark placed this emotionally charged exchange before Jesus’ flogging and John positioned this exchange after the flogging.5
Perhaps we would live differently if we remembered more frequently (and more accurately) what the cross cost.
At once, the Cross revealed what kind of world we have and what kind of God we have: a world of gross unfairness, a God of sacrificial love.” —PHILIP YANCEY8
Jesus’ breath had jump-started Adam’s life but now Jesus, paying for the sins of Adam and his descendants, was struggling for air. With bones nailed to the cross and blood pouring from His wounds, the “author of life” (Acts 3:15), through Whom “all things were created” (Colossians 1:16), was dying.
Savior, am I caressing anything you were crucified for? If so, I repent: forgive me, heal me, send help to me, and strengthen my love for You. When I am tempted, may I see Your cross, remember Your cost, and let love “bind my wandering heart” to You.
love, not nails, kept Jesus on the cross: love and how much He wanted us.
But mortification—literally, “making death”—is what life is all about, a slow discovery of the mortality of all that is created so that we can appreciate its beauty without clinging to it as if it were a lasting possession. . . . In every arrival there is a leave-taking; in every reunion there is a separation; in each one’s growing up there is a growing old; in every smile there is a tear; and in every success there is a loss. All living is dying, and all celebration is mortification too.11 (1992)
Paid to be close to Jesus: nearest and yet farthest away. The paycheck can change your perspective whether paid in cash or in praise. The soldiers valued Jesus’ stuff more than His life. As they kept themselves busy around the cross, they numbed themselves to His voice. Today, fast God-as-job. Whether your check comes from a church or not, consider ways in which you, too, may be near in body but absent in spirit, taking care of Jesus’ stuff but not attending to His voice. Proximity does not automate intimacy. Only love transforms “near” into “for.”
One Joseph held Jesus at His birth. Another Joseph held Jesus at His death.”
Joseph’s actions stir something within me: an ache possibly too deep for words. I long for Jesus to occupy my resting place. Whatever part of me I have reserved for me—for my self—I long to give it away to Jesus.
When we offer to Jesus the place we have reserved for our selves, He surprises
us by filling that space with His resurrected life. By offering his resting place to Jesus, Joseph transformed a tomb from a place of death for him...
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He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.
Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem. Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.
When dreams shatter, we, too, need to give ourselves time to gently collect the broken pieces and wrap them respectfully in tears. This is not about prematurely abandoning hope. This is about accepting reality. Denying Jesus’ death would not return Him to the disciples. It was healthy for them to permit a burial. Faith is not threatened by funerals.
The disciples did not isolate themselves after Jesus’ burial, but intentionally maintained their relationships. We, too, must resist isolation and enjoy good talks and take long walks with trusted friends. For even in loss, we are stronger together than alone. Like the early disciples, as we walk and talk with each other, Jesus walks and talks with us (Luke 24:15–16). Walking with the Savior, they eventually realized that their dream, though dead, had not perished!
obedience is never a waste; it is an investment in a future we cannot see. When we dream with God, our dreams—even in burial—are not lost: they are planted.
Jesus was obviously gone before the stone was rolled away. His messenger was there to open the way in for the women, not the way out for the Savior.
