Journey to the Cross
Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday when we embark on our journey to the Cross and empty tomb yet again. Lent, the time between Ash Wednesday and Easter Sunday, can often be made about our individual experiences and commitments solely between “me and God.” But, left to our own solitary devices, a lonely Lent can make us even more self-centered than we are by default! As a family friend once said, “When I’m alone, I’m not in the best company.” When I’m isolated as a Christian, my spiritual blinders come on: I can convince myself I’m never at fault, always in the right, and don’t need others to tell me otherwise!
In his book Kingdom, Grace, Judgment, the late priest Robert Capon explores God’s use of “left-handed power…a power that looks for all the world like weakness, intervention that seems indistinguishable from non-intervention.” To recognize God’s left-handed power in the world takes more eyes than just mine. By myself, God’s mysterious work looks like absence or acquiescence to the world’s brokenness. In my narrow and blurry vision, the Cross can look like defeat. It takes a whole community for each of us to recognize God’s unconventional Kingdom in our midst.
This Lent, consider taking the journey with others rather than just by yourself. Perhaps it’s signing up for our weekend discipleship retreat called The Course (March 24-26 at the church; visit the link to register), or it could be participating in our Lenten small group conversations (visit the link to learn more) on Wednesday (starting next week) at 6:30pm or Sundays at 9:30am in the John Wesley Rm. Perhaps it’s another practice you adopt in coordination with family, friends, roommates, or other church members.
However you decide to recognize this important moment in our yearly Christian rhythms, don’t believe, for one second, that you can or must do it alone.
With you,
Pastor Reed McNitzky