This morning & evening marks the beginning of our Lenten Study Group meetings, 6 sessions between now and Holy Week that more than a few of us will spend together journeying through the Lenten season. As I was reading and re-reading our lessons for today, I was struck by the challenge of Lent. In our Ash Wednesday service and in the first two Sundays of Lent, we have heard about the radical transformation that is done in so many through the exercise of the discipline of Lent, but I wonder sometimes if we miss the potential for the things of this season to truly transform our lives.
See, in our study group, we are looking at N.T. Wright's Christians at the Cross: Finding Hope in the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus, and I know from previous encounters with Bishop Wright's work that he can be a bit of a challenge for us to read. After all, he is one of the world's foremost New Testament scholars, very prolific in the breadth and depth of his writings, quoted often in academic and mainstream circles alike. Also, Bishop Wright is a Church of England man, serving (as Bishop of Durham) in a culture and a setting that is quite dissimilar to our own. It would be very easy for any of us to dismiss the challenge of reading his work, for some of the cultural and scholastic references he makes are completely foreign to us.
However, this is where I think that we have the most to gain; we are people who like the familiar. We are people who like to make things on a level where 'we can get it.' We are people who like to know the answers before the questions are asked. We are people who, knowingly or not, go through the routines of life, finding (more often than not) security in being 'in control'. Lent knocks us out of this thinking. Lent is a season given to us by God through the church as a time to say, 'No, things are going to be different.' Lent is a season where we are, if we are willing, challenged to step out of our routines and look closely at what Christ has in store for us. It is, if you will, a season of returning to the cross. It is quite unfamiliar to us, this idea of being transformed by another (in this case, Christ), for we live in an age where it's all about 'personal responsibility', 'calling your own shots', etc.
To allow Christ to do transforming work in and through you by stepping into something different, like the discipline of Lenten observation, is like diving into a completely different style of book from a completely different kind of author than you know - it is equal parts challenging, frightening, frustrating, and liberating. The easy thing to do in life is to stick to the familiar, the tried and true.
The challenge of the Cross is to go to something completely different.
See You Soon!
Lamar
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