Then all the disciples left him and fled.

— Matthew 26.56

Lenten Reflection: The Abandoned Savior
The Park Forum

God, we abandoned you.

It was the darkness in our hearts that caused your Father to turn his back on you. Eternal unity broken by our sin. Truly we would have been counted among your disciples that night. When you asked, “remain here, and watch with me,” we would have slept. Disquieted by evil—though we stood in the presence of the very one who could save us—we would have fled.

My God, my God, why have You forsaken me, and why are You so far from helping me, and from the words of my groaning? — Psalm 22.1

You were forsaken because you embraced the consequences of our brokenness. Your body broke under the weight of hell.

He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.

But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. — Isaiah 53.3–6

Lord we ask only this: may we not forsake your sacrifice by defining our lives by our own failures and fleeting successes rather than the glory of your grace and peace.

Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him; he has put him to grief; when his soul makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days; the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.

Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied; by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities.

Therefore I will divide him a portion with the many, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong, because he poured out his soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many, and makes intercession for the transgressors. — Isaiah 53.0-12

Prayer: The Refrain for the Morning Lessons

Do not let your hearts be troubled. You trust in God, trust also in me. — John 14:1

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle.

Full prayer available online and in print.

Today’s Readings
Leviticus 17 (Listen – 5:36)
Psalm 20-21 (Listen – 3:17)

Then Jesus said to them, “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death; remain here, and watch with me.”

― Matthew 26.38

Lenten Reflection: The Garden of Anguish
The Park Forum

The Son of God, who rhythmically withdrew from all human contact to pray, now asks his disciples to journey with him into the garden. He did not want to be left alone.“Father, take this cup.” The prayer of Christ would go unanswered.

For the first time in all of eternity, “Jesus Christ turned toward the Father and there was nothing there but the abyss,” remarks Timothy Keller. “There was nothing there but the darkness that opens out into an infinite nothing. He turned, expecting heaven and the Father, and there was hell.” Blood vessels ruptured under stress—his body being forced toward death long before the cross—as the weight of sin fell upon our savior. Keller explains:

As he began to walk, he began to experience the wrath of God. He began to actually experience God turning away from him. How does God punish sin? The Bible tells us (it’s almost poetic justice) the sinful human heart wants to get away. It wants to be away from God. It wants to be able to be its own master. So the way God punishes sin is to give the heart what it wants.

Jesus received what we deserved—what we have earned. From his birth to his resurrection, Christ did for us what we are unable to do. He loved God fully and loved man perfectly. He gave his life that we may live. Though we see this, we have trouble reorienting our lives in response.

We do not want to accept such a sacrifice. We do not want to cost of our sin to be so high. We do not want to live indebted to grace so deep. Christ’s love shines through the night, even while our love flickers in the wind. Keller concludes:

We don’t trust him. We’re afraid he might not have our best interest in mind, that he might ask us to do something that won’t be really good for us. So on the one hand, we don’t really trust him, but on the other hand, we don’t really trust ourselves. One of the reasons why we don’t give ourselves wholly and utterly and completely is because we’re afraid of failure.

Here is a love that hell came down on. His love for you—hell came down on it—and it didn’t eat through it. His love for you, hell came down on it, and it didn’t break it.

Prayer: The Call to Prayer

Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, from everlasting and to everlasting; and let all the people say, “Amen!” — Psalm 106:48

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle.

Full prayer available online and in print.

Today’s Readings
Leviticus 16 (Listen – 5:36)
Psalm 19 (Listen – 1:52)

It is difficult, after sixteen centuries and more during which the cross has been a sacred symbol, to realize the unspeakable horror and loathing which the very mention or thought of the cross provoked in Paul’s day.

―F.F. Bruce

Lenten Reflection: The Unlucky Tree
The Park Forum

The word “crucifixion” was nearly unspeakable among Rome’s cultural elite. Most Romans, like Cicero, avoided the term all-together, opting for the euphemism arbori infelici suspendito—hang him on the unlucky tree. In the ancient Jewish tradition, and therefore early Christian culture, to hang on a tree was to fall under the curse of God.

For the first Christians, Christ’s cursed death would have been just as arresting as the thought of his resurrection. Yet how the apostle Paul—a Jewish-elite Roman Christian—responded to the scorn and humiliation of Christ on the cross set a tuning-pitch for the early church.

“Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others,” the apostle wrote. His reasoning wasn’t moralism or civility, but a direct application of what it meant to follow a crucified savior. He continued with the words to one of the first Christian hymns:

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

In other words: sacrifice your pursuits, comfort, and status just as Christ sacrificed his for you. This is the pathway to resurrection. Selfish ambition fractures relationships. Vain-conceit leverages success in an attempt to exact revenge on those who have hurt us in the past. The cruciform lifestyle lays all this down—we follow Christ to the cross because grace has invited us to the resurrection.

Of the first Christians, British theologian F.F. Bruce remarks:

One could have understood it if the early Christians, knowing that the crucifixion of Jesus was an undeniable fact, had admitted it reluctantly when they were compelled to do so. But Paul, Roman citizen by birth and religious Jew by upbringing, not only dismisses as the merest refuse those things in which he had once taken a proper pride, but embraces—as the most worth-while goal in life—the knowledge of the crucified Christ and boasts in his cross.

Prayer: The Greeting

Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to your Name give glory; because of your love and because of your faithfulness. — Psalm 115:1

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle.

Full prayer available online and in print.

Today’s Readings
Leviticus 15 (Listen – 4:59)
Psalm 18 (Listen – 5:47)

Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.

― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Lenten Reflection: Costly Grace
By Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945)

Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our Church. We are fighting today for costly grace.

Cheap grace means grace sold on the market like cheapjacks’ wares. Grace is represented as the Church’s inexhaustible treasury, from which she showers blessings with generous hands, without asking questions or fixing limits.

Cheap grace means grace as a doctrine, a principle, a system. It means forgiveness of sins proclaimed as a general truth, the love of God taught as the Christian “conception” of God. An intellectual assent to that idea is held to be of itself sufficient to secure remission of sins.

The Church which holds the correct doctrine of grace has, it is supposed, ipso facto a part in that grace. In such a Church the world finds a cheap covering for its sins; no contrition is required, still less any real desire to be delivered from sin. Cheap grace therefore amounts to a denial of the living Word of God, in fact, a denial of the Incarnation of the Word of God.

Cheap grace means the justification of sin without the justification of the sinner. Grace alone does everything, they say, and so everything can remain as it was before.

Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man will gladly go and sell all that he has. It is the pearl of great price to buy which the merchant will sell all his goods. Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ.

It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son: “ye were bought at a price,” and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us. Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon his Son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered him up for us. Costly grace is the Incarnation of God.

Costly grace is the sanctuary of God. Costly grace confronts us as a gracious call to follow Jesus, it comes as a word of forgiveness to the broken spirit and the contrite heart. Grace is costly because it compels a man to submit to the yoke of Christ and follow him; it is grace because Jesus says: “My yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

*Excerpt from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship. Touchstone, 1995. 

Prayer: The Refrain for the Morning Lesson

Deliverance belongs to the Lord. Your blessing be upon your people! — Psalm 3:8

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle.

Full prayer available online and in print.

Today’s Readings
Leviticus 14 (Listen – 8:11)
Psalm 17 (Listen – 1:58)

Never did Jesus throw any doubt on a man’s health, vigor or fortune, regarded in themselves, or look upon them as evil fruits.

―Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Lenten Reflection: 20170406 – The Cross in the Modern World (Part II)
By Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945)

This irresponsibility and absence of bonds has its counterpart among the clergy in what I should call the ‘priestly’ snuffing around in the sins of men in order to catch them out… (See Part I)

From the theological point of view the error is twofold. First, it is thought that a man can be addressed as a sinner only after his weaknesses and meannesses have been spied out. Second, it is thought that man’s essential nature consists of his inmost and most intimate background, and that is defined as his ‘interior life’; and it is in these secret human places that God is now to have his domain!

On the first point it must be said that man is certainly a sinner, but not mean or common, not by a long chalk. To put the matter in the most banal way, are Goethe or Napoleon sinners because they were not always faithful husbands? It is not the sins of weakness, but the sins of strength (genius, hubris.), which matter here. It is not in the least necessary to spy out things. The Bible never does so.

On the second point it must be said that the Bible does not recognize our distinction of outer and inner. And why should it? It is always concerned with the whole man. It is quite un-biblical to suppose that a ‘good intention’ is enough. What matters is the whole good. The discovery of inwardness, so-called, derives from the Renaissance, from Petrarch perhaps.

The ‘heart’ in the biblical sense is not the inward life, but the whole man in relation to God. The view that man lives just as much from outwards to inwards as from inwards to outwards is poles apart from the view that his essential nature is to be understood from his intimate background.

This is why I am so anxious that God should not be relegated to some last secret place, but that we should frankly recognize that the world and men have come of age, that we should not speak ill of man in his worldliness, but confront him with God at his strongest point, that we should give up all our clerical subterfuges, and our regarding of psychotherapy and existentialism as precursors of God.

*Abridged from Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Letters and Papers from Prison. 

Prayer: The Refrain

The Lord knows our human thoughts; how like a puff of wind they are. Happy are they whom you instruct, O Lord!* whom you teach out of your law. —Psalm 94.11–12

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle.

Full prayer available online and in print.

Today’s Readings
Leviticus 10 (Listen – 3:25)
Psalm 11-12 (Listen – 1:59)

This Weekend’s Readings
Leviticus 11-12 (Listen – 7:20) Psalm 13-14 (Listen – 1:43)
Leviticus 13 (Listen – 9:34) Psalm 15-16 (Listen – 2:03)