What Does It Mean to "Take Up Our Crosses"?

[I was happy to preach on February 25, 2024 at Saint Peter Lutheran Church in Walburg, Texas.]

Mark 8:31-38

In a community where we once lived, a judge put together a committee of about twenty people. It was charged with creating strategies to prevent drug abuse among local teens. When the committee first met, the judge asked everyone to introduce themselves and to give their theory of why so many kids were involved with drugs.

Each person gave a theory. The answers included low self-esteem, poverty, academic difficulties, peer pressure, mental health, and parental abuse. With each theory, there were affirming nods all around. The last person to speak was Clarence. Clarence headed a program that helped youth get off drugs. He himself was an addict in recovery. “I’ve seen all of the issues that have been mentioned as factors,” he said. “But, in the end, I think addiction is a spiritual problem. People turn to drug and alcohol abuse to find the life and hope only found in Christ.” 

I was in the room where that happened. I wanted to applaud Clarence. But I saw no approving nods and heard no affirming words. There was silence.

I think there was one major reason for that silence. 

People there didn’t want to hear that the answers to any problem they faced, at least in their professional lives, was beyond their competence, their understanding, their effort. They didn’t want to hear that the basic problem for all of us, is our inborn impulse to be our own gods, to sin. 

They also didn’t want to hear that the only One Who can free us from our sin and the death and problems that come from it is Jesus, God the Son. 

It’s only through the grace of God given to us through the crucified and risen Jesus and the faith in Jesus we receive through God’s Word and the Sacraments of Baptism and Communion, that we are given the life and wholeness we crave.

Jesus is the One Who gives us the ability to face this life and the next life in the certainty that nothing can separate us from the love of God.

But like the people on that community committee, we Christians don’t always like to hear any of that. Even the resurrection part. 

Neither, it turns out, did the apostle Peter. 

Just before the incident recounted in today’s gospel lesson, Jesus asked the disciples who they thought He was. Peter said, “You are the Christ.” (Mark 8:29) 

It’s the right answer. But as we learn in today’s lesson, Peter had no idea what his answer meant. 

This is why Mark says Jesus started to clarify things for Peter and for us. Mark writes: “And [Jesus] began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again.” (Mark 8:31)

Wait a minute, the disciples must have thought: The Christ, the Messiah, God’s anointed, is supposed to be a king who conquers and makes everything right. What’s this about the Messiah suffering, being rejected, and being killed?

But the difference between the disciples’ expectations of a triumphant Messiah and Jesus’ prediction of His own suffering, rejection, and murder isn’t the only reason for what happens next. 

Mark says: “...Peter took [Jesus] aside and began to rebuke him.” (Mark 8:32) Peter knew what Jesus was getting at when Jesus said that the Son of Man was going to be killed. God had said of the Messiah through Isaiah centuries earlier, “he was crushed for our iniquities.” (Isaiah 53:5) But Peter couldn’t accept that he was so lost in his sin–in his failure to love God and love neighbor–that he, like the rest of us, needed the Messiah to save him by the good news–the gospel–of Christ’s death and resurrection for sinners. It’s fairly easy for us to accept that Christ died for sinners, isn’t it? But it’s harder to accept that we’re among the sinners that need saving! 

God’s Word is unambiguous though: “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23)

After Peter rebuked Him, Jesus rebuked Peter, saying, “Get behind me, Satan! [Jesus knew that the self-righteous words coming from Peter’s mouth were coming from Satan, echoing the words of Satan to Jesus in the wilderness when he tried to tempt the Savior not to go to the cross to save us.] [“Get behind me, Satan”] For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.” (Mark 8:33) Then Jesus says, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel's will save it.” (Mark 8:34-35) And then this: “For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?” (Mark 8:36) Take all the power, prestige, money, and advantages of this world into your hands and it will all still one day crumble to ashes, as surely as you and I will in our graves or in our urns.

But the story of both this life and the one to come ends differently for those who take up their crosses and follow Jesus. 

To take up our cross means two things, I think. 

First, it means, to acknowledge our sins, to take the cross Jesus bore for us as our rightful condemnation. Our sin put Jesus on the cross. 

Second, taking up our cross means speaking plainly that Jesus is our Lord, to confess His Gospel. 

When Jesus spoke the Gospel, the good news, that He was dying and rising, to save the sinners of the world, it led to His crucifixion by first-centuries Jews and Gentiles, who were no more anxious than the rest of us to admit their sin was so bad they needed the Messiah to die and rise to make them (and us) fit for life with God, righteous. 

Whenever we confess Jesus is Lord, we will encounter things like stony silence, rejection, or, as happens to Christians all over the world even today, death. Suffering for our faith in Jesus in this world is as much a part of being a Christian as living in the confidence of the resurrection. So, Jesus says elsewhere: “In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33)

Jesus warns that when we lack the humility to acknowledge our sin or confess Him as “the way, and the truth, and the life,” there will be consequences in eternity. (John 14:6) If we refuse the shelter of His grace and forgiveness, our sin will be our eternal undoing. Jesus says: “For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.” (Mark 8:38) 

The corollary to that, of course, is that as, by the power of the Holy Spirit working in God’s Word, we are empowered to take up our crosses and follow Jesus–living our faith in Jesus in plain view, Jesus tells God the Father, “This is My child for all eternity!”

Friends, God’s Law says that we deserve death. 

But the Gospel of Christ gives us life we don’t deserve and could never earn. By grace–God’s charitable and unearned forgiveness given in Christ–we are saved through God’s gift to us of faith in Jesus. 

The gospel tells you even today that in Christ, all your sins are forgiven and you have everlasting life with God, so that you may believe, even on your worst day on earth, this is true. 

When all your strength and all the people and things of this world fail you, even at the moment death comes to you, you can trust in Christ and the saving work He already accomplished for you when He said from the cross, “It is finished!” 

The promise of the risen and ascended to Jesus to the first-century church at Smyrna is the same promise He makes to you this morning, at this moment: “Be faithful [–keep repenting, keep trusting, keep taking up your cross, keep following Me–] unto death, and I will give you the crown of life.” (Revelation 2:10) Amen

Radical Problem, Radical Therapy

[This was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, earlier today.]

Mark 8:31-38
Imagine a scene with me. You're in your doctor's office for a consultation. A few weeks earlier, you found something that wasn't quite right and went to see the doctor. She ordered up some tests and now you're back to see her to learn the results. She enters the office and says, "I'm sorry, but it's very serious. You have cancer and the prognosis is not good." Your heart is sinking until she offers this word of hope: "But I have a treatment regimen that's going to make everything OK." Shuddering with excitement, you listen closely as she tells you the treatment: "I'm going to give you a facelift."

You know that can't be right: When you're up against a major illness, a superficial remedy won't do. In the face of radical maladies, only radical therapies will do.

We human beings are confronted with a major malady. It's called death and it's the result of sin.

You and I were created in the image of God. That means that we are unique among all of God's creatures and creation. We are the pinnacle of God's creation. But sin has distorted our very natures. And because the human race is the pinnacle of the creation, charged with being God's good managers of all things, the Bible says that all creation groans under the weight of our sin.

The Bible uses that word, sin, in two different ways.

One way the Bible talks about sin is as a condition of our birth, what the Bible scholars and theologians call original sin. This is what David is referring to in Psalm 51:5. The psalm is a song of repentance on David's part, composed after he had committed adultery and then had his lover's husband killed. David asks for forgiveness and renewal from God, taking complete blame for his sins. Then he says this: "Indeed, I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother conceived me."

I'm sorry to have to reveal this to you, but if you had human parents, you were born guilty, too.

Sin is a debt we owe to God and you and I are born with a debt so crippling we could never possibly pay it off.

But if that sounds bad, it gets worse.

Being born in sin means that we have an inborn inclination to add to our debts by sinning ourselves. (This inborn inclination to sin is what the Lutheran confessions call concupiscence, a predisposition to use God's good gifts at the wrong times, or for the wrong reasons, or with the wrong people.)

The other way the Bible talks about sin is the way you and I usually use the word: a violation of the will of God as expressed in the Ten Commandments. We fail to honor God as God. We fail to show as much concern for others as we do for ourselves.

Because of the condition of original sin, our sins are stubbornly evidenced in all our thinking, speaking, and living. In Romans 7:15, the apostle Paul writes: "I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want [anything that expresses love and regard for God and others], but I do the very thing I hate [anything that has me setting off on my own without regard to the will of God]." "I sin," Paul is saying, "and left to my own devices I cannot help myself."

Now folks, this is serious business. We are born in sin and we find ourselves incapable of refraining from sin. Paul reminds us elsewhere that there is only one outcome we can expect from the sin that, in both its forms, live within all of us: "The wages of sin is death" (Romans 6:23). We sin and deserve to die,  separated from God forever.

"Wait a minute," you might say. "I know I'm not perfect. But I've never committed any of the really big sins. I've never murdered someone. I've never committed adultery. I've never embezzled thousands from my employer."

In James 2:10-11, we read: "For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it. For the One Who said, 'You shall not commit adultery,' also said, 'You shall not murder.' Now if you do not commit adultery but if you murder, you have become a transgressor of the law."

If we violate one of God's commandments--from taking God's Name in vain to bearing false witness about a classmate, church member, or neighbor--God considers us in violation of all His commandments.

In sin, we have a major problem. The prognosis is death.

And even we who confess Jesus as our King and God need radical therapy every day.

That's what Jesus is talking about in today's Gospel lesson. Turn to Mark 8:31-38.

To understand this passage, we need to set the stage. Shortly before the incidents recounted in our lesson, Jesus had a conversation with His disciples. "Who is everybody saying that I am?" Jesus asks. The disciples report that some say He is John the Baptist returned from the dead. Others say that Jesus is actually Elijah, who had lived and been carried into heaven by a chariot of fire some nine centuries earlier. Others, the disciples reported, said that Jesus was "the prophet," a mysterious figure whose appearance many had been awaiting. "But," Jesus asked the disciples, "who do you say that I am."

In Mark 8:29, Peter says, "You are the Messiah [or, the Christ]."

The title, Christ [from Christos as it appears in the New Testament, which was written in Greek] or Messiah [from the Hebrew in which the Old Testament was written], means Anointed One.

The kings of God's people--called variously Hebrews, Israelites, Judeans, Jews--were always anointed with oil on being enthroned.

In Old Testament times, as much as eight centuries before the birth of Jesus, God had revealed through the prophets that there would one day come a special Christ--Anointed One--who would reconcile God and the human race.

Through the intervening centuries, anticipation had risen and fallen for the promised Christ. And there were certain expectations that people developed about the coming Christ or Messiah.

The people of first-century Judea, the place to which Jesus, God-in-the-flesh, came to live, thought that the Messiah would make what would amount to cosmetic changes, the moral equivalent of a facelift as a cure for cancer.

To them, the problems they faced had nothing to do with themselves or their own deficiencies. They wanted a king who would toss the Romans out of their land. They wanted an end to oppressive government regulations. They wanted the rich to pay their fair share in taxes and ease up on the poor. They wanted a king who would do their bidding, using the latest Gallup Poll as his guide for pleasing them. As is true for us today, their idea of what God should do in their lives was very different from what God had in mind.

That's why Peter's declaration of faith in Jesus as the Messiah was so dangerous. Jesus had to make sure that Peter and the rest of the disciples received some instruction on what it means to confess Jesus as the Christ. He didn't want to feed their false expectations. Jesus had come to do more than offer facelifts to dying people!

Look at Mark 8:31: "Then He began to teach them that the Son of Man [a title Jesus often used for Himself] must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again."

The therapy for our sin, Jesus is saying, begins with Him. He, Who never once sinned, undergoes the suffering and death we deserve for our sin so that the debt can be paid for all who repent and believe in Jesus.

But this was more than Peter could bear!

We have no idea how much attention, if any, he and the other disciples paid to Jesus' prediction that He would rise from the dead. But we do know that he heard Jesus loud and clear when it came to predicting that He would suffer, be rejected, and be killed.

Look at Mark 8:32: "Peter took Him [Jesus] aside and began to rebuke Him." Peter manhandled Jesus, taking Jesus off somewhere away from the rest of the group. The word rebuke, epitimao in the Greek in which Mark originally wrote, means warn, upbraid, condemn, set straight.

Imagine this! Peter has just declared Jesus to be God's Anointed King and now he has the audacity to tell Jesus how to do His job!

But if Peter thought he was sparing Jesus embarrassment by taking Jesus aside, Jesus has no intention of sparing Peter any embarrassment. Jesus knows that Peter is speaking for a lot of people when telling Jesus not to mention things like suffering, crosses, or executions.

Look now at verse 33: "But turning and looking at His disciples, [Jesus] rebuked Peter and said, 'Get behind Me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things." 

You'll remember that last Sunday, we considered Jesus' encounter with Satan in the wilderness. Satan tempted Jesus away from suffering, rejection, and the cross. But Jesus knew that He needed to stay the course, whatever pain He caused Himself. 

Now Jesus applies the name of Satan to His right hand man, Peter! Peter may have thought that He was doing a nice thing, like the church member who says, "Pastor, I know that the Bible says that Jesus is the only way to eternity with God, but you make people feel uncomfortable when you tell the truth like that." "Niceness" of the kind Peter exhibits here leads people away from God. "Niceness" like that suits Satan's purposes just fine. Jesus, in essence, is telling Peter, "I am the great Physician and My suffering, rejection by others, and death on a cross are the first part of the cure. So, get out of My way!"

Then, Jesus gives the second part of His radical therapy for our sin and death. Look at verses 34 and 35: "He called the crowd with His disciples, and said to them, 'If any want to become My followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow Me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for My sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it."

Here we see that to believe that Jesus is the Christ--the King, the Lord of all--is more than just saying the right words on Sunday mornings. 

To believe that Jesus is the Messiah is, first of all, to surrender ourselves, even to the point of discomfort and death, to God's only aim for our lives, our sole aim in life. Do you know what God's aim is for your life? Colossians 3:18 says: "And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit."

God aims to make us like Jesus! 

That means that you and I need to remain focused--day to day and moment to moment--on Jesus. 

We need to daily repent for sin and allow the Holy Spirit to renew us. 

As we stay focused on Jesus, through all of life, the Holy Spirit works a miracle: We who have been distorted by sin are made over in the image of Christ! 

It doesn't happen overnight. 

It doesn't happen within our time on this earth. 

On the way to our resurrection from the dead, we won't avoid suffering, rejection, or death any more than Jesus did. 

But we become more and more like Jesus. 

1 John 3:2 says to those who dare to follow Jesus, "Beloved, we are God's children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when [Jesus] is revealed [on His return to the earth], we will be like Him..." We will be made over into the truly human beings God intended us to be when He made the first man and the first woman.

To believe that Jesus is the Messiah is, secondly, to embrace the very life style of Jesus. When, through Jesus' death and resurrection, you understand that you are number one in God's eyes, you no longer feel the need to "look out for number one." You can start to look out for others the way Jesus looks out for us. 

Philippians 2:3-4 says: "Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others."

John Stott tells the story of a college classroom in India. The professor, a Hindu, realized that one of his students was a Christian. "If you Christians lived like Jesus Christ," the professor told the student, "India would be at your feet tomorrow." 

No Christian wants to have others at their feet. But our joy as Christians is only made complete when we share Christ with others and they too, come to believe in Jesus as the Christ.

Sin and death threaten to separate us from God for eternity.

God's cure is radical, but sure. 

It begins with the Christ, God the Son, suffering, dying, and rising for us. 

And it's fulfilled when, after confessing Jesus with our lips, we confess Him with our lives, taking up our crosses and following Him: submitting ourselves to the death of our old sinful selves, committing ourselves to letting God make us over in the image of Jesus Himself, and embracing the very life of self-sacrifice and unstinting love that Jesus lived.

May God give us the power to have a faith that's more than words, a faith that shows in our whole lives. May we submit to the radical cure that gives us life with God forever!

Amen

Finishing the Race

[This was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, earlier today.]

Mark 8:31-38
At the Summer Olympic Games in Mexico City in 1968, a runner named John Stephen Aquara ran in the marathon, representing Tanzania. Shortly after the race began, Aquara fell, causing serious injuries to both a knee and an ankle. He received some medical attention and then, bandaged and still bleeding, got back on the trail and resumed the race. He limped, hobbled, and skipped. Two hours after the other competitors had finished, John Stephen Aquara crossed the finish line. He even took a victory lap around the stadium. When a reporter later asked him why he had continued in the race when it was clear he could win no medal, Aquara replied, "My country didn’t send me seven thousand miles to enter the race. They sent me here to finish the race." [1]

When we turn from sin as a way of life and trust Jesus as our God and our only hope, our eternal destinies are assured. The believer in Jesus lives in the certainty that the Savior Who died and rose for sinners like us gives eternity with God to all who surrender to Him.

But our lives from that point aren’t meant to be spent just waiting for eternity. The Bible says that followers of Jesus are to live as aliens in a foreign country and that each of us, in our own ways, are to be "ambassadors for Christ." The Bible also says that life is a race and that each of us are to run it like competitors going for the gold. We’re to live each day we have on this earth with purpose and meaning and faithfulness to Christ even if everyone around us thinks we’re crazy. As followers of Jesus living in this world, we’re to be like John Stephen Aquara. We’re runners God has sent into the world not just to enter the race, but to finish the race!

Our Gospel lesson for this morning gives us a good indication of what’s involved in the race that you and I are to run. Just before the beginning of the incident that our lesson recounts, Jesus’ key disciple, Peter, made a stunning confession. He said that Jesus is the very reflection of God in a human being. Jesus, Peter says, is the Messiah and the blessed Son of God the Father. Jesus tells Peter that he’s absolutely right. What a feeling that must have given to Peter and the other disciples! Jesus was the long-awaited Messiah, about to begin His rule, and they were in on the ground floor.

But Jesus didn’t leave them with that heady feeling for long. Jesus chose that very moment to tell the disciples that He would go to Jerusalem, undergo all sorts of suffering, be rejected by the religious leaders, be condemned by the government, be killed, and three days later, rise again.

Mark, the writer of our lesson says that Jesus "said this quite openly.” So openly, in fact, that he riled Peter up! Peter pulled Jesus aside, grabbed Jesus by the shoulders as though trying to talk sense into a man who had stepped out onto a fiftieth-story building ledge, and shaking Jesus, began yelling at Him. One of the other Gospel writers says that Peter said, "God forbid! This will never happen to You, Lord!"

In this little performance, Peter manages to make Jesus fiercely angry! Jesus condemns Peter passionately. He tells Peter, "Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things!" The word Satan basically means one who obstructs or opponent. Peter thinks that he’s being a nice guy. He thinks that he’s encouraging Jesus to banish any negative thoughts about suffering or crosses. But Jesus tells Peter, "Get out of My way! The Father didn’t send me just to enter the race. He sent me to finish the race!"

For Jesus, that means suffering physically. It means suffering rejection and death on a cross. It also means something that Peter doesn’t seem to have heard: rising from the dead.

After lowering the boom on Peter, Jesus calls together His disciples and the crowd of people who watch His every move and He tells them: "If any want to become My followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow Me."

Followers of Jesus are called to finish the race just like Jesus did. Our race as followers of Christ is like a journey. In this journey, three major things need to happen. First: We're to say goodbye to our selfishness. (I must confess that I find this extremely difficult to do! More often than I care to think, my attitude is like that of George Bailey in It's a Wonderful Life: "I want to do what I want to do.")

But jettisoning our selfishness is precisely what Jesus means when He says that we’re to deny ourselves. Jesus calls us to quit worrying so much about ourselves and think about others.

Six years ago, I read about a woman who managed a North Carolina nursing center. She made a point of cultivating personal relationships with all the residents and had a genuine love for helping meet their physical and emotional needs. An avid gardener, she grew roses behind the nursing center and saw to it that each resident received a fresh-cut rose on their breakfast tray each morning. She gave of herself, treating others as she wanted to be treated because some day, she knew that she could be a resident of that nursing center. But she wasn’t ready for that yet when I read her story in 2003. You see, she was only ninety!

When you know that God will preserve you here and in eternity, you can abandon self-absorption in order to care about others, no matter your age or condition.

In our journey, Jesus says, also we need to carry our baggage. That’s what Jesus means when He tells us to take up our crosses. A lot of people have the wrong idea about what Jesus means when He tells us this. They think that “carrying our cross” means enduring the everyday challenges, frustrations, or tragedies of life. But our experience tells us and the Bible affirms, that everybody faces these things in life. They happen whether we want them to happen or not. They happen whether we’re Christians or not.

Jesus though, is talking about something we voluntarily take, something we choose to endure, like He voluntarily took up a cross to save us from sin and death. Taking up our cross then, means embracing experiences we’d rather not go through, knowing that when we do, others may see Jesus in us and want the hope and life Jesus offers.

An acquaintance of mine, a pastor of the Evangelical Covenant Church, named Tom, his wife Barb, and their neighbors in north Cincinnati suburb once found out that their brand new homes were built on a toxic waste dump. The situation made it onto the TV news and into the newspapers. Many of Tom’s and Barb’s neighbors reacted with fierce hatred toward the builder, public officials, and others.

But Tom and Barb made a decision, as Tom told me at the time, to be positive witnesses for Christ in the midst of this situation. Even as they sought to get their neighborhood cleaned up, Tom and Barb resolved to demonstrate and live the love of Jesus Christ. They made that resolution in spite of seeing the value of their home plummet and being concerned about the possible effects of their home’s location on their health.

As Tom put it: "This presents us with an opportunity to show Jesus to people. And Barb and I are on our knees a lot, asking God to help us be faithful." Tom and Barb volunteered to go through a situation they could have simply moved away from by, instead, looking for ways to help others experience the saving love of Jesus. They suffered for the sake of others. That’s what people do when they take up their crosses. I pray to God that one day I will be that faithful!

Finally: We’re to actually take the journey Jesus gives us. That’s what Jesus means when He says "Follow Me." Lots of people go to worship on Sunday mornings. But they don’t journey through their weeks with Christ! Day in and day out, we’re to put Jesus first and make following Him our highest priority.

That isn’t always easy! Loving God and loving neighbor in a dog-eat-dog world can be hard. It may mean rejection and suffering of one kind or another, just as it did for the Savior we follow. But remember—always remember—that Jesus, as He says, in our lesson today, will never be ashamed of those who dare to follow Him. Followers of Jesus are life’s ultimate winners. We belong to God forever. And we want to take as many people with us to heaven as possible! Those who humble themselves by denying themselves, taking up their crosses, and following wherever Jesus leads may look like Clark Kent to the world. But in the eyes of the only One Whose opinion really matters, they look like Superman and Superwoman.

God calls us not just to enter the race. But to finish the race. Let’s be true to that call!

A Look at This Coming Sunday's Bible Lessons (March 8, 2009) (Part 1)

[Regular readers of Better Living know that, each week, I try to take a look at the lessons on which worship for the subsequent Sunday will be built. I do this partly to clarify my own thinking, but also to help the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, the congregation I serve as pastor, to get ready for worship. Because we use a lectionary (that's a plan of Bible readings) associated with the Church Year, a version of which is used by most Christians in the world as they worship each week, I hope that others will find it helpful, too.]

Second Sunday in Lent
March 8, 2009

The Bible Lessons:
Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16
Psalm 22:23-31
Romans 4:13-25
Mark 8:31-38

Prayer of the Day
O God, by the passion of Your blessed Son You made an instrument of shameful death to be for us the means of life. Grant us so to glory in the cross of Christ that we may gladly suffer shame and loss for the sake of Your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, Who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen

General Comments:
1. Go here for a discussion of Lent. (In spite of the title of the linked piece, it contains quite a bit of information about Lent.)

2. The color associated with Lent is purple. Purple, as most children learn, is the color associated with royalty, making the color appropriate for this season that culminates with Jesus' "enthronement" on the cross and the confirmation of His kingship with His resurrection on Easter.

But how exactly did purple come to be associated with royalty, wealth, and power? Purple dyes were the most costly to create and so, the most costly to buy in the ancient world. Only kings and others of great wealth could afford to have anything with purple in it.

In the Roman Empire, the wealthiest and most powerful members of society--the senators--were the only ones who could incorporate purple into their garments. They did so with purple stripes on their togas. (Only the elite could wear togas in public. Others wore simple tunics.)

Purple dye was created from the "glandular fluids of certain types of sea snails in the eastern Mediterranean, known collectively as murex snails." (Since Christianity emerged in Palestine during an era dominated by Greco-Roman culture, you might also be interested in reading The Ancient City by Peter Connolly and Hazel Dodge for fascinating descriptions and illustrations of everyday life in ancient Rome and Athens.)

3. Unlike many Sundays in the Church Year, there is a connection between the first lesson (from Genesis) and the second lesson (from Romans). (The Psalm isn't really counted as a lesson, per se.) The lesson from Genesis recalls a covenant that God made with Abram (later Abraham) and Sarai (later Sarah) to become the ancestors of a generations of believers. What did Abram have to do to be so blessed? Believe in the promise and the promise-maker.

In Romans, Paul underscores that this is all that's required of us today: To believe in the God made known definitively and authoritatively in Jesus.

We cannot earn, any more than Abraham could, the status of righteousness, rightness with God, and with it eternity with God and the presence of God in our daily lives now. That comes as a gift which God confers on sinners who turn from their sin (and its control over their lives) and instead, trust or believe in Jesus (and His control over their lives).

More on the individual texts later in the week.