Dead Man Walking During the Season of Lent

How interesting to be going through a transition from Skyline Church, where I have been privileged to serve for the past 14 years, to Asbury Church, to which God is leading me to help nurture and encourage the movement of God's people gathered there. The resources I have gathered to help me navigate this passage describe leaving a long-term pastorate as a form of death - saying so many goodbye's and handing over ministry tasks among the saints here that have defined me for so long to other capable followers of Jesus who will carry on some of these tasks and lay others that have meant so much to me aside. At the same time, we are in this season of Lent walking together a spiritual path of remembrance of Jesus' journey to Jerusalem and the cross - a journey that beckons each of us to take up our cross and follow Jesus - to lose our lives to save them.

This journey of Lent calls into question everything we think we know about death and life. We think that death marks the end of our lives - the obliteration of all that we are. We fear death, as the last inevitable sign of our weakness and powerlessness before the power of evil and darkness in this world. Each day of our lives when we sin, and fail ourselves, or others, or God, by doing something that breaks our connection to God and others or failing to do something that would strengthen our connection to God and others, we draw closer to the ultimate separation from all things which is our death.

Or so we think.

The death of Jesus is so different from any of these misconceptions - these haunted dreams we carry with us about death - that his death on a cross in Jerusalem redefines what it means to die (and what it means to live). Throughout this journey of Lent, Jesus reminds us of the inevitable destination: the Son of Man will be handed over to his enemies; he will suffer terribly; and he will be put to death. The disciples don't want to hear it, of course. What can his demise mean for the movement toward God that his life represents that they have each given up everything to follow? Without Jesus, they are nothing. They will be utterly lost. Yet on he leads them towards the Holy City where he will suffer and die for the sake of love. On he leads us all.

You get the idea that Jesus has in mind a different destination that the one that strikes fear into our timid hearts. He walks resolutely and purposefully toward this death; this death begins to look like what he was born to do. And as we follow Jesus in our own time, toward our own inevitable death, we can learn something invaluable by resisting the temptation to move to quickly to the resolution of Easter and the miracle of the resurrection.

In my own between time, God calls me to pay close attention to the way Jesus journeys toward Jerusalem and death. He walks with an absolute trust that follows a trajectory beyond the veil of death - his own death or the death of his followers or the many, many people he has come to love. And he invites me (and you) to walk on this reimagined path as well (those who cling to their lives will lose them; but those who lose their lives, for my sake, will find true and abundant life).

So what does walking along this new path that leads to and beyond death look like? The principle characteristic of this path is peace - freedom from anxiety and fear - a peace that defines each step with intentionality and gratitude. There are no coincidences and nothing is left to blind chance. Every moment on the path that leads beyond death participates in an eternal unity that profoundly connects to God. We ware walking this path, yet every step brings us to an arrival, a homecoming, a place of belonging - we are at any particular "here" for a reason - receiving and participating in God's presence and power as we bestow and receive the blessings of all creation.

Can we ever say enough about this peace that passes all understanding? The angels sang of this blessing Jesus would bring to all people at his birth. On his last night with his friends, Jesus blessed them with peace - not as the world gives - but the peace that enabled him to lay his life down for his friends, and to invite them to love each other as he loved them. We cannot imagine the power and promise of this peace of Christ - our birthright. Peace that transcends pain, paves the path of forgiveness, invites us to rejoice in all things, swallows up death in victory, and trumpets the nearness of the Kingdom of God.

He has not left us orphans. We know the way he is going. Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life. Toward death, certainly, but also in peace that sees beyond the death of our pride, our fear and our isolation, toward communion with God and with all creation. I should be glad for such a death.