“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.
~Mark 8:34
 
This is tricky—an invitation spoiling for misuse. Slippery ground. An abusive relationship, a medical affliction, racial and economic inequity, unnecessary suffering of any kind. Could any of these ever be described as a cross a disciple, or anyone, should bear? We pray not. The scriptures insist not.
 
Suffering due to abuse of power is never redemptive and is antithetical to the character of God. Indeed, to bear one’s cross is first about the elimination of suffering by following the trail Jesus blazed. We resist evil as he did, rather than accept it. We join in solidarity with the crucified; even when it unsettles and inflames the status quo.
 
This is, simply, the way to life from the one who calls all creation beloved. The Lenten way: new life comes through the denial of our worst selves. In his very next breath Jesus says, “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.”
 
What are we to make of this in this season of pandemic and the unavoidable truth that suffering, and denial seems to be borne by some far more than others? What are we to make of this call for the healing not only of this heartbroken and luminous world, but for our own selves? Are these not one and the same question?
 
Enter into worship.

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For Christ also suffered for sins once for all…in order to bring [us] to God.
—1 Peter 3:18

In order to bring us to God.

Here is the invitation of Lent in a nutshell—the gift of a season journeyed toward God that comes by way of dying.

Do not let this be a morbid thought. Life has always come this way. Our own suffering is not meaningless. Just look outside and let the tree buds and crocus and daffodil shoots testify.

And consider the gospels. Let them preach of faith. Mark was the first, written sometime around the year 65. John was the last of the four, around 90 or 100. Two full generations between them. And how different they are as the souls who shaped them tried to figure out how to respond to shattered expectations that Jesus had not returned, as they shaped a new coherence, an enduring faith!

We have measured our loss in days, months, perhaps. We are overwhelmed by a year of pandemic. Our last worship together in person was nearly one year ago. What we have lost! But this is not the only measure. We are enduring changes that are generations in the making and in the experiencing.

Perhaps one of the greatest gifts of the chaos of this moment and this season of history, perhaps the greatest gift of this Lent is the gift of easing us off the dependence of being able to control our environment that comes from privilege and power. That we would lean on God instead, that we find God once again for a new generation.

…in order to bring us to God.

​Enter into worship.

It is a striking scene. Jesus on the mountain with Elijah and Moses. In the linear thinking of our European Enlightenment mindset this story is indeed strange. Foreign. Not so much, though, to the Indigenous cultures we dismissed for their backwards ways as we drove them off their lands. Not so for the ancients who understood the wisdom of the ages is available for counsel.

Amidst the wonder of this mountaintop scene is an invitation for us to remember that we too have access to the wisdom of “all the law and the prophets.” They are here. Now. Available to us in these scriptures and in this Way of discipleship. As is the presence of this one about whom the clouds proclaim “This is my Son, the Beloved, listen to him!

As we encounter Holy Wisdom in this Transfiguration Sunday and its invitation to the self-reflection and renewal of Lent, may our eyes be opened to the Holy all around us. May we listen and learn of what makes for life. Enter into worship.

Have you not seen? Have you not heard?
 
Well, yes, we have. We have seen those moments when the tidal wave of justice has risen up, when our deepest and purest longings have echoed in other voices, when hope and history rhyme.
 
And yet.
 
There is reason to wonder. An imperfect union. An endless history of human violence. Our own hearts arrhythmic with self-interest, mediocrity and doubt. Some moments and epochs seem to be more about subtraction than addition.
 
And yet.
 
All is not as it seems. Have you not seen? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth.
 
Wait for the Lord; renew your strength. Seek God where you can be found. Enter into worship.