Marked for Life

Today is Ash Wednesday. Yesterday was Fat Tuesday, also known as Mardi Gras, which many of you have heard of, associating it with the craziness that goes on in New Orleans every year at this time. 

Today also begins a forty-day season known in the Christian church as Lent. Many of you already understand that Lent is the period of time leading up to Easter. The reason for its being forty days is tied to Jesus’ time in the wilderness of fasting and praying just before he began his ministry (see Matthew 4:1-11). Christians use those forty days to prepare our hearts and minds to fully celebrate Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection—his sacrifice for our sins and his victory over sin and death.

We begin that period with Ash Wednesday. It is a day to repent…to acknowledge our own shortcomings and our need for God’s grace in our lives. It is a day to grieve the sin that continues to oppress the abused, the disenfranchised, the needy in the world. It is a day to mourn the hearts that have yet to hear the good news and to lament the times that we have fallen short of the call of God on our lives to carry the message of God’s love in large and small ways to a needy world desperate to receive that gospel.

I grew up in the Baptist church and then joined the Nazarene church when I was seventeen. Ash Wednesday was not a significant part of our church calendar throughout most of my life. It’s only been in the relatively recent past that our local church has begun having an Ash Wednesday service. It has become an incredibly meaningful day of the year in my life; the evening service has a powerful effect on my heart.

Ours is not a highly liturgical church, meaning that we do not have a formal set of rites, a traditional sense of dress among our clergy, and a given series of readings. But for our Ash Wednesday service we borrow a tradition from the liturgical churches. Following communion, or the Lord’s Supper, one of the church elders will use ash to smudge a cross on each of our foreheads. This symbolizes the death of Jesus for our sins.

The first time I received a cross on my forehead, I immediately began weeping. Weeping, by the way, is not the same as crying. Weeping comes from a deep sense of grief, and I was grieving. That cross on my forehead brought home a deep sense of responsibility and a deeper sense of connection to the one who had taken the responsibility for me.

I play one of the keyboards at my church and when I returned to the keyboard, I was unable to see the music through my tears. All I could think was, Jesus died for me. Jesus actually died for me. Oh, thank you, Jesus!

After the service was over, we all left the sanctuary silently and somberly. What I had not prepared for was the vision that awaited me out in the foyer of the church. Every forehead I saw had an ashen cross smudged on it. Every single one. This time I started crying tears of joy.

Just before he went to be crucified, Jesus prayed to his Father, “I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one—I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me” (John 17:22-23).

We were all marked for life. Oh, thank you, Jesus!

Symbols

Whenever Americans view photographs or video images of the New York skyline taken between 1973 and 2001, they cringe at the sight of the World Trade Center towers for they all know what happened there in September of 2001. The buildings themselves were not to blame for the events, but they were the site of one of the greatest tragedies in American history. The towers themselves have come to symbolize the heartbreak of terrorism invading our beloved homeland.

The cross is likewise a symbol of a history-changing event and prompts an emotional response for many people. It is the Christian symbol of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. The cross itself was not to blame for the death of Christ, but it was there that he suffered and died for our sins and won the final victory over the bondage of sin in our lives. When a Christian views the cross, he or she is reminded of the event that forever changed the relationship between God and humanity and the triumph that Jesus won once and for all.

 

This Easter, as we once again celebrate the resurrection of Jesus from the grave, may we remember that this conquest over sin was complete and for all time. It was not just a first step in a battle; it was the end of the war. Jesus emerged from the grave as Divine Conqueror. His triumph over sin was for all humanity, for the rest of history.

Years ago I read a book by Hannah Whitall Smith called The Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life. The truth that this brilliant woman kept emphasizing is that Jesus saves me now and he completely saves me. I don’t have to wait for some eventual salvation from sin and its bonds in my life…he has saved me from the moment I ask for and receive his salvation. And that salvation is not some halfway or partial work in my life; he didn’t do all that he did on earth, on the cross, and through the gates of hell just for me to continue to slog through the muck of sin day after day. No! He came to deliver me from all of that bondage NOW!

Some of you still haven’t figured out what I’m talking about. Some of you are afraid to believe me. But some of you DO know what I’m talking about and have tears in your eyes because you know it’s true. This is not about judgment or telling you that you have to be a better person…this is about the grace of God reaching out to take your life and make it into something better that you couldn’t even dream about before.

I am praying that these words will remind you that Jesus went through everything we celebrate this week to do something amazing. The cross…that symbol of the crucifixion of Jesus…is not about death; it’s about LIFE.

I, the Lord, have called you in righteousness;

    I will take hold of your hand.

I will keep you and will make you

    to be a covenant for the people

    and a light for the Gentiles,

to open eyes that are blind,

    to free captives from prison

    and to release from the dungeon those who sit in darkness. (Isaiah 42:6-7)

Share the Love

Over the coming weeks I will be posting a series of blogs on one topic: "Share the Love." I believe we are all called to do this by our Maker. It is our highest calling among our fellow humans, and I have discovered a multitude of ways to do this and to be empowered to do so. I want to share these with you.

The best way to understand the meaning and importance of sharing love with each other is to read Jesus' own words to His disciples directing them to love. Jesus' life was an absolute definition of love and His words to His disciples on His last evening with them made His command clear: "Love each other as I have loved you" (John 15:12).

Throughout John's gospel, John refers to himself as "the disciple whom Jesus loved" (for examples, see John 13:23 and 19:26). John was on the scene for some of the most significant events in Jesus' earthly life (Matthew 17:1). When Jesus hung on the cross, He gave John the responsibility of caring for Jesus' own mother, Mary (John 19:25-27). The brotherly relationship between Jesus and John must have been the very model of the bond Jesus was calling all of us to have with each other, and John's purpose in recording this account of Jesus' life and message was to communicate the nature and essence of that love.

Chapters 14 through 16 are the words Jesus spoke to His disciples, His closest friends, allies, and students, just before He was handed over to the officials for His crucifixion. Jesus knew what was coming and that He had only a few hours left to communicate His deepest thoughts, concerns, and desires to these friends. Knowing that His time among them was nearing an end, the one thought that He kept coming back to over and over again was simply, "Love one another." It must have been the most important thing He wanted them to know, the one guiding principle He wanted them to carry with them through their upcoming trials and challenges in the days, weeks, and years to come.

Jesus knew that this love--the very foundation of His connection with God the Father and the Holy Spirit (John 15:9)--would be the bond that would connect His disciples to Him and to each other, the basis upon which His church would be founded, and the truth that would unite the church as one Body. In fact, in one of his later writings, John says that our very identity as followers of Jesus Christ would be revealed in our love: "This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not a child of God; nor is anyone who does not love his brother. This is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another" (1 John 3:10-11).

But Jesus did not simply give us this command to love one another and then leave it to us to figure out how to love that way. In John 17, Jesus closed His time with the disciples that night with a prayer of protection, sanctification, and empowerment; a prayer that God would grant them the same love that He had shown Jesus; a prayer that the Holy Spirit would be sent to dwell in and among them and fill them with His love. He knew we would not be able to conjure up that kind of love through our own strength or determination.

Jesus knew that the kind of love needed to change our lives and to change the world would only be possible through the grace and divine power of God Himself.