[re]imagine Lent: 4/1/2023
We encourage you to sign up for the 40-40-40 Lenten Challenge, a challenge with our partner Southeastern Iowa Synod to participate in Lenten practices, including these daily devotions. Just signing up counts as participation! More info here.
“Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death— even death on a cross. ~ ”
Jesus did not have to suffer. He did not have to endure the mocking, the betrayal, the shame, and injustice of it all. He, though he was God, emptied himself and became obedient to the point of death. And the beauty of this reality about the God whom we worship is that this is the truth of love.
In God’s love, there is always choice, always freedom. God’s love is not coercive, or manipulative, and it does not exert its will. This is the love into which you are invited in the waters of baptism. Joined to Christ and God’s divine love, the Spirit brings you to death in these waters, that you may live.
Imagine how we might birth a new world out of these waters – a world of love and peace which surpasses understanding. A world of compassion and justice. A world where your needs are met by others who have emptied themselves, and where you, likewise, empty yourself for the sake of others. This is the choice of God’s love – life through death, or a dead life.
Artist Lauren Wright Pittman says of this choice, “[it] isn’t an obvious one. One side looks like an opulent pile of riches, a crown, and endless power, while the other looks like tattered and worn hands with new life blooming out of wounds, work, burdens, and relationships. This choice may seem like a distant decision made long ago, but it’s a decision to be made every single day, one moment at a time. In working for and with the downtrodden, poor, orphaned, widowed, ostracized, and oppressed, we will find ourselves."
About the image: Pittman, Lauren Wright. A Choice, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=57082 [retrieved March 31, 2023]. Original source: Lauren Wright Pittman, http://www.lewpstudio.com/.
Prayer
Hosanna! I praise you God, for your saving grace. I praise you for giving me Jesus, your son, who suffered with and for us all. Open my heart and mind to all that it is to be human, that your word might sustain me and empower me to speak that same word to all you put in my path, that the world might come to trust in the resurrection and redemption of all creation.
Amen.
Journal Prompt
As we prepare to enter into Palm/Passion Sunday, I invite you to reflect on the ways that this day encompasses a wide spectrum of human experience: from praise to denial, joy to fear, and palm waving to stone throwing. How have you experienced Jesus’ presence with you in all these times of your own life? How might God be calling the church to reimagine how we talk about this reality with even more and new people?
Week Five Devotions by Rev. Erika Uthe, uthe@seiasynod.org