Reading the Gospels for Lent

 

Read Matthew 16-18

 

In these three chapters we encounter a rollercoaster of emotions.  First, you have Jesus talking about the cross.  To be clear, the cross was not a shiny brass object at the front of a church, the cross was a form of legalized execution.  The cross was Rome’s way of dealing with political threats.  The cross evoked fear.  You didn’t pick up your cross, you avoided it at all costs!  To place the cross at the center of the faith is to place the good news that the suffering of life is not just to be tolerated or endured.  Rather suffering is the place we meet God.  God’s love incarnate, in the flesh of Jesus, faced the cross and says we will too.  I think about the last few exhausting, emotionally draining, politically explosive, socially divisive years.  The cross of too much violence of school shootings and too many African Americans killed by police; the cross of cultural wars against the LGBTQ community where we legalize discrimination; the cross of elected officials using power against others; the cross of inflation that causes people to have to choose between food on the table and medical insurance ~ don’t even get me started on property insurance in our state.  The cross of politicalization of everything.

Then, right after Jesus says there will be moments when the weight of the cross is on your soul, Jesus is transfigured.  He goes up to have a committee meeting with Peter and James and John. After a short twelve-mile hike (I totally made up that number) up a steep mountain climb, Jesus then calls another meeting with Moses and Elijah.  You gotta wonder how the disciples knew it was Moses and Elijah – or maybe they were wearing name tags like any welcoming church member would do.  Hold these two narratives, because too often I think we struggle with processing our pain, so we pass it along in comments on Facebook or texts.  This was a theme of yesterday, how our suffering becomes a competition in a game no one really wants to play or will ever “win”.  Suffering can connect us at our deepest, most vulnerable, soul level, but we don’t get there.  We stay on the surface of political talking points that get tossed about to see whose side are you on.  To be a people of transfiguration is to be a people of transformation.  The cross is not a transaction (Jesus is not a credit card paying some “debt”, God has already shown time and time and time again a high compassion for human brokenness in the Hebrew Scriptures.  God shows forgiveness and loving kindness.  After all, how could killing God’s son count for us rather than against us as humanity?)  Rather the cross is a sign that love is fiercer than we can ever know.  To be sure, it may not feel that way, because often when show humans show love, we may think we understand God’s call, but I am not sure we do.  Rather, human love it is like bringing a chess piece to a checkers competition or wearing a Hawaiian shirt to a formal dinner.  God’s love isn’t playing by the rules of the world, so it isn’t going to win the game the powers that be in the world are playing.  The gospel, good news is about a freedom that can’t be won on a battlefield, but a freedom of a life that isn’t bound by what hurts and harms us.  Too often we are lost sheep, we are adult-ish and childish rather than childlike from chapter 18.  Reading the gospels reminds us of another way that the world, your family, even your logical mind may not understand, but your soul knows to be true.  May these chapters shine a light of God’s love brightly on you.  Amen.