Last week I suggested that we devote our Lenten study to a richer understanding of the resurrection.
By now someone must be wondering why I have not been talking about sin in anticipation of Lent.
Lent is a season of repentance, after all. The Ash Wednesday liturgy turns on the penitential symbol of ashes, the penitential Psalm 51, and a powerful Litany of Penitence.
“So Dean Owensby,” one might ask, “why aren’t you telling us about where we’ve fallen short and how to set ourselves straight?”
Jesus came to proclaim the Good News, and every minister of the Gospel has been sent by him to do the same thing. Homiletics professors routinely tell their students that you have to know the Bad News before the Good News sounds genuinely good. I don’t dispute that. But my experience teaches me something that needs to be added to this homiletical advice.
Most of us are all too aware of where we get it wrong and how far we have to go.
The limits of our powers of self-improvement make themselves abundantly clear often enough.
Heartache, regret, loneliness, remorse, fear and resentment are among the common fruits of the Fall that we taste with wearying regularity.
They grow from the soil of our distorted, broken relationships with God and with each other. Remembering these bitter fruits and the soil from which they grow is not much of a spiritual challenge.
By contrast, our principal spiritual challenge is to live this life as people being restored, renewed and redeemed by the love of God in Christ.
We are overcoming the brokenness that makes headlines and causes sleepless nights through the power of Christ’s resurrection. Christ is doing for us what we cannot do for ourselves, but we are not passive recipients. We are active participants.
We are called to cooperate with grace.
Even during Lent, our focus should never be on sin. Our focus should be on what God is doing about it through his Son our Savior Jesus Christ. Even in the midst of Lent, we are meant to be people of joy and hope, because we are people reborn by the power of God’s love for us.
Given the struggles that life presents us in our daily rounds, this Good News can be pushed to the background. That is why I invite us all to renew and deepen our understanding of the resurrection this Lent.
The resurrection is the source of our hope and our joy. It is the power of love flowing even now through you and through me. By focusing on the resurrection, we will not only know comfort and strength, but we can be the beacon of hope and the instrument of love in the world that we have been called to be.
