2-10-2016

Good Morning All!!   

           Luke 9:22; “saying, “The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.”

    Today is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the season of Lent.  It is a time when we focus on what is often called “The Passion of Christ” specifically what our verse addresses; the suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus.  We call it the passion because of its intensity, because of the rawness of the experience.  In a short and condensed amount of time, from Thursday night until Sunday morning, everything in the world completely changed.  During this time frame, all of our hopes, all of our longings, all of our desperate pleas are answered by God in his unimaginable act of love. 

    Yet these few days are just the culmination of Jesus’ life on earth.  From the very start of his life Jesus is tempted by the devil.  The devil tried to move the passions of Jesus from that of doing his Father’s will to the desires and passions of sinful man.  The devil tries to get Jesus to respond to greed, arrogance, selfishness, self-preservation, self- aggrandizement, just to name a few of the temptations of Jesus.  Yet the level of Jesus’ temptation was probably far greater than you and I can ever imagine.  Every day the devil would have focused on tempting Jesus.  Trying to make him a king, using the Scribes and the Pharisees as pawns to needle and provoke Jesus, using the disciples with their apparent lack of understanding, using his mother’s weeping at the crucifixion, any of these and a myriad of other actions that Jesus could have “fixed”.  He could have allowed the people to make him king, he could have performed miracles unknown to shout the Pharisees, he could have dismissed the disciples, he could have ended his mother’s pain by not being crucified; he could have but he chose to do the Father’s will and that was the Passion.

    So over these next few weeks, think about the cost to the Father and to Jesus.  Think about how great a love is displayed in these acts of love.  Remember that because of these acts of suffering, dying, rising and ascension to heaven, we are redeemed by God as his children.  Not as slaves or property but as children, beloved by Him, chosen by Him to live with Him in eternal love and grace.  This is what the Passion means; you and I have life eternal, we have the hope and the comfort that this gives us.  Our tomorrow is taken care of.  Our debt to God has been paid and we can now see God as our loving Father and not as an avenging judge. 

    So as we think about the Passion, see it as love and that our response is love.  Our response or reaction should be one of thankfulness, praise and joy.  Our response should be one of trying to share this love with those around us with those who are in need of it.  The love of God should lift our love for those around us.  So try and lift someone’s spirit today.

Father, your great love lifts us up and gives us all we need.  You fill us with your love and you give us peace that the world never knows.  Lead us to look up and see your love and to live our lives in service to those around us.  In the precious name of Jesus we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret