Season of Lent - Week 7 - Silence

As we close out Lent and enter Good Friday and Easter weekend, let us join our Lord in his silence as he carries our sins and our sorrows before his accusers. Take time to reflect on these two texts from Scripture and the below lyrics by Andrew Peterson as he journeys with Jesus through the Garden of Gethsemane (link to listen to the song is below).

Isaiah 53:7

He was oppressed and afflicted,

    yet he did not open his mouth;

he was led like a lamb to the slaughter,

    and as a sheep before its shearers is silent,

    so he did not open his mouth. (NIV)

Matthew 27:12-14

But when the leading priests and the elders made their accusations against him, Jesus remained silent. 13 “Don’t you hear all these charges they are bringing against you?” Pilate demanded. 14 But Jesus made no response to any of the charges, much to the governor’s surprise. (NLT)

It's enough to drive a man crazy; it'll break a man's faith

It's enough to make him wonder if he's ever been sane

When he's bleating for comfort from Thy staff and Thy rod

And the heaven's only answer is the silence of God

It'll shake a man's timbers when he loses his heart

When he has to remember what broke him apart

This yoke may be easy, but this burden is not

When the crying fields are frozen by the silence of God

And if a man has got to listen to the voices of the mob

Who are reeling in the throes of all the happiness they've got

When they tell you all their troubles have been nailed up to that cross

Then what about the times when even followers get lost?

'Cause we all get lost sometimes

There's a statue of Jesus on a monastery knoll

In the hills of Kentucky, all quiet and cold

And He's kneeling in the garden, as silent as a Stone

All His friends are sleeping and He's weeping all alone

And the man of all sorrows, he never forgot

What sorrow is carried by the hearts that he bought

So when the questions dissolve into the silence of God

The aching may remain, but the breaking does not

The aching may remain, but the breaking does not

In the holy, lonesome echo of the silence of God

Andrew Peterson, “The Silence of God” lyrics © NEW SPRING PUBLISHING INC, NEW SPRING PUBLISHING, INC.

Season of Lent - Week 6 - Submission

We are on journey with Jesus. As we near the Cross, we take time to reflect on what thoughts, feelings and ideas filled his beautiful soul. One of the ideas that filled the life and mind of Jesus was surrender or submission to God and his will.

Read slowly over the texts below and reflect on your own heart. Talk to the Lord about what you discover.

Where are you in relation to the submission of Christ?

Would you characterize yourself as “open and willing” or “closed and willful”?

Phil 2:5-11 ESV

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Hebrews 5:7-8 NIV

During the days of Jesus’ life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with fervent cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission. Son though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered.

James 4:7 ESV

Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

Season of Lent - Week 5 - Brokenness

The word “brokenness” is thrown around a lot these days both inside and outside the church. Since we can’t be too careful about the words we use, I want to propose a definition and reflect on what it has to teach us as we journey through Lent. Brokenness is our experienced inability to make life work. It usually flows from either conviction of sin (see Psalm 32 and 51), or intense suffering of some kind (e.g., Psalm 88).

Brokenness stops us in our tracks. We experience running into something and this something breaks us, tears and pulls at us and disables us in some way. We come to the end of ourselves and are filled with a combination of helplessness, sorrow, anger, depression, fear and/or shame. Regardless of the cause, when we are broken we are simply unable to keep going the way we have been going. We become desperate for relief, comfort, clarity and some semblance of control. We long for a sense of safety and rest to return.

As the elders have discussed how to help Redemption Spokane become a “safe place,” the issue of brokenness has come up, particularly in how we share our brokenness and how we listen to others sharing their own experiences. There are healthy and unhealthy ways to express brokenness. For example, social media has proven to be a most unhelpful form of expressing brokenness because it doesn’t draw upon the resources of face to face relationships. It is too easy to hide behind our technology and avoid considering the preciousness of others as well as avoiding responsibility for our own actions and words. We often use social media to simply generate sympathy for our plight, but it rarely translates into actual relational support because there is very little accountability on either side. We need the presence of others, not just sympathy.

Those of us who are hurting often ask, “How do I know when it’s safe to share?” This is a difficult question involving many factors. Generally, it is safe to share your brokenness in the context of a relationship in which you have a measure of reasonable trust. Those of us who hear the story of someone’s pain have a responsibility to listen well and resist fixing; we need to hold our friends’ pain up to the healing presence of Christ and seek to be present to our friend, no matter how uncomfortable or awkward that might get. At times, we offer practical assistance. Those of us who share also have responsibility in this - we need to share our brokenness in relationship to the healing presence of Christ and not in a way that is asking another person to save us. Many of us can sense when our boundaries are being threatened by a friend who is broken and unknowingly looking to us to fix things.

What does all this have to do with Lent? Lent is a time when we pay attention to our brokenness, inability and need so that we might grow in experiencing the provision of Christ for us in deeper ways. I encourage you to begin to take stock of your broken places, the places where you feel stuck and hopeless. Begin to ask God to speak into them and shed his light there. Take courage from God’s love and light and begin to share your burdens with the Christian brothers and sisters around you. Lent tells us that none of us are alone and none of us suffer in vain. We will come to find that in the sufferings of Jesus, our sufferings find healing redemption.