Leaning Into Lent: Day 39—Majestic Submission

Lean closer. Listen. The city hums. The occasional motorcycle from the new spring crop rumbles by. The furnace hums. Purple finches squabble over bird seed at the feeders. Cars pass. Maddy, the dog, twitches and whimpers in her dreams on the sofa. Railway locomotive diesels throb through the coulee. Life goes on around me. Most people are enjoying a holiday. Most are oblivious to what we Jesus followers are up to on Good Friday just as they must have been in Jerusalem when Jesus drank the cheap sour wine, said "It is finished" and gave up his spirit. Life went on all around as "he poured himself out to death" (Isa 53:12); so many oblivious, then and now, to the final fight to the death for their souls and ours.

Lean even closer. Listen. Nothing seems to have changed.

I don't feel the anguish that Jesus felt. My life is not in danger. I can't crank the feelings up at will. But that's not the point. It really is finished. The point is to listen to the words of Holy Scripture, and to remember and to honour Him for—to give him worth for who He is and what He completed. I remember at an Evangelical Association city wide Good Friday service a few years ago, now retired Pastor Mark Bolender called what Jesus did, "majestic submission."

When I lean close and bow, my all too frail, willful and sinful humanity is brought into distressing relief when compared to His majestic innocence and submission.

And yet, I keep leaning in—listening. What makes Good Friday so very good is the way that through that majestic submission, "God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." (2 Cor 4.6)

My heart cannot but glow in the face of such knowledge.

From Night Prayer:

Almighty God,
as we stand at the foot of the cross of your Son,
help us to see and know your love for us,
so that in humility, love and joy
we may place at his feet
all that we have and all that we are;
through Jesus Christ our Saviour.
Amen.

Gene+