Lent Midweek Series, Week Five

Before Holy Week starts tomorrow, I figure I should post the final of the five Lent Midweek reflections that I wrote. If you want more information about what this series was all about, take a look at the first post in the series.

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The song for the final week was my favorite, and was the genesis of this series, Sorrow words and music by Greg Gaffin).

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When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, some two miles away, and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them about their brother. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home. Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.” Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” She said to him, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.”

     - John 11:17-27 

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Sorrow. This song speaks some to the reality that we all live with … namely, the reality that every person at some point in life has to deal with sorrow, and suffering, and misery - and the truth that at times each one of us feels like we’ve been trampled down.

Did you ever do that thought exercise? Maybe in college philosophy class, or maybe in high school civics, or maybe just sitting around late at night with friends - the thought exercise that involves dreaming about how the world could be perfect, or at least much better than it is now.

What’d you come up with? Personal accountability? Stronger churches? Better access to natural foods? More cohesive neighborhoods? More support from other people? More individual responsibility? People being nicer to each other?

I don’t have the definitive foolproof answer to how we make the world a better place. You don’t either. Some people think they do, though. I wonder if that isn’t the purpose of politics. Do politicians, at least the best ones, get into that field because they believe that if their opinions were implemented as public policy, then the world would be a better and more perfect place?

Honestly, I hope so - in fact, I hope that’s why each of us does the work that we do, so that the world could be a better and more perfect place.

The unfortunate truth, though, is that despite all our thought experiments and all our politics and all our opinions, we won’t be able to make the world a perfect place … because (as you know) we all sin and fall short of the Glory of God.

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with trying. Perhaps if every living soul was upright and strong, our world would be much better. Maybe if we no longer trampled one another down, or if all of the soldiers in all of the armies simply refused to kill each other any more, then we would enjoy a greater degree of happiness, a greater degree of joy.

So I say, let’s give it a try.

Because even though we all know it will fail, it’s worth trying. And maybe, just maybe, our world will end up just a little better for the trying.

But in the end, we’ll never rid the world of sorrow. You know this, because you live in the world and recognize that it’s broken and sinful - and the only way the sorrow that permeates the world will dissipate, as the song notes, is when the only true Messiah rescues us from ourselves.

Which, as Martha hears, is where we meet Christ - who is the Resurrection and the Life, the Messiah who rescues us from ourselves.