Tag: Journey to the Cross

Journey to the Cross 2023: beginning our Lenten journey

Matt EricksonLeave a comment

“Even now,” declares the Lord,
“return to me with all your heart,
with fasting and weeping and mourning.”
Rend your heart
and not your garments.
Return to the Lord your God,
for he is gracious and compassionate,
slow to anger and abounding in love,
and he relents from sending calamity.
(Joel 2:12-13)

Join us tonight, February 22, at 6:30 PM, in-person or via live stream for the beginning of our Lenten journey at Eastbrook Church with our annual Journey to the Cross service. Each year, we invite everyone to fast during the day and break the fast by participating in the Lord’s Supper together at this service. For more information on fasting, explore the resources I have pulled together here.

This also begins our Lenten (and beyond) devotional journey, “Fractured,” written by the Eastbrook community that accompanies our new sermon series. You can access the devotional online, as a downloadable PDF, via the Eastbrook app, or through a limited-run of paper copies. I’ve included the entry I wrote for today in the devotional below.

For more information on the importance of Lent and the beginning of Lent on Ash Wednesday, consider reading this post: “What is Ash Wednesday and Lent?“

Dust to Dust

Read Genesis 3:14-19

“By the sweat of your brow
    you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
    since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
    and to dust you will return.” (Genesis 3:19)

The journey of Lent begins with a sober reminder: we are dust and we will return to dust. Earlier, we’re told in Genesis 2 that “the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being” (2:7). The man (adam) was formed out of the dust (adamah), or mud, and filled with the breath of God before being placed in God’s Garden in the land of delights (Eden). The earthiness of humanity in Genesis 2 feels freighted with purpose and beauty from God.

But in Genesis 3, after the man and woman assert their autonomy from God, a series of curses come upon humanity and the creation. Now, the man will work the soil with great trouble instead of the labor of delight. This sweaty toil will continue until the man (adam) returns to the dust (adamah).  The idea of being made from dust now holds a heaviness for us with a dark destiny at its end.

Most of the time we avoid the dark destiny of our dust-formed lives. There are entire industries and vocations dedicated to distracting us from death. This may seem like a good thing until some unexpected diagnosis or fearful event brings us face-to-face with our mortality. Suddenly everything shifts. We must consider our end and are often unprepared for that reality.

The journey of Lent begins with an invaluable gift to counteract our escapist tendencies. The traditional beginning of Lent with Ash Wednesday combines the application of ashes with the stark statement of Genesis 3:19, “for dust you are and to dust you will return.” It is a reminder that the fractures of sin touch our lives and we, too, are lost apart from the intervention of God. It is true, as Paul writes, that “the wages of sin is death.” It is good to remember that reality. It is good to see our sin and its weight. It is good to consider the seriousness of death that we might live in humility before God and others. Thank God for the remainder of that statement from Paul: “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:23). 

So, friends, let us enter this journey of Lent in all humility and sober reflection. Let us pray with the psalmist, “Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom” (Psalm 90:12)

Begin with Brokenness: An Ash Wednesday Sermon

Matt EricksonLeave a comment

Last week at Eastbrook’s “Journey to the Cross” service, I shared this message for Ash Wednesday rooted in Joel 2:12-17.

Sometimes what’s broken can become more beautiful and stronger than before.

In the Japanese artform kintsugi broken pieces of pottery are taken by an artist and repaired by mending the imperfections with a lacquer infused with powdered gold. Instead of flaws to be hidden, the imperfections become part of the beauty and strength of the vessel worth highlighting.

Kintsugi speaks about two realities we experience in our lives and in the world all the time. One the one hand, things are not the way they should be, and on the other hand, beauty can break forth unexpectedly from brokenness.

The journey of Lent is like this. On the one hand we travel a shocking, broken road with Jesus in Jerusalem. He is hailed as King at His triumphal entry. Many people flock to hear His powerful words and teaching. They watch Him cause a scandal in the religious center. He shows the fruitlessness of dead religion and turns expectations upside down. But what started with great acclaim turns to dark destruction as Jesus eventually is crucified in Jerusalem. His body beaten. His blood poured out.  His suffering for us. 

“He took up our pain and bore our suffering” (Isaiah 53:4).  On the one hand, Jesus’ journey is difficult.

On the other hand, we discover that Jesus’ difficult pathway to the Cross is God’s pathway for bringing what is good. God brings life, healing, forgiveness, change, and transformation through the sacrifice of Jesus upon the Cross. He turns an upside-down world right-side up. It’s the sort of thing we describe with the Bible word “salvation.” The Apostle Paul describes the wonderful paradox of Lent in 1 Corinthians:

“For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God….For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.”  (1 Corinthians 1:18, 25)

Sometimes what’s broken can become more beautiful and powerful than before. We see this in the life and ministry of Jesus.

We see that with God’s work in our own lives as well. On the one hand, we all know that despite appearances we’re not all we’re cracked up to be. We have sinned and we are broken. We experience that in our relationships, in our pursuits, and inside of ourselves. Lent gives us an opportunity to pull off the mask before God and before others and just be our real selves. 

To name before God and others that things are not right and we still need God’s healing, redemption, and salvation in our lives. As Paul says: “I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in my sinful nature a slave to the law of sin” (Romans 7:25).

On the other hand, God can bring beautiful transformation in our lives by His grace and truth. We are never castoff by God. “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). We are all trophies of God’s grace, prizes of Jesus’ rescue mission.

Sometimes what’s broken can become more beautiful and stronger than before…and that’s even true of us.

But sometimes we can forget all this. Like someone with a case of amnesia we forget why we’re here and what we’re all about. Like someone lost in the forest, we become disoriented and forget which way we are supposed to go. And so, we move through our daily routines without thinking or feeling. Like someone who wakes up in the morning without having a jolt from their daily cup of coffee, we’re groggy in a dreamworld and lacking touch with reality. This touches our life with God as well, both individually and as a community. Amnesiac, disoriented, and groggy, when Lent arrives, we tend to just go through the motions. We give up something. We read the devotional. We participate in the Journey to the Cross service. 

But the prophet Joel snaps us awake with his stark words:

“Rend your heart
    and not your garments.
Return to the Lord your God,
    for he is gracious and compassionate,
slow to anger and abounding in love,
    and he relents from sending calamity.” (Joel 2:13)

Sometimes what’s broken can become more beautiful and stronger than before. The prophet Joel calls out to a people sinking in the waves of sin and idolatry. He calls them to turn around from their wrong ways and seek after God. Drawing on the action common with repentance, an outward tearing of garments, the prophet tells the people to tear their hearts, to break them up, before God. 

Right alongside his invitation to break our heart with repentance—to turn to God—Joel reminds everyone that God is ready to meet us with His patience, forgiveness, and unyielding love. He takes the broken places of our lives and restores them, infusing these imperfections with His inestimably valuable grace, truth, holiness, and love. 

Lent begins with brokenness. It begins with realizing the ways we have strayed from God. We turn back, tearing our hearts open with confession, bringing to Him the places where we are broken, and presenting to Him our lives. Twentieth-century novelist Ernest Hemingway once wrote, “The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places.” Now, that may be true generally, but with Lent, we do not place ourselves at the mercy of an anonymous world, but in the hands of a loving God who graciously remakes us through Christ.

Sometimes what’s broken can become more beautiful and stronger than before. 

Journey to the Cross 2022: beginning our Lenten journey

Matt EricksonLeave a comment

Join us this Wednesday, March 2, at 7 PM, in-person or via live stream for the beginning of our Lenten journey at Eastbrook Church with our annual Journey to the Cross service. Each year, we invite everyone to fast during the day and break the fast by participating in the Lord’s Supper together at this service. For more information on fasting, take a look here.

If you are planning to join us online, please pick up a packet with materials, including communion, at Eastbrook on Sunday morning, February 27, or from the Church Office 8 AM-4 PM Monday, February 28-Wednesday, March 2.

This also begins our Lenten (and beyond) devotional journey, “Scandalous Jesus,” written by the Eastbrook community that accompanies our new sermon series. You can access the devotional online, as a downloadable PDF, via the Eastbrook app, or through a limited-run of paper copies.

For more information on the importance of Lent and the beginning of Lent on Ash Wednesday, consider reading this post: “What is Ash Wednesday and Lent?“

St. Augustine on Overcoming Temptation

Matt EricksonLeave a comment

Saint_Augustine_PortraitHere St. Augustine of Hippo comments on Psalm 61:1-2, reflecting on the reality that Christ was tempted in the wilderness to show us how to overcome temptation and trials.

1 Hear my cry, O God;
    listen to my prayer.

2 From the ends of the earth I call to you,
    I call as my heart grows faint;
    lead me to the rock that is higher than I.

Hear, O God, my petition, listen to my prayer. Who is speaking? An individual, it seems. See if it is an individual: I cried out to you from the ends of the earth while my heart was in anguish. Now it is no longer one person; rather, it is one in the sense that Christ is one, and we are all his members. What single individual can cry from the ends of the earth? The one who cries from the ends of the earth is none other than the Son’s inheritance. It was said to him: Ask of me, and I shall give you the nations as your inheritance, and the ends of the earth as your possession. This possession of Christ, this inheritance of Christ, this body of Christ, this one Church of Christ, this unity that we are, cries from the ends of the earth. What does it cry? What I said before: Hear, O God, my petition, listen to my prayer; I cried out to you from the ends of the earth.  That is, I made this cry to you from the ends of the earth; that is, on all sides.

Why did I make this cry? While my heart was in anguish. The speaker shows that he is present among all the nations of the earth in a condition, not of exalted glory but of severe trial.

Our pilgrimage on earth cannot be exempt from trial. We progress by means of trial. No one knows himself except through trial, or receives a crown except after victory, or strives except against an enemy or temptations.

The one who cries from the ends of the earth is in anguish, but is not left on his own. Christ chose to foreshadow us, who are his body, by means of his body, in which he has died, risen and ascended into heaven, so that the members of his body may hope to follow where their head has gone before.

He made us one with him when he chose to be tempted by Satan. We have heard in the gospel how the Lord Jesus Christ was tempted by the devil in the wilderness. Certainly Christ was tempted by the devil. In Christ you were tempted, for Christ received his flesh from your nature, but by his own power gained salvation for you; he suffered death in your nature, but by his own power gained glory for you; therefore, he suffered temptation in your nature, but by his own power gained victory for you.

If in Christ we have been tempted, in him we overcome the devil. Do you think only of Christ’s temptations and fail to think of his victory? See yourself as tempted in him, and see yourself as victorious in him. He could have kept the devil from himself; but if he were not tempted he could not teach you how to triumph over temptation.

[Source: Commentary on the Psalms Ps. 60, 2-3: CCL 39, 766]

Journey to the Cross 2021: beginning our Lenten journey

Matt EricksonLeave a comment

Join us this Wednesday, February 17, at 7 PM, in-person or via live stream for the beginning of our Lenten journey at Eastbrook Church with our annual Journey to the Cross service. Each year, we invite everyone to fast during the day and break the fast by participating in the Lord’s Supper together at this service. For more information on fasting, take a look here.

You can access the Journey to the Cross Program here and the kids packet for the night here.

This also begins our Lenten (and beyond) devotional journey, “Becoming Real,” written by the Eastbrook community that accompanies our new sermon series on Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. You can access the devotional online, as a downloadable PDF, via the Eastbrook app, or through a limited-run of paper copies.

For more information on the importance of Lent and the beginning of Lent on Ash Wednesday, consider reading this post: “What is Ash Wednesday and Lent?“