connecting lent and easter

Yesterday I got internet going at my temporary apartment here in Buneos Aires. This should make it easier to get back into a blogging groove these weeks ahead. I continue to find writing and blogging a helpful way to process and reflect...whether anyone actually reads this stuff or not. :)

Amidst the busy activity of preparing to leave Argentina, I spent time this Lent season in the Stations of the Cross. Scriptures of Jesus’ arrest, trial, and crucifixion, along with a couple resources guided my meditations these past several weeks of Lent. Thursday night I will bring my way of the cross Lenten journey to a close and watch The Passion of the Christ with the Jeremiah and Jennifer. (The Forcattos are out of town for a few days spending time with Walter’s parents who are here visiting Argentina.) The film is center around the traditional Stations of the Cross. Today in my exploring of the city, I visited the downtown Cathedral. The Cathedral had some very old, beautiful, and detailed Stations of the Cross paintings around church. I spent time observing the people surrounding Jesus and their different reactions to him and his cross. However, I did notice how sanitized and clean Jesus was in these paintings. Not a drop of blood on him from the beatings that proceeded his carrying his cross to Golgotha. Even the crown of thorns seemed to sit gently on his head. He actually looked pretty capable of carrying the cross without falling down or needing assistance. The paintings were a pretty big contrast to the reality represented in The Passion.

I have been contemplating Romans 6:1-14 this Passion Week in preparation for Good Friday and Easter. “If we have been united with him in death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his…Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him” Romans 6:5, 8. While Lent and Good Friday gives space for self-examination to more deeply grasp our death to sin because of Christ’s work on the cross, Resurrection Sunday reminds us of the new life and hope we also share in Christ.

In my blog surfing this week, I found a great quote from N.T. Wright on Christine Sine’s Godspace blog….

“So how can we learn to live as wide-awake people, as Easter people?… In particular if Lent is a time to give things up, Easter ought to be a time to take things up…. If Calvary means putting to death things in your life that need killing off if you are to flourish as a Christian and as a truly human being, then Easter should mean planting, watering, and training up things in your life (personal and corporate) that ought to be blossoming, filling the garden with color and perfume and in due course bearing fruit… Jesus resurrection is the beginning of God’s new project not to snatch people away from earth to heaven but to colonize earth with the life of heaven.”
(Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church by N.T.Wright)

(Looks like I have one more book to get my hands on this year!) These words of Wright helped me connect the dots of Lent and Easter...The death to sin and resurrection of new life we share with Christ that we read about in Romans 6. Really timely connections points as I continue in my themes of hope, reconciliation, and new life this year. Especially good stuff to contemplate and soak in this Holy Weekend ahead! As Lent draws to a close and Good Friday is upon us, may our year-round season of living the Resurrection take deeper root in our hearts and impact the way we live and share the Kingdom with those around us!