Lent 2024 - Dark Night

Saturday, March 23, 2024 11:45 AM

I was planning on writing often this Lent, sharing reflections as I processed this season. But I haven’t really done that, and I think the reason is because my plans got hijacked by experiencing Lent. The ancient followers of Jesus saw Lent as a decent into the tomb, where we meet the living King, and rise with him on Easter into a new year, a new life full of new perspectives, new adventures, new challenges to walk with the God who makes all things new. 


It all sounds great, but what does it actually mean to descend into the tomb? … I’ve been thinking about this a few days now, and want to try and answer that question.


Sometimes our foolish choices land us in the tomb. The reality is that my life experience has actually been pretty good. Really the only danger my life has been in was the result of a few pretty stupid things I did involving risky sports, drag racing down snowy roads, and hanging on the side of cliffs getting to the best fishing spots. None of them were done attempting to defy God, or to disobey or hurt anyone. They were mostly a young man’s adventurous spirit. Because God protected me I’m still here and able to write this reflection. But if a foot had slipped, the car spun out, or… my story might have been very different. God often protects us from our impulsive selves, but not always. Our foolish choices can lead us into the tomb. 


But when I think about the Easter tomb, I have tended to think of it as what others did to Jesus. They betrayed him, ran away, accused, slandered, tortured, and finally killed him. They put him in the grave. Although I have not experienced anything like Jesus did, the trajectory of my life, and maybe the tiredness I’ve been feeling, left me feeling mad at God. I have expended all the resources we have and some we don’t have to try and bringing into reality something I believed God put into our hearts and minds. And it has felt like it has been so difficult, like everything has been against us. A couple mornings ago we prayed and asked to hear back from the government agency we’re trying to be approved through so we would be allowed to step into the inspections and get to work. We’d been told to expect that review approval early this week, and we got a big fat bunch of nothing. No word from the state, no word from God. Just nothing. Which is what my life mostly feels like right now. I understand that doesn’t make it true, but it’s what it feels like. I am so weary of the process, of feeling like there are no options before us. I had been reading about God leading the Israelites through the wilderness and into the promised land. 


No misfortune is in his plan for Jacob;

no trouble is in store for Israel.

For the LORD their God is with them;

he has been proclaimed their king.

God brought them out of Egypt;

for them he is as strong as a wild ox.

No curse can touch Jacob;

no magic has any power against Israel.

For now it will be said of Jacob,

‘What wonders God has done for Israel!’ (Numbers 23: 21-23)


And somehow it made me mad reading about God showing up for these people who really weren’t all that committed followers, and had just been doing one rebellious or dumb thing after another, yet God still is making a way for them. And it seemed so different than my own experience. And I found myself in the Haggens Grocery parking lot yelling at God. I found myself asking, “Are you even there? And if you are, do you even care? Why is this so hard if you’re so good?” 


I wish I had an answer not just for myself, but for all the people who have looked up into an empty sky feeling terribly alone and shouted, “God are you even there?”


  • Holding a dead or dying loved one…
  • Watching a battle with disease or sickness…
  • Replaying the image of the tear stained face and hearing the angry words, “This marriage is over!”
  • Working and working, and then opening the bank accounts next to the list of  bills, and once again there just isn’t enough to go around.
  • Doing your best, and having someone say, “This is terrible.” 


Our world is full of so much pain… the scriptures remind us that the last great enemy is death. The tomb is real, and sometimes we find our life’s journeys passing just outside the door where the scent of death seems to overwhelm the glory of life. (Kind of like driving by that dead squished skunk on the highway!)


But then the last couple of days I have found myself wrestling with these questions and asking God to show me Jesus way for when we find ourselves in the tomb moments of our lives. In the scriptures we read how Jesus spent three years touching the sick and diseased, casting out demons, confronting the death of both the religious elite and the morally depraved. He had developed a huge following of those he was rescuing, but at the same time an army of haters had come together - politicians, self-righteous religious people, and those who were offended at his call to repent and submit to the ways of God. Jesus knew the cross was coming, and he wasn’t very excited about it. He cried out to his Father asking if there was any other way. There was no answer. And in the end he responds  “Not my will, but Yours.” So a case could even be made that his own father put him in the grave. 


I wonder if Jesus was asking some of those same questions as his life was being dragged to the tomb. And then I remembered these words. “The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life —only to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again.” (John 10:17-18)


Jesus had a choice. And the choice he made was to trust his Father and allow his life to descend into the tomb. Not because he has to, but “because of the joy set before him, he endured the cross, despising the shame.”  We have the same choice.


None of us wants the tomb. We live in a world that tells us the tomb is the end, the ultimate failure. We are told to hold onto this life and everything we want and have. But the more we try and hold it, the more it slips from our grasp. In this broken world the tomb is a part of the journey into life. It is the gateway to the Way of Jesus and His Kingdom. I’ve said those words hundreds of times, but somehow they feel more real at the moment, because God feels farther away and he’s not answering the way I want. He’s letting me flounder. Right now I don’t know why, but I do know my choice. I will trust him. If everything crashes and burns, I will hold on to the hope that my Redeemer lives, and my Creator cares. 


What does the tomb look like for you right now? What is God asking you to lay down or set aside? What do you find yourself most afraid of? What are you resisting, fighting against, or maybe running away from? - The scripture tell us Jesus set his face like flint for Jerusalem. His journey to the tomb was unstoppable. His disciples kept asking him, “What are you doing? They’re going to kill you!” But death held no fear for the one who is life. He was carving our pathway, showing us the way to life leads through the tomb. It leads through the places where we don’t have all the answers, don’t get what we want, don’t understand the whys, can’t see clearly to the future and our cries to God seem to be bouncing off the ceiling going nowhere. Maybe that’s where the tomb actually begins. And maybe that’s where that new life begins too, when we grab the desperate courage to choose in faith what we do not have and cannot see a way to, simply because we know it’s right, it’s His way. 


Now the time has come for the Son of Man to enter into his glory. I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat is planted in the soil and dies, it remains alone. But its death will produce many new kernels—a plentiful harvest of new lives. Those who love their life in this world will lose it. Those who care nothing for their life in this world will keep it for eternity. Anyone who wants to serve me must follow me, because my servants must be where I am. And the Father will honor anyone who serves me. (John 12: 23-26)