Beneath the Cross of Jesus

Rev. Harrell D. Davis

The Book of Common Worship reminds us: Friends in Christ, every year at the time of the Christian Passover we celebrate our redemption through the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. Lent is a time to prepare for this celebration and to renew our life in the paschal mystery. We begin this holy season by acknowledging our need for repentance, and for the mercy and forgiveness proclaimed in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

We begin our journey to Easter with the sign of ashes. This ancient sign speaks of the frailty and uncertainty of human life, and marks the penitence of this community….

Lent, beginning with the imposition of ashes, is the church’s way of symbolizing our journey to Easter. Like a symbolic via dolorosa, our journey traces the steps of faith traveled by spiritual ancestors, brothers and sisters, the saints of First Presbyterian Church. We, like they, are embarking on the spiritual journey that will lead to the cross.

“Beneath the Cross of Jesus I fain would take my stand….” So says one of our favorite Easter hymns. But what does it mean to fain take a stand? One dictionary says: “The old word fain describes the feeling of gladly or willingly doing something. You would fain have stayed home, but had to venture out in the rain.” So, the hymn asks us, using an archaic adjective, to gladly, willingly, take our place beneath the cross of Jesus.

How do you sell a journey, much less a destination, that brings us to the symbol of Christ’s suffering and death? How do you encourage a spiritual journey of penitence in an age of rampant excess?

New Testament scholar David Lose reminds us that Ash Wednesday (including the whole of Lent) is about the unexpected, the counterintuitive, a reversal of expectations. He writes: As we once more commence our journey to Jerusalem and the cross, we must be prepared to meet the God who always defies our expectations. Caught off balance and unawares, we may once again recognize that our best and only hope for blessing in this life—and salvation in the one to come—rests in God being true to God’s own nature, even to the point of taking on our lot and our life to die on the cross that we might live with hope…..

I invite you, therefore, in the name of Christ, to observe a holy Lent by self-examination and penitence, by prayer and fasting, by works of love, and by reading and meditating on the Word of God.

I invite you to gladly, willingly, take your place beneath the cross of Jesus. Thanks be to God.

~Harrell