Today we enter the darkest collection of hours on the ancient Church calendar. Perhaps that accounts for my somber mood, perhaps there is more to it. Navigating days of such compressed loss and elation can be tricky.

As we make our way through this final week of Lent, here are a couple of questions: What are you willing to risk—risk for what you desire the most, risk for those you love the most?

ANCIENT STORYLINES

I don’t know if the Father, Son and Spirit bantered about their Risk-Aversion Quotient. I don’t know if Jesus felt a sense of danger—that kind of danger that is an elixir of anticipation and dread—as he said farewell to his heavenly digs and descended into the womb of a Middle Eastern teenage woman.

Jesus’ most extreme leg of his pilgrimage happened some two thousand years ago this week.

Jesus enters Jerusalem in the throes of Passover, one of three of Jewish pilgrim holidays. He was welcomed with shouts, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” But within five days some were screaming, “Crucify him! Crucify him!”

During that week whatever implicit ideas Jesus had about risk become explicit.

A gut-wrenchingly candid conversation takes place between him and God (Matthew 26: 36-46). “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.” Sweat like blood. Isolation. Betrayal. Rejection. Fiery, salty tears.

Risks. A mother’s heart sliced open by the sword. A Father’s gaze turned away. Death. Separation. Darkness. The sun goes in hiding. The earth trembles in fear. The Creator and the creation are visibly haunted by the enormity of that risk.

How did Jesus have the reserves to go through with it? To risk that moment of connection he had always had with God the Father and God the Spirit? His community with them was so strong it was a part of his very identity. He’d lose a part of himself if he went through with it (becoming the perfect sacrifice, becoming sin). Yet, he’d lose a part of himself if he didn’t.

The gains for humanity would ultimately be gains for the Community of the Three. Meister Eckhart said, “We were born out of the laughter of the Trinity.” This rescuing and recollecting of man and woman would be the reclamation of joy for their Creator.

But the risks….

Not only would Jesus become the world’s greatest victim, the only completely innocent soul to be tried, accused and crucified, he would also become humanity’s most horrific victimizer. He’d take on all the sins of the world—from the white lies to the hellish acts only done in the dark. All of them.

He who was Mercy would embody injustice. He who was Justice would embody deceit. He who was Life would embody death.

How did he go through with it?

Dying to that instinct to survive. Dying to that need to control. Dying to his reputation. Dying to his perfect relationship with Father and Spirit. Dying to himself.

PROVISIONS FOR YOUR LENTEN JOURNEY FOR THE NEXT SEVEN DAYS

REFLECTION: I don’t know how Jesus did it. The mystery and magnitude of his character is beyond me. But I believe he did do it. And that three days later he defied death and rose again.

The promise is that his risks is what gives me—and all others who receive his life, death and resurrection—the reserves to make our own extreme pilgrimage, our own sacred risks.

DISCUSSION: So what are you willing to risk—risk for what you desire the most, risk for those you love the most?

If you knew you’d be loved completely at the end of the day, what would you risk for love?

Feel free to share your thoughts; go to the DISCUSSION BOARD.

IMAGE OF GOD: How does Jesus’ risk-taking compare or contrast with your vision of God?

CONFESSION/HOPE: When I was a junior in college my dad told me this: “God often gives us a dream and lets it die, only to resurrect it in himself, making it more pure, more his.”

I’m sure my dad had shared his little maxim with me many times before, but it was during my junior year a dream of mine began to slip into a coma. Since my early teens I had wanted to be a television reporter. Dreams of being the next Joan London of Good Morning America evolved to the next Christiane Amanpour of CNN. And while I was a video producer for a couple of years in Belgium, my life seemed to keep taking left turns away from being an international correspondent.

By age 27 I was draped in black, mourning the loss of my dream. And at times I mourned the loss in some passive-aggressive ways, such as work-a-holism and swearing off cable so not to be taunted by CNN. At my best of times my dad’s words have returned to me again and again. And in graced moments I’ve been invited me to live in the paradox of Jesus’ teachings: “my life is not my own” and “life abundantly.”

Currently it looks like my dream may just rise from the dead after all. I certainly don’t have perfect awareness of what happened to my dream as it lay entombed for fifteen plus years. I don’t know what exactly has been purified nor do I comprehend the many, many things that still need to die. I do know I’ve been humbled, humbled by both failure and love. And no doubt more humbly awaits.

Yet as resurrection comes there are sure to be more risks. I can name some now. And I’ve had to live in the throes of some of them during this Lenten Journey. But there will be many I have yet to see and name.

For me the hope is that the One who took the greatest risks to love goes with me through it all. Or I should say, he goes with us all as we risks to go with him.

SCRIPTURE: Read Philippians 2:5-11 slowly during the course of this week:

“Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: 


Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death—even death on a cross! 


Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

LENTEN ASHES FOR YOU: Here’s a story from Brian Welch of Korn: www.iamsecond.org/#/seconds/Brian_Welch

INVITE OTHERS INTO IT: Pray each day for God to give you sacred encounters. Meet for coffee or go on a walk with a friend this week to share what risks you sense you are being invited to take.