Daily Devotion for Lent - Day 40

Scripture Reading: Luke 23:26-56

And so we see the end of the revolution.

It wasn't a revolution of arms - we never saw Jesus take up the sword.  But it was a revolution of ideas.

For the Jewish people, Jesus asked them to consider how they were treating one another in the midst of captivity.  How could they remain faithful with so much pollution going on all around them?  As the foreigners came and lived among them and even told them what they could and couldn't do, how would they retain their identity in God?

Some traded a part of their identity - colluding with the occupiers - in order to maintain certain parts of their tradition such as worship in the Temple.  From Jesus' perspective, this collusion may have been worse than that of the tax collectors.  When Jesus is betrayed by his own leadership and killed by the foreign soldiers, we see the curtain of the temple torn in two.  This may foreshadow the violent end that such collusion will lead to for the Temple.  But it may also indicate that the leadership that would work to have Jesus killed was broken.  And lest we lay all the blame on our leaders, the crowds willingly followed their plan.

We see women all through today's reading.  

They are wailing for Jesus as he makes his way to The Skull.

They watch and pray as he is nailed to the cross.

They see him taken down and placed in the tomb.

They begin to prepare ointments and spices to anoint his body following the sabbath.  

They are to be the first to discover that the revolution hasn't ended as they surmised.  In fact, it may be just beginning...

But that is for tomorrow.  For today, we have grief.  And that is enough for today.

Prayer for the day:

Loving God, we grieve our loss anew as we remember the crucifixion of our Lord.  We are participants in the story as we wail with the women or scoff with the soldiers.  At times we are both criminals - doubting your power, O God, while at the same time yearning for salvation.  But then we are also faithful like Joseph who tended to propriety and buried Jesus before sundown.  There are times in life when things seem meaningless and we go through the motions.  Today, we pray for endurance.  We pray this in Jesus' name.  Amen.

Photo by Andy Read via Flickr.com.  Used under the Creative Commons License.