A vision for a bigger Lent …

As the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem

Luke 9:51

Lent is upon us and this is the time of year when the Christian church stops and gives thought to the suffering of our saviour, Jesus. We take time out of our busy lives and contemplate his life and death. Some will have given something up for Lent thereby recalling Christ’s own 40 day fast in the desert at the beginning of his ministry. Lent culminates in the Easter weekend where we recall the torture and crucifixion of Jesus and then celebrate his resurrection.

With the strong focus on suffering, crucifixion and resurrection it is very easy to reduce Jesus’ resolution to set out for Jerusalem to a simple story of Jesus dying on the cross for my sins and being raised to life so that I might have eternal life. And yes, Lent and Easter are all about that, Jesus did die on the cross for our sins and in his resurrection we have the promise of our own resurrection – at least those of us who have surrendered our lives to him and asked him to be Lord of our lives.

Yet Lent and Easter are about so much more than our personal salvation. Jesus came to bring God’s kingdom rule back to this earth, a rule that humans rejected from the very start. In Genesis we find humans rejecting God’s rule and God no longer walking with them in the garden. In Acts we find Jesus giving his Spirit to his church and walking with us in every moment of our lives, no longer just in the cool of the evening. As we saw in our autumn series he empowered his church to proclaim and demonstrate his kingdom rule through healing the sick, casting out demons and raising the dead.

But to stop there would be to miss even wider truths of what Lent and Easter are about. As God’s kingdom rule is restored to this earth through what Jesus did, our world is turned upside down. Paul summarised this in a pithy statement in Galatians 3:28. Racial harmony is restored, there is no longer Jew nor Greek. Power relationships are restored, there is no longer slave nor free. Gender relationships are restored, there is no longer male nor female. Of course, God’s kingdom is here now but it won’t be fully here until Christ returns so sadly gender inequality continues, people are still enslaved and racial distrust continues even in this country.

During Lent we are going to think about an aspect of gender inequality and see what the Bible has to say about it. During April we will be bombarded with political messages ahead of May’s election and that will give us opportunity to engage with politicians to see positive change in our society. There are plenty of opportunities for us as God’s people to extend his kingdom rule, to play our part in restoring his creation to the beauty with which it was made.

Let us take Lent slowly this year and spend some time pondering the implications of Jesus setting out for Jerusalem and committing ourselves to resolutely extend his kingdom rule into our broken and needy world.