Lent, Day 36: GO TO THE CROSS

John 12:20-36

A group of people came to see Jesus, and when Jesus was told about their search, He spoke about His upcoming death on the cross.  It was as if Jesus said to the seekers, if you want to find Me, go to the cross. That’s where I will be.  He took it further and said, “Where I am, there My servant will be also.”  In fact, He said, “If anyone serves Me the Father will honor him” (John 12:26).

For Jesus, the future had become present, and it was to the cross He would go to fulfill the will of God.  As He would lay down His life, He told His followers, “He who loves his life loses it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it to life eternal ” (vs.25).  The hour had come, and forever afterwards one could not speak of Jesus but within the perimeters of the cross.  He was a servant that would go all the way to suffering, death, and the grave.  He would be the suffering servant who would rise up out of the grave and bring the very life of God into the world.

The season of Lent reminds us that you and I need a Savior.  We need a Savior who understands us and receives us and cares for us, and who redeems us.  Do you think you need a Savior?  This might just be the question of the age.  Jesus takes us away from conversations about life to a life transforming relationship with Himself.  

Truth is that we Believers are people of the cross, and as Dietrich Bonhoeffer says in these probing, insightful, and challenging words, 

As Christ is Christ only as the suffering and rejected one, so the disciple is a disciple only as one who suffers and is rejected, as one crucified with Jesus. Discipleship, understood as being bound to the person of Jesus Christ, places the disciple under the law of Christ, that is, under the cross. (God is on the Cross: Reflections on Lent and Easter)

On Tuesday in Holy Week, can we embrace this radical thought, and meet Jesus at the cross?  Can we draw near to Him that He might shape and form us into people of the cross?  Can we drink the cup, and come alive in His life?  Can we choose to be where He is, and to live in a way that reflects our life in God? Yes, it will go against the grain of the world, and leave us vulnerable to worldviews that cannot embrace Jesus.  However,  if we do so, we will discover that Jesus did not stay on the cross but was raised up from the dead, to live as King of kings and Lord of lords.  

“As you have the light, believe in the light. Then the light will be within you, and shining through your lives. You’ll be children of light.”
                               (Jesus, in John 12:36, MSG)