From the Pastor

As the calendar turns to spring, I appreciate that Lent comes with this new season. The church calendar and my 2025 calendar sing a different tune this time of year. Take that literally! When the calendar turns from February to March, you begin to hear the chorus of creation singing a new song, birds, frogs, insects, children, dogs, wind, and rain. All these beautiful noises that God has designed with His incredible creativity come together in the awe-inspiring symphony of God’s creation.

While that’s going on outside, a different tune is sung in the church as well. Journeying into Lent, the “Alleluias” are put away for a time, songs and prayers take on a more somber and meditative tone. We remember the cross of Christ and how our sins put Him on that cross. Some of us may even take up a Lenten discipline that brings a bit of suffering into our daily life. We often associate Lenten-time with suffering, which I find just a little ironic since we often associate springtime with joy.

There can be room for both! Remember, we are always resurrection people, the cross is empty, even during Lent. Because of the tomb is empty, we take time to focus on the cross and what it means for our daily lives. Jesus brings us into His cross when He says in Luke 9:23, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” The idea here is not to intentionally take up a life of suffering. Instead, it is to focus our lives on the cross of Christ, which can include suffering at times. Think for a moment on the physicality of carrying a cross. A cross is big enough that when carrying it, you need empty hands.  There isn’t room to carry anything else. That’s the point Jesus is trying to make! As people of our crucified and risen Christ, He calls us to live wholly for and with Him. There is no time or moment in our lives that are separate from Christ. Our relationship with Him soaks into every particle and atom of the life He has gifted us.

That’s why Jesus calls us to take up this cross daily and we follow Him. This cross is not our own, but the cross of Christ. The cross that we have been baptized into. The apostle Paul says that “all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death” (Romans 6:3). This cross that we carry is a reminder that our sins have been crucified with Christ, they are dead and we now “walk in the newness of life” (Romans 6:4) that Jesus has accomplished for us.

The song we sing this season is both one of new-spring-joy and routine-Lenten-meditation. They always go together as people of the crucified and risen Christ. Our focus is on the cross we carry, the cross of victorious-suffering of Christ. As we do, I ask, what is your Lenten discipline this season? What will you give up or take on, as you daily live with hands full of the cross?

Your cross-carrying brother in Christ,
Pastor Zach Sarrault