Jesus spoke very plainly of the purpose for His coming: "...the Son of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again." This Wednesday is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the Lenten Season. During these next weeks of Lent, these words of Jesus will once again be pressed into our memory as we hear the story of His passion and pain, His cross and death.

The theme for our Lenten observance here at the chapel this year is A Journey in the Cross of Christ. We're going to direct our attention to the cross of our Lord Jesus for on that cross He won salvation for us. There is no life for us sinners apart from His cross. Take away the cross and you take away salvation.

Peter didn't understand that. In today's Gospel, just after Jesus had told of how He was going up to Jerusalem to suffer, die, and rise from the dead, Peter began to rebuke Him. In other words, Peter said to Jesus "don't talk like that....I don't want to hear such foolish and pessimistic talk about bleeding and dying." Peter had a problem. He wanted a Jesus without a cross. He wanted a Savior who would bring salvation in some other way, some less painful manner. Peter's intentions may have been good. No doubt he wanted to spare Jesus from suffering and shame. But his good intentions were dead wrong. They were hell-bent. Jesus says to Peter, "Get behind Me, Satan! For you are not mindful of the things of God, but the things of men." To divorce Jesus from His cross is devil's work for the things of God are in the Savior whose body is nailed to the cross.

Peter was not mindful of the things of God. He is not alone. So much of Christianity in North America has gone the way of Peter, mindful of the things of men but not of God. Straight preaching of sin and salvation is replaced by sermons that are little more than pep talks with an emphasis on feeling good rather than being good. Confession of sins is thought to be too negative so it is omitted from the service if you can still call it that. Lent is a big downer for it focuses on such things as sin and guilt, betrayal and denial, pain and death. The things of men --our momentary needs --are indeed transitory. Lent focuses on our real need, our eternal need-life with God through the blood of Jesus Christ.

Now we come to Lent as disciples of Jesus Christ, as those who are learning the things of God. Jesus says, "Whoever desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me." Notice that Jesus doesn't ask us to deny something but to deny ourselves. There is the practice of giving up something for Lent, denying yourself something during the Lenten Season. Now that can be a helpful spiritual discipline insofar as it is a reminder that Jesus Christ gave up His all for us. But Jesus is calling on us to something much more radical than giving up meat, or chocolates, or movies for Lent. He calls us to deny ourselves. Now that sounds terribly strange to our ears that have grown accustom to hearing about self-esteem and how important it is to make sure that we have are needs met.

Jesus says that we are to deny ourselves. That is, we are to deny that we have any power in ourselves to save ourselves. We are helpless for by nature we are dead in sin. We are spiritual corpses who cannot revive themselves. To deny the self is to look away from the self and to Christ crucified as our only Savior. Opposite of such denial of self is the thought that there is something in me that God has to pay attention to, something that would commend me to him, something that would make me worth saving. To deny the self is to lose your life. It is to let go of any and everything that you would hang on to in order to justify yourself in the sight of God. It is to let go of the rationalizations and the excuses that you are tempted to use to defend your sin in God's presence. It is to let go of every reference to yourself that you would use to argue that God owes you something.

So Jesus says "For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the Gospel's will save it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" Someone has said "He is no fool who lets go of what he cannot keep in order to gain something that cannot be taken away." That is what are journey in the cross of Christ is about-learning to let go that which we cannot keep in order to lay hold of the gift of Jesus Christ.

The journey in the cross of Christ is not traveled on an easy road. The world, the devil, and our own sinful flesh see to that. Then there the road blocks that sometimes God Himself puts in our path, so that as the old song puts it we may see Him more clearly, love Him more dearly, and follow Him more nearly. We call those obstacles "crosses" because God uses them to put to death the self-reliant old Adam who still lives within us so that we may be drawn to trust in the cross of Jesus alone. Luther says that through these crosses, God "keeps discipling us and driving us that our faith may increase and grow stronger and thus bring the Savior more deeply into our hearts."

It is not our calling to go out and look for crosses that we might carry. As we live our lives faithful to Him in the places where He has called us to live, the cross will come. But underneath those crosses, we are sustained by the words of Jesus that give us a peace that the world cannot give. We are upheld by the promises that God made to us in our Baptism. We are strengthened with the body and blood of Christ given us to eat and to drink as the sure and certain pledge of the redemption of our bodies.

Lent is not merely a journey to the cross but it is our journey in the cross of Christ. It is a journey that will not end until that Great Day when we are brought to the resurrection of our bodies and the life everlasting. In the meantime, we press on in the confidence expressed by the hymn-writer:

"Then let us follow Christ our Lord,
And take the cross appointed
And firmly clinging to His Word.
In suffering be undaunted.
For those who bear the battle's strain
The crown of heavenly life obtain"

The peace of God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus to life everlasting. Amen.