Sound the Alarm: Toward Good Friday (2025 Lent and Holy Week Series)
Ash Wednesday inaugurates the season of Lent in horror and despair. The rebellion of the people and the displeasure of the Holy One permeate the scripture passages. Promises of hope seem distant. The prophetic entreaties for repentance come with an air of futility and fatalism that this people would choose, for once, what is right and good in the perspective of their God. The prophet Joel warns against calamity of epic proportions. It’s time for the locusts to swarm the land, for a conquering invader to prevail over the nation, and even the heavenly hosts will move against them. Catastrophe looms with certainty.
Blow the trumpet in Zion;
sound the alarm on my holy mountain!
Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble,
for the day of the LORD is coming, it is near—
—Joel 2:1
The coming of the Sovereign One should be good news, but this time the people will tremble. Their problems will overwhelm them; their despair will blanket them. The moment is unprecedented. Still, there is a word of hope and promise:
Yet even now, says the LORD,
return to me with all your heart,
with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning;
rend your hearts and not your clothing.
Return to the LORD your God,
for he is gracious and merciful,
slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love,
and relenting from punishment.
—Joel 2:12-13
Repentance, from the heart, still leads to redemption. God’s grace waits in eager hope and expectation. The season of Lent invites Christians to repentance, individually and, more significantly, collectively.
It may well be that we will have to repent in this generation. Not merely for the vitriolic words and the violent actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence and indifference of the good people who sit around and say, “Wait on time.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches
Holy Week reminds us that eventually the wait will end. From Ash Wednesday, we journey to the deceptive high of Psalm Sunday to the transition of Maundy Thursday to the dueling triumph and despair of Good Friday. This penultimate date is not just a marker for transition but its own destination. When we rush past it, we may neglect to attend to the jubilation experienced and expressed by the majority of the crowd…echoing and mocking the adulation of those waving palms earlier in the week with cries of “Crucify Him.” The crowd wants the spectacle not salvation of the world and certainly not the common good.
Repentance invites us to critically evaluate our response to God’s goodness and our response in comparison to God’s goodness. This series will encourage and challenge the church to consider ourselves, collectively and individually, and our response in the world and our response to the world as followers, witnesses, and ambassadors of Jesus the Christ. Focusing on the journey toward Good Friday compels us to confront the truth that ministry requires commitment and exacts costly sacrifices despite our wish for ease. We also follow Jesus in this.
When one brings together the description of Jesus as “deeply grieved, even to death,” with his request to “remove this cup from me,” and his concluding statement, “the hour has come; the Son of Man is handed over into the hands of sinners,” one is brought face-to-face with the mystery of the kingdom of God. Jesus is indeed asking if the divine will that God’s Jubilee justice triumph over the forces of evil can occur without suffering. But God’s answer is silence. Indeed, the Son of Man will be handed over to those who wish to do him harm. The mystery at the heart of the gospel is clearly seen here: God’s war for the liberation of humanity will not be waged with weapons or instruments that are normally associated with power. No. It is in the form of weakness and the compassionate self-offering of the Son of Man that God’s righteousness and justice will ultimately triumph. But this will not be a path that leaves God unaffected. Rather, the passion of Jesus is the outworking of the cost of God’s struggle with the powers of sin and death.
Christian T. Collins Winn, Jesus, Jubilee, and the Politics of God’s Reign
Sound the Alarm…toward Good Friday.
Ash Wednesday, March 5: Joel 2:1–2, 12–17 | “Trembling”
Lent 1C, March 9: Luke 4:1–13 | “Famished”
Lent 2C, March 16: Luke 13:31–35 | “Warning”
Lent 3C, March 23: Luke 13:1–9 | “Cut Down”
Lent 4C, March 30: Luke 15:1–3, 11b–32 | “Squandered”
Lent 5C, April 6: John 12:1–8 | “Reclining”
Palm/Passion Sunday C, April 13: Luke 19:28–40 | “Sent”
Maundy Thursday C, April 17: John 13:1–17, 31b–35 | “Loved”
Good Friday C, April 18: John 18:1–19:42 | “Standing”
Year C 2024-2025 Seeds and Ways Focus and Roadmap: Embodied Jubilee: Justice, Righteousness, and Redemption
In the biblical narrative, justice and righteousness were often encapsulated in the same word. In fact, when reading the text, when encountering the word “righteousness”, it would be entirely appropriate to substitute the word “justice.” In Year C, with an emphasis on the Gospel according to Luke, the emphasis will be on reclaiming justice as an essential element of the reign and realm of God and both a hope and sign of the kindom of God manifested on earth. Luke’s account gives particular attention and significant emphasis on the marginalized, oppressed, and silenced in society. Individual righteousness, a derivative or consequence of following the way of justice, will be treated as such.
Jubilee, represented by the settling of all debts, will be claimed as the ultimate destination of the collective and communal faith journey. The call to discipleship throughout this liturgical year will be to participate in Embodied Jubilee. The Suggested Congregational Response to the Reflection will point to and offer a path to engage with this call.
Finally, no treatment of justice and jubilee would be complete without a focus on the redemptive acts of the Holy One and God’s disciples in human history. That is good news. Let’s proclaim it!
The Rev. Dr. Cheryl A. Lindsay, Minister for Worship and Theology, United Church of Christ, (lindsayc@ucc.org), also serves as a local church pastor and worship scholar-practitioner with a particular interest in the proclamation of the word in gathered communities.