by Eron Henry | Apr 9, 2025 | Lent 2025
The cross—Christianity’s central paradox—was an instrument of torture and death that Christians proclaim as the very site of God’s decisive victory. This appears nonsensical by conventional standards. Victory typically manifests in visible power, overwhelming force, and the defeat of enemies. Yet the cross presents the opposite: apparent weakness, submission, and defeat.
This paradox illuminates an important truth: God’s victory operates according to different principles than human conquest. On Golgotha, God achieved triumph not by avoiding suffering but by entering fully into it. What appeared as defeat—the execution of Jesus—was actually the strategic culmination of divine purpose. As Paul writes, “The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” (1 Corinthians 1:18).
The hiddenness of this victory was not incidental but essential. Had God’s triumph appeared as conventional victory, it would have merely replaced one domination system with another. Instead, by concealing victory within apparent defeat, God subverted the very logic of worldly power. The cross reveals that God conquers not by coercion but by self-giving love that absorbs violence without replicating it.
Martin Luther’s “theology of the cross” captures this dynamic perfectly. God is revealed precisely where God seems most hidden in weakness, suffering, and death. The cross thus becomes not an unfortunate prelude to resurrection but the very revelation of divine character. God’s strength is made perfect in weakness; God’s wisdom appears as foolishness to the world.
This hidden victory carries profound implications. It suggests that God may be at work most powerfully where appearances suggest divine absence. It indicates that redemption often comes not by escaping suffering but by transformation from within it. And it challenges our preoccupation with visible success, suggesting that authentic victory may look like failure by worldly standards.
The hiddenness of God’s victory in the cross reminds us that divine power operates beneath the surface of history, working not through domination but through seemingly insignificant acts of love, mercy, and faithfulness that ultimately prove more enduring than empires.
Prayer
Mysterious God,
In Your wisdom, You have veiled Your greatest triumph in what appeared to be defeat. At Calvary, where the world saw only humiliation and death, You were accomplishing salvation. Where observers witnessed weakness, You were demonstrating Your greatest strength.
We confess our attachment to visible victory and tangible success. We want triumphant faith that impresses others, not the hidden victory of the cross. We seek divine power that removes suffering rather than transforms it from within. Forgive our resistance to Your upside-down kingdom.
Open our eyes to recognize Your hidden work in our lives and in our world. When circumstances suggest Your absence, help us trust Your presence. When failure seems certain, grant us faith to believe that redemption continues beneath the surface.
Teach us the pattern of the cross – that in surrender we find freedom, in giving we receive, in dying we live. May we embrace this paradoxical wisdom not merely as theological truth but as the very rhythm of our discipleship.
In our suffering, remind us that the cross was not God’s withdrawal but God’s deepest involvement. In our weakness, assure us that Your strength operates most powerfully when human ability reaches its limit.
Through Christ our Lord, who transformed an instrument of death into the means of life abundant, now and forever.
Amen.
by Eron Henry | Apr 8, 2025 | Lent 2025
The resurrection of Jesus Christ represents more than a personal victory over individual mortality; it constitutes God’s decisive triumph over death in all its forms throughout creation. This cosmic scope is essential to grasping Easter’s full significance. God’s victory extends to every dimension where death and chaos threaten God’s good creation.
Scripture consistently presents death as a multifaceted reality. Beyond biological cessation, death manifests as relational breakdown, ecological degradation, systemic injustice, and spiritual alienation. These are not separate problems but interconnected expressions of creation’s bondage to decay (Romans 8:21). Death represents the undoing of God’s creative ordering, the reversion toward chaos that threatens all levels of existence.
The resurrection thus announces that God’s redemptive purpose encompasses the entire created order. In Paul’s vision, Christ’s resurrection initiates a comprehensive restoration that ultimately includes “the redemption of our bodies” (Romans 8:23), the liberation of creation itself from decay, and the final defeat of death as “the last enemy” (1 Corinthians 15:26). This holistic scope appears likewise in Colossians, where Christ’s reconciling work extends to “all things, whether on earth or in heaven” (Colossians 1:20).
What makes this perspective revolutionary is its refusal to restrict its significance to individual salvation. God’s victory over death addresses every aspect of creation’s brokenness—physical bodies, ecological systems, social structures, and spiritual realities. No dimension of existence lies beyond resurrection’s transformative reach.
This comprehensive understanding challenges both reductionist views of salvation and the compartmentalization of faith. It affirms that God’s redemptive concern extends to economic systems, political structures, environmental degradation, and technological developments, not as separate concerns from spiritual matters but as integral aspects of creation’s movement from death to life.
The resurrection thus becomes not merely a past event or future hope but the defining reality that shapes Christian engagement with every dimension of creation. Wherever death and chaos threaten—whether in personal suffering, social injustice, or environmental degradation—the resurrection proclaims God’s intention and power to bring restoration and new life.
Prayer
Jesus our Lord, Redeemer of All,
We praise You that in Your resurrection, You have declared victory over death in all its forms. Your triumph extends to every corner of creation where chaos threatens Your good purposes.
Forgive us for compartmentalizing our faith and limiting the scope of Your redemptive power. We often reduce salvation to spiritual matters alone, failing to recognize Your concern for bodies, relationships, systems, and the entire created order. Expand our vision to see the comprehensive nature of Your victory over death.
Where biological death brings grief, assure us of Your promise of bodily resurrection. Where social systems perpetuate injustice and oppression, empower us to embody resurrection hope through works of justice and reconciliation. Where environmental degradation threatens Your creation, guide us toward practices that nurture rather than exploit the earth.
Give us courage to confront death in all its manifestations, knowing that Your resurrection power works comprehensively to restore all that is broken. Help us resist the temptation to surrender any aspect of creation to chaos as though it lay beyond Your redemptive concern.
When we face seemingly insurmountable challenges—disease, injustice, ecological crisis, or spiritual darkness—remind us that these too fall within the scope of Your Easter victory. Nothing in all creation can separate us from Your love or lie beyond Your power to make all things new.
Hear us Lord Jesus Christ, the firstfruits of the new creation, in whom all things in heaven and on earth are being reconciled.
Amen.
by Eron Henry | Apr 7, 2025 | Lent 2025
In a world increasingly structured around retribution and the demonization of “others,” the community of faith is called to embody a radical alternative: hospitality. This practice goes far beyond mere politeness or social etiquette. Biblical hospitality represents nothing less than a counter-cultural witness against cycles of vengeance that threaten to consume human society.
The biblical narrative consistently portrays hospitality as a divine attribute that God’s people are called to embody. From Abraham welcoming mysterious visitors at Mamre to Jesus dining with tax collectors and sinners, Scripture presents hospitality as sacred practice, the recognition of divine presence in the stranger. In Hebrew tradition, hospitality wasn’t merely kindness but a moral obligation, reflecting the memory that “you were once strangers in Egypt.”
What makes hospitality particularly powerful against vengeance is that it directly challenges the fear-based logic that fuels retribution. Vengeance operates from a scarcity mentality where the other’s existence threatens one’s own security and identity. Hospitality, by contrast, proceeds from abundance, the conviction that welcoming the stranger enriches rather than threatens the community.
Jesus intensifies this connection when He commands, “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you” (Luke 6:27). This radical hospitality toward adversaries breaks the cycle of retaliation by refusing its fundamental premise: that those who harm us forfeit their claim to human dignity and care. The cross itself represents divine hospitality extended toward enemies, as Paul notes: “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).
In society, where vengeance masquerades as justice and dehumanizing rhetoric justifies exclusion, the faith community’s practice of hospitality acquires prophetic significance. When churches welcome refugees, when believers build relationships across political divides, when communities create space for the marginalized, they aren’t merely performing acts of charity. They are witnessing to an alternative social reality grounded in reconciliation rather than retribution.
This hospitality requires vulnerability, the willingness to risk being wounded rather than preemptively striking out. It demands the humility to recognize that our boundaries between “friend” and “enemy” may not align with God’s expansive welcome. And it requires imagination to envision possibilities for relationship where the world sees only threat.
The community of faith is, or should be, a living testimony that vengeance, despite its apparent inevitability, does not have the final word.
Prayer
Welcoming God,
You who set a table before enemies and friends alike, who make room for the outcast and the stranger, we praise You for Your boundless hospitality. In a world bent toward exclusion and retaliation, You have shown us another way.
Forgive us when we have chosen the safety of vengeance over the vulnerability of welcome. We confess our tendency to draw tight circles around “us” while pushing “them” to the margins. We admit how readily we justify hostility toward those who have harmed or threatened us, forgetting that we ourselves have been welcomed when we deserved exclusion.
Transform our communities into outposts of Your kingdom, places where the logic of retribution yields to the practice of reconciliation. Give us courage to open doors, extend tables, and create spaces where enemies might become friends.
Where political division tears at the fabric of society, help us create forums for genuine encounter rather than debate. Where religious differences breed suspicion, guide us to build relationships of mutual respect and understanding. Where economic inequity separates neighbor from neighbor, inspire us to share resources with radical generosity.
When hospitality feels costly or dangerous, remind us of Christ’s welcome extended to us at the price of the cross. When we are tempted to protect ourselves by excluding others, open our eyes to recognize Your image in the face of the stranger.
May our practices of welcome become living testimony against vengeance’s false promise, showing the world that Your love creates possibilities where hatred sees only dead ends.
Through Jesus Christ, who has welcomed us into Your household not as guests but as beloved children.
Amen.
by Eron Henry | Apr 6, 2025 | Lent 2025
The gospel’s announcement is never a completed task but an ongoing necessity in a world where evil demonstrates remarkable resilience. Though Christ has won the decisive victory, the powers of darkness continue to exert influence through systems of oppression, distorted values, and alienation. This persistence of evil necessitates the continual restatement of the gospel’s truth.
Evil’s resilience manifests in its adaptive capacity. Like a virus mutating to resist treatment, evil reconfigures itself for new contexts. The same greed that once justified chattel slavery now operates through exploitative economic systems. The tribalism that fueled ancient warfare now functions through nationalist ideologies and political polarization. When directly confronted, evil rarely retreats; it typically regroups in less recognizable forms.
What makes the gospel proclamation particularly challenging is that evil’s most effective strategy isn’t opposition but distortion. The good news becomes twisted into prosperity theology, nationalistic triumphalism, or individual escape from worldly concerns. The gospel’s radical message of reconciliation and divine solidarity with the suffering is domesticated into something that no longer threatens the status quo.
The Christian community faces further challenges through alienation, both internal and external. Internally, believers become estranged from the radical implications of their own faith tradition, relegating its transformative message to Sunday observances disconnected from everyday decisions. Externally, the church’s voice becomes alienated from the broader culture, dismissed as irrelevant or misunderstood as merely promoting private morality.
In this context, the gospel must be proclaimed “again and again,” not because its truth changes, but because each generation and context requires fresh articulation of eternal verities. This repetition isn’t redundancy but renewal, ensuring the gospel connects with contemporary realities while remaining rooted in Christ’s definitive revelation.
This persistent proclamation depends on both faithfulness and creativity. Faithfulness maintains continuity with the apostolic witness centered on Christ’s life, death, and resurrection. Creativity develops fresh language, metaphors, and practices that make the ancient message intelligible within new cultural frameworks. Without faithfulness, the proclamation loses its connection to revelation; without creativity, it loses its communicative power.
The church thus stands as a community of persistent witness, refusing to surrender the world to evil’s apparent inevitability while acknowledging the long struggle until all things are made new.
Prayer
God of Unfailing Truth,
In a world where darkness shows stubborn persistence, where evil adapts rather than surrenders, where Your good news becomes distorted or dismissed, we ask for strength to proclaim Your gospel again and again.
Forgive us for moments of silence when we should have spoken, for assuming that once stated, Your truth need not be restated. We confess our fatigue in the face of resilient evil and our discouragement when darkness seems to prevail despite the light we’ve offered.
Grant us renewed conviction about the gospel’s relevance to every dimension of human experience. When systems of oppression mutate to avoid accountability, give us discernment to recognize their new forms and courage to name them in the light of Your justice.
When Your message becomes distorted into something that comforts the comfortable rather than liberates the captive, sharpen our understanding of the genuine gospel. Help us distinguish between cultural Christianity and the radical call of Christ, between religious respectability and kingdom faithfulness.
Give us creativity to find fresh language that makes ancient truth intelligible to contemporary ears. May we neither compromise the message nor cling to expressions that no longer communicate effectively. Like faithful translators, help us preserve meaning while adapting form.
When alienation tempts us to retreat into like-minded enclaves, push us toward genuine engagement with those who see the world differently. Remind us that Your gospel speaks to all human hearts, though in different ways.
Where proclamation has become routine or ritualized, renew our sense of wonder at the extraordinary good news we bear. Where it has become harsh or condemning, restore the note of grace that makes it truly good news.
Through Jesus Christ, whose victory we proclaim until all things are made new.
Amen.
by Eron Henry | Apr 5, 2025 | Lent 2025
In the person of Jesus Christ, God confronts death not as a distant sovereign issuing decrees from afar, but as a warrior entering the battlefield. God addresses death in its fullness: its power to end life, its threat over human existence, and even its strange attraction in human experience.
Death’s power is self-evident. It terminates biological function and severs relationships. Yet its influence extends beyond physical cessation. Death threatens us psychologically, haunting our decisions and driving much of human culture and achievement. Perhaps most insidiously, death sometimes attracts us, whether through nihilistic despair, self-destructive behaviors, or the weaponization of mortality against others.
In Christ, God confronts this multifaceted enemy directly. The incarnation itself represents a divine refusal to remain separate from human mortality. By assuming flesh, the eternal Word enters death’s jurisdiction. Throughout his ministry, Jesus demonstrates authority over death’s power by healing the sick and raising the dead, signaling that death’s dominion is being challenged.
Yet it is at the cross where God’s strategy becomes most counterintuitive. There, Christ experiences death’s full force—physical agony, relational severance, and spiritual desolation. In that moment, death appears victorious. But what seems like surrender becomes subversion. By entering death’s realm voluntarily and innocently, Christ transforms death from within.
The resurrection reveals that death, despite its apparent finality, cannot contain divine life. Its power is broken, its threat defanged. What’s more, its attraction is countered by a greater attraction, the pull toward abundant life in communion with God. Easter thus represents not merely Jesus’ individual triumph but death’s comprehensive defeat.
This victory means Christians need not be governed by death’s power, intimidated by its threat, or seduced by its attraction. Instead, we are freed to embrace life fully, even when that means confronting suffering and mortality. The Christian path is not escape from death but participation in Christ’s transformation of it.
In Jesus Christ, God has not simply postponed death or provided compensation for it, but has fundamentally redefined it, turning what was our ultimate enemy into a passage toward fuller life.
Prayer
Victorious God,
When death cast its long shadow across creation, You did not abandon us to its darkness. In Jesus Christ, You entered our mortality, confronted our enemy, and emerged triumphant. We praise You for this incomparable victory.
We confess that we often live as though death still reigns supreme. We bow to its power when we shrink from love for fear of loss. We cower under its threat when anxiety controls our decisions. We surrender to its attraction when despair seems easier than hope.
Free us, Lord, from death’s grip on our imaginations and our hearts. By Your Spirit, help us to internalize the truth that in Christ, death has been defeated, not just postponed or compensated for, but fundamentally transformed.
When we face illness, loss, or our own mortality, remind us that these experiences, though painful, no longer define our ultimate reality. You have written a different ending to our story.
Teach us to live as resurrection people, not denying death’s reality but transcending its power. May our lives reflect the joyful defiance of those who know that love is stronger than death, that light overcomes darkness, and that life, not death, speaks the final word.
Through Jesus Christ, our Risen Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever.
Amen.
by Eron Henry | Apr 4, 2025 | Lent 2025
The gospel presents more than a religious belief system or moral code. It unveils an alternative ordering of human existence. In Jesus Christ, God reveals a fundamentally different way of structuring life than the dominant patterns that shape our social, economic, and political relationships. This alternative emerges not as theoretical ideal but as incarnate reality in the person and ministry of Jesus.
The dominant ordering of human existence typically revolves around hierarchies of value, accumulation of power, and mechanisms of competition. Success means ascending these hierarchies, securing advantages, and positioning oneself favorably against others. Even religious systems often reinforce these patterns through hierarchical structures and merit-based frameworks for divine approval.
Christ reveals a radically different ordering. His ministry systematically inverts conventional hierarchies: elevating children, women, foreigners, and the socially marginalized while challenging those at the apex of religious and political power. His teaching redefines greatness as service rather than domination: “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all” (Mark 9:35). His economic vision prioritizes sufficiency for all over accumulation by few, as evidenced in feeding miracles and early church practices.
What makes this alternative ordering particularly subversive is that it originates not from human social theory but from the character of God revealed in Christ. Jesus’ boundary-crossing love, solidarity with the suffering, and ultimate self-giving at the cross demonstrate that the divine life itself operates according to principles of generosity, vulnerability, and mutual flourishing rather than domination, security, and competition.
The resurrection then validates this alternative ordering as not merely idealistic but ultimately more aligned with reality than systems built on power and exploitation. The vindication of the crucified one suggests that the universe itself is structured according to self-giving love rather than coercive power, that reality’s deepest currents flow toward reconciliation rather than division.
For Christian disciples, embracing this alternative ordering means more than personal piety or occasional charity. It requires reimagining economic relationships beyond scarcity mentalities, political engagement beyond partisan power struggles, social connections beyond homogeneous groupings, and environmental relationships beyond utilitarian exploitation.
This divine alternative doesn’t withdraw from existing systems but creates counter-communities whose practices and priorities bear witness that another way of organizing life is possible, communities shaped by Christ’s pattern rather than prevailing cultural assumptions.
Prayer
Creator God,
You who have revealed in Jesus Christ an alternative ordering of human existence, we thank You for showing us that the dominant patterns of our world are neither inevitable nor aligned with Your intentions. In Christ, we glimpse not merely religious truth but a fundamentally different way of being human.
Forgive us for conforming to this world’s systems even while claiming allegiance to Your kingdom. We confess how readily we adopt cultural assumptions about success, security, and status while merely adding a veneer of religious language. Deliver us from the subtle idolatry that pays lip service to Your alternative while organizing our actual lives around values You have called into question.
Reorder our economic lives according to sufficiency and generosity rather than accumulation and comparison. Challenge our political imaginations to seek flourishing for all rather than advantage for our group. Transform our social connections to reflect the boundary-crossing solidarity we see in Jesus.
Form us into communities that embody this alternative ordering so convincingly that others might glimpse through our common life what a Christ-shaped world looks like. May our practices of sharing resources, extending hospitality, seeking reconciliation, and caring for creation demonstrate that another way is possible.
When living by Your alternative feels costly or countercultural, remind us that in Christ You have revealed what is ultimately most real and life-giving. Give us courage to resist the pressure to conform to patterns that distort Your image in humanity.
Through Jesus Christ, in whom we see not just who You are but who we are called to become.
Amen.
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