2016 Belmont University Lenten GuideSample

I have taken your guilt away from you. (Zechariah 3:4) In today’s reading, Zechariah the prophet has a vision of Joshua the high priest dressed in pathetic rags. Before him stands the angel of God who brings forgiveness and joy. Shed your garments of guilt, for God has brought you a new garment of joy and restoration. It is a wonderful vision for this Lenten season, as it prepares us to welcome God’s mercy and renewal as the joyful garments that await the Lenten pilgrim. But there is another figure in Zechariah’s vision, and he too stands before Joshua. Satan comes to tear God’s servant down with words of guilt and accusation. I confess that when I look upon my sins, anxieties and failures, as I am called to do during Lent, I find it easier to allow shame and guilt to have the final word on my “pathetic” existence. I struggle to accept that I am forgiven, or that God has the power to renew my life. There is a voice—at once my own and not my own—that tells me that I am not good enough, that there is no hope for me or those I love. It is the voice of an accuser that looks on me and on my sins without mercy, a voice that lacks the power to breathe new life into the dead and dying realities of my life. I have come to wonder whether this dark yet seductive voice of despair and guilt is not the voice of Satan. His ventriloquism speaks my words to me in my own voice, and yet I am left more dead, dumb and wooden for having believed them. In Zechariah’s vision, the voice of Satan is silenced by the voice of God who denounces him and proclaims Jerusalem as His own. As we turn to our sins and shortcomings, let us remember that within us there lies a voice that boldly invites us into forgiveness and new life, but there is also a voice that denies us the love and life of God. Let it be our Lenten labor to tune our ears to the voice of mercy, the voice of life, the voice of God, and silence by faith and the Word of God those voices that would bring guilt and shame on us and all the beloved of God. MANUEL CRUZ Assistant Professor of Theology College of Theology & Christian Ministry