Excerpted from 2024 Lenten Guide: Terror and Amazement, a Lenten Guide for Lectionary Year B from the North Carolina Council of Churches.
Hebrews 10:16-25
“This is the covenant that I will make with them
after those days, says the Lord:
I will put my laws in their hearts,
and I will write them on their minds,”
and he adds,
“I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more.”
Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin.
Therefore, my brothers and sisters, since we have confidence to enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain (that is, through his flesh), and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us approach with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful. And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching.
Good Friday is the day we pause to meditate on the death of Jesus. This year’s theme of “Terror and Amazement” is well aligned with today’s reading from the letter to the Hebrews offering guidance through the misery and lamentation of Good Friday.
It should be impossible these days not to include in our prayers all those who are directly and indirectly impacted by the hateful attacks of war and genocide that overwhelm our planet. Our trust in God is being tested, especially when we are told with such unwavering conviction that the end (peace) will justify the means (violence). Scripture says otherwise and so these times of terror are precisely when we are reminded of “the new and living way that [Christ] opened for us through the curtain” and implored, “Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for [the one] who has promised is faithful.”
The terror of scorn, despise, insult, and brutal murder is balanced by the promise that we will be able to make sense later of what we do not understand now as hope for the amazement of the faithful journey unfolds. As we “see the Day approaching,” may we be inspired to “provoke one another to love and good deeds” and demand a global cease-fire to the multiple terrors that plague us. May we be inspired so that devotions to peace-making signify our eternal faithfulness.
