To base and entrust your life on what can be seen in this world is to commit oneself to unreality. The reality of things, indeed, the way, the truth and the life of the world is in what is not readily seen: Christ as Lord.
The pastor, then, possesses the prerogative of calling the children to himself, in the stead of Christ and after the manner of Christ, to particularly bless them with the Word.
Preaching the Word made flesh liberates the imagination from this world’s false and crippling vision of reality, and once again brings the imagination into an encounter with the one and only true and living God through Immanuel: “God with us.”
According to the Law, everyone will be judged by their own deeds, on his own work. So, before the judgment of God we only have our own works to boast in and not our neighbor’s. But the Gospel shows us a wonderful exception.
In the Church, the cry is, “He loves,” and it is that message which transforms our worldviews from taking to giving, from radical individualism to trans-demographic inclusivism, from selfishness to selflessness, from “tolerate my rights” to “loving rightly together.”
Jerusalem, temple, and king, all three bespoke of Yahweh’s kingship, as well as of His Kingdom and presence on earth and all the blessings bound up with it.
Perhaps this year we shall see Lent reaching more toward Easter and tethered to the resurrection then the economy-car style tradition which simply terminates in Good Friday.