Our words of proclamation from the pulpit not only bring repentance and comfort, enacting in our hearers an exchange of sinful identity for the identity of God’s child, but also the motivation and fuel for loving others.
Lenten meditation is the one time Luther might advise us to be turning in on ourselves--and taking a cold, honest glance. For only in the shadow of the Cross can we look honsetly into the cause of the death of the man from Nazareth, the second person of the Trinity.