With My Eyes On Jesus
Lenten Meditations on the Dying Jesus
Dale Goldsmith
With My Eyes On Jesus
Lenten Meditations on the Dying Jesus
Copyright © 2018 Dale Goldsmith. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.
Cascade Books
An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers
199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3
Eugene, OR 97401
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paperback isbn: 978-1-5326-3775-9
ebook isbn: 978-1-5326-3777-3
Cataloguing-in-Publication data:
Names: Goldsmith, Dale.
Title: With my eyes on Jesus : lenten meditations on the dying Jesus / Dale Goldsmith.
Description: Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2018.
Identifiers: isbn 978-1-5326-3775-9 (paperback) | isbn 978-1-5326-3777-3 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Church year—Lent—Devotional literature.
Classification: mlcs 2018/409785 2018 (print) | mlcs 2018/409785 (ebook)
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1989, by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Manufactured in the U.S.A. 03/20/18
“Dale Goldsmith has written a rare treasure: a devotional that gently and consistently explores what it means for the Lord of the Universe to die, and what that means for us to live in imitation of Christ . . . As Christians reclaim a rightful focus on the art of dying well as part of living well, With My Eyes on Jesus is a gift.”
—Susan Windley-Daoust, Director of Missionary Discipleship of the Diocese of Winona-Rochester, Minnesota
“Death’s mystery looms at the end of each life. Without some sense of it, we cannot put our lives in context. Goldsmith does not answer death with pious platitudes. He gives us multiple stories touching, probing, interrogating death from every angle. Lenten reflection on these devotions will give a sense of death that undergirds the courage to live fully and faithfully.”
—Dan Edwards, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Nevada
“Dale’s voice strikes, catches, and safeguards the reader who would ordinarily fear their own heartbeat in reflecting on death. The cadence of his voice is genuinely meditative because he has lived through the realities of grief and followed his own life’s roots into a deeper Life than most of us ever fathom. The reader need not wait until the season of Lent to read these daily encouragements; today is a fine day to face and open one’s life.”
—Gray Matthews, The University of Memphis
“In this beautiful and compellingly written book of Lenten devotions, Dale Goldsmith keeps our eyes focused on dying. In the long pilgrimage through this reflective season, we gaze upon our own death, the deaths of others, and, most of all, Jesus' death. As we come ever nearer to Easter, we are at last enabled to lift the hymn of the saints, ‘God will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more.’”
—Thomas G. Long, Candler School of Theology
Introduction
Lent is a time Christians devote to spiritual disciplines. The devotional readings in this volume invite the reader to focus on Jesus’ death and its relationship to our own mortality and dying.
Jesus faced death from the start of his time on earth both because he was human and because he was the object of death threats and murder plots. These meditations invite a closer relationship with the human, vulnerable Jesus. We may not be very good at emulating him, but this is the part of his story that comes closest to paralleling our own stories.
All but one of the authors of the New Testament—the exception is Jude—write of Jesus’ death, its centrality, its meaning, and its relationship to believers in their respective dying/deaths. While these meditations are not based on a biblical format or chronology, they have been arranged to integrate with the larger gospel narrative.
The following meditations offer a disciplined journey along a narrative arc that begins with Jesus’ life—his coming, mission, words and deeds, increasing opposition—and death. The story continues as the early church’s writers reflect on the meaning of Jesus’ death as the basis for hope and new life.
This can be hard work. Forty-six days focused on dying may seem daunting, even depressing, especially in our death-avoidant culture. It may lead into dark spaces that we would prefer to avoid. But the God of the New Testament is the God of life and of death, of living and of dying. This God offers us a hope for understanding and facing the end of life in Jesus Christ.
Each devotion consists of five sections, beginning with a New Testament text. Since the whole of the document used in each day’s devotion will have dealt with many topics, the original context of the day’s text is briefly described. The meditation is intended to draw the reader into focused engagement with the text. Finally, the prayer and today sections suggest directions for outward responses by the reader.
Dying and death are not the major problems for Christians in Scripture. But to the extent that they can be obstacles for us in our vocation to live faithfully, the hope is that these meditations might bring readers closer to the Lord of the living and the dying.
Dale Goldsmith
Amarillo, Texas
Day 1, Wednesday—Christ’s Courteous Love
Philippians 2:5–8: Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, (6) who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, (7) but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, (8) he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross.
Context: The church at Philippi was facing opposition and threats of death. Paul was in jail for his work on behalf of the gospel message. The Philippian church had sent Paul’s friend Epaphroditus with material support for Paul who responded with this letter of encouragement, including a hymn describing Jesus’ “obedience to death.”
Meditation: In 1375, the English mystic Julian of Norwich fell ill with what threatened to be a terminal illness. In her suffering, she experienced what she believed were the very pains of the dying Christ; he was accompanying her in her final agonies.
But she recovered! Her near-death experience transformed her understanding of Christ and in the forty years of service that followed, she went on to share this experience of Christ with others. In her memoir, Showings, she writes of her resolve to tolerate faithfully her own dying—whenever that might happen. She described Christ’s gracious presence in her time of need as a gift of his “courteous love.”
Julian’s Christ is much the same as the one described in the ancient hymn Paul includes in his letter—the royal and divine Jesus who comes down . . . and down . . . and down . . . and finally all the way down to the place of his own human suffering and death. He came to the very place where each of us will one day find ourselves. We can begin this Lenten journey with the assurance that Christ has graciously and courteously come, sent by a caring creator, to share our most mysterious moment—dying.
Prayer: Thank you,