Live Differently

Overview of Live Differently: 7 Perspectives on Lent

Christ is radically different and calls us to follow and imitate him. Across the season of Lent, this sermon series helps you guide your congregation through seven perspectives that explore Christ's counter-cultural calling. Each guide in this series includes:

• AIM exegetical commentary on the text,

• insightful sermon illustrations,

• inspiring quotes, and

• liturgical resources on themes in the passage.

Created for Lent 2022. Texts are for RCL Year C and are suitable for non-lectionary preachers at any time.

TPW puts you in the driver's seat. We want you to approach God's Word, prayerfully listen to the Holy Spirit, and create a message for your congregation. We don’t offer ready-made sermons. Instead, we provide resources and inspiration to help you craft your own sermons and services.

Series Introduction

Seven Perspectives

The story of Lent is one of a pauper and a prince. We are the paupers, born into sinful misery and destined to die. Christ is the prince, elevated and eternal, whose embodied peace descends from on high into the poverty of mind, body, and soul in which we wallow.

Our stories are interwoven. The prince is found in the pig sty with the lost and broken. His human appearance and experience are indistinguishable from ours. He hungers and thirsts, he smarts and stings, he weeps and mourns, he suffers and dies.

Historically, Lent has been a time of austerity and self-deprivation, moral and mortal reflection, and repentance and renewal. The church has called its faithful to deny themselves during this time and pick up their cross and follow Christ. Ironically, it is more the case that Christ carries us, we who fumble to bear the weight of our own burden. As Jesus himself beckons, “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls” (Matthew 11:29 NRSV).

While Lent reminds us of our moral failings and the mortal demise that they inevitably reap, it further challenges us to question our cultural comfortability and to live differently as Christ himself. Our culture elevates image, self-promotion, and keeping up appearances. So we exchange our real and authentic selves for a hyped-up, glamorized, and airbrushed caricature. Our culture celebrates pleasure. So we avoid pain at all cost, stuff it down, numb it, hide it, and ignore it, believing that it has nothing to teach us. Our culture celebrates perfection. So, we strive to make the grade, the bank, and a name.

Jesus comes and overturns the cultural tables, stiff-arming image, pleasure, and the standards of religious and social perfection for a greater goal--wholeness of life with God and with humanity, the glorious end of the Hebrew word “shalom”.

This Lenten series follows seven perspectives on Christ’s life interwoven with ours via meditation on Lenten texts from Ash Wednesday through the Liturgy of the Psalms on Palm Sunday.

It is our prayer that this Lent be one of renewed perspective for each of you as pastors and preachers. May your own life be a Christ-shaped difference to your culture and your people.

What is AIM Commentary?

AIM stands for Ancient context, the text through the lens of Jesus (Ἰησοῦς), and our Modern application.

Understanding the Ancient or original context of the passage is necessary to inform and guide our interpretation. We also believe along with the Reformers that the interpretation of the Ancient context of the Hebrew scripture for the church necessarily flows through its Lord, Jesus Christ. Furthermore, we affirm that the role of the preacher to bring the congregation from the Ancient context through Christ and to the Modern context, making the message real in our hearts and lives.