During Lent, this page will feature special devotional material written specifically for this season from renowned New Testament scholar N. T. Wright. (The material is taken from N. T. Wright’s Lent for Everyone.) Each day will feature a new passage from the book of Matthew with Wright’s corresponding devotional lesson. The content will be refreshed every day during the season of Lent. Please use this page as a means of preparing yourself as we approach the anniversary of Jesus’ death and resurrection on Good Friday and Easter.

You are also encouraged to leave insights and reactions to the devotional in the comments section below. Your words will serve to encourage and to challenge other believers. You may also share any personal thoughts and experiences you have during Lent not related to the devotional material.

We pray this season will be a blessing to you. If you made a commitment for this season, we hope that as you persevere through the discipline, you may gain insight into the suffering of Christ and his love for you and others. Join us as we walk with our Lord during Lent together as one community!

Lent Devotional

This lenten devotional can be found at YouVersion.com. (For the Bible portion, we recommend reading the latest NIV version for accuracy.) YouVersion is an excellent Bible and devotional reading site and application. By visiting the site, you can set up a free account and then sign up for this particular devotional. You can then conveniently receive daily emails with the devotional for each day or you can read it on your computer or smartphone (there is an app for every mobile platform) at your convenience. Also, if you would like to get started reading your Bible in a systematic fashion after Lent, this site also has convenient Bible reading plans that keep track of your progress.

If you prefer to read the devotional on our site, you can find it below. We will refresh the content everyday. Also, please remember to leave comments so that other people can be encouraged by your thoughts!

April 5th, Holy Week: Maundy Thursday

N. T. Wright

Scripture Reading(s): Matthew 27:1-32

N. T. Wright Lent Devotional Content: A few years ago there was a great railway disaster. Two trains, approaching London, speeded on to the same bit of track. Many were killed, several injured.

There was a long official enquiry. At the end of it, after countless hours of agonizing testimony, a report emerged. It was a grievous mistake, said the report. But there was nobody really to blame.

I have oversimplified, of course. But again and again that seems to be the verdict in such cases. Yes, it was terrible. But no, it wasn’t really anybody’s fault. Most of us, looking on, can’t quite get our heads round that.

Matthew has told the story of the events that led up to Jesus’ death in order to make exactly the opposite point. Yes, this was a terrible event. And yes, it was everybody’s fault. The chief priests have already shown their true colours, and are clearly to blame. Now Judas realizes his own guilt. Then Pilate plays his own cynical game: some have suggested that he was a good man, trying his best to have Jesus acquitted, but most likely his main motive was to try to establish his superiority over the chief priests. Then the crowd join in, and they help the priests to beat him at his own game. But he was certainly to blame as well.

Then the soldiers join in the fun. King of the Jews, eh? We’ll see about that. The previous mockery, in front of the chief priests, was making fun of Jesus’ claim to be a prophet (26.67— 68). This time it’s the claim to be king.

The point is that they all contribute. The crowd may indeed have shouted ‘his blood be on us, and on our children’ (verse 25) — a chilling phrase which has been horribly abused by many so-called Christians who have used it as an excuse to persecute Jewish people, Jesus’ own blood relatives. But Matthew’s point is that, though the crowd are indeed complicit, everyone else is too. Only the minor characters like Pilate’s wife (verse 19) and Simon of Cyrene (verse 32) stand out in the other direction, and they can do nothing to stop the brutal killing of the innocent Jesus.

We may begin by watching from the sidelines, but the story is designed to draw us in. We find ourselves there in the crowd, shouting like football supporters for this man rather than the notorious Barabbas (the first person in history, but by no means the last, to discover that Jesus was dying in his place). We feel the surge of emotion, of anger that our national hopes have been trampled on by this upstart from Galilee. Or, in the back room of Pilate’s headquarters, we find the soldiers, so long fed up with having to police Jewish uprisings, finally discovering someone on whom they can take out their frustrations. These things happen, we think. This is how people react. And, in a sense, who can blame them? That’s how it is.

It is precisely ‘how it is’ that sent Jesus to the cross. Matthew is telling us, in these vivid and shocking human scenes, what Jesus’ death is all about. There is a dark twist in ‘the way things are’. Jesus came to enter that darkness, to have his own body twisted in pain on the cross, so that the world could be straightened out, so that light could dawn at last.

TODAY
Almighty God, as the darkness closes around Jesus, help us, like Simon, to carry his cross, to be there with him to the end.

*To see previous lenten devotional content, please visit our Lent devotional archive.