More than a mere remembrance, Holy Week is an experience that offers us tactile connections to God’s Costly Grace. We begin the week with Palm/Passion Sunday – a worship filled with jarring contradictions. We participate in a peculiar parade, where the Messiah rides a humble donkey rather than a white steed. And in the end, he wears a peculiar crown – one made of thorns. We begin with joyful shouts of “Hosanna,” but in the end we find our own voices joining the shouts of “Crucify Him!” Yet, in this holy week, the Costly Grace of our salvation is palpable in and through Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection.
Lent is a season of grace, but it is undoubtedly a Costly Grace. Lent calls us to take God’s grace seriously and reminds us of its full cost. Dietrich Bonhoeffer coined the phrases “costly grace” and “cheap grace,” encouraging Christians to a life of costly discipleship in response to the great cost of Christ’s death on Good Friday. Throughout the forty days of Lent, we are invited into Costly Grace: “Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ” (Bonhoeffer).