The season of Lent gives almost unparalleled opportunity for preachers to placard before their auditors the Cross of Christ and beckon Christians to take up their cross and follow Him.
Because this life is transient and we already live in the new and eternal age restored in Christ (at least in part), our preoccupations are different to those bound to this world and life.
Rituals resist domestication and confront us with a world and worldview brought forth from the Bible and through twenty centuries of Christianity for the purpose of arresting our contemporary worldview through its self-sameness.
Here is Paul’s repacking of the Christmas gift in terms of the personal and corporate implications of God so loving the world that He gave His only begotten Son.