Introduction
           Around a decade ago, when I was a pastor in Northern Indiana, I took part in annual services built around Jesus' seven statements from the cross.  They took place at the local African Methodist Episcopal church, and I was the only pastor of the seven who was not African-American.  Each of us was supposed to preach about ten minutes on a different one of the “last words."  Sitting up there with some of the best preachers I’ve ever had the joy of being associated with was one of the great joys of my life.
            Of course the service was an utter failure.  Don’t get me wrong.  We sang the classic songs about the cross and read the right scriptures; the preaching was beyond compare. It’s just that we couldn’t stay planted in Good Friday.  Every speaker would figuratively roll back the stone, open the tomb, and get to Easter. We were like kids who couldn’t wait for Christmas to open our gifts.  It was too hard to keep a somber expression when the fire of the risen Christ is in our hearts.
            This is not a phenomenon limited to any one particular group.  Nowadays I live in a small town in Pennsylvania. My colleague Dick Williams, the pastor at the Everett United Methodist Church and a preacher I deeply respect, always laughs when our clergy group plans our joint Lenten services and reminds us that we don’t do Lent very well because we’re Easter people at heart and we already know the ending!
            I’m not saying Lent is a waste of time.  On the contrary.  Most of the Christians I know live the cross daily. We bear the scars of our history, our environment, and of the sin that the apostle Paul describes so well. (Read the seventh chapter of Romans, especially verse 15: “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.”)
            That’s why Easter is such good news.  And we’re all in this together. That’s why one of the joys of reading The Upper Room is that we come to realize we’re all in the same boat, experience the same struggles – and share the same risen Lord!
            Lent is an opportunity to take a journey together, in the words of a popular chorus “from the cross to the grave, from the grave to the sky.”  Each year it is the same familiar path, and yet it is always new. 
            This Lent I suggest that small groups allow the daily meditations of The Upper Room to serve as the cobblestones for a journey from Job’s ash hill to the City of God.  I choose the image of the city deliberately.  Biblically, history will find its fulfillment in the City of God, the New Jerusalem.  This should not be surprising.  The city, after all, is where all the people are! 
            I grew up in California, and I enjoyed visiting the missions.  The road that ran north and south through Colonial California was called El Camino Real – “the royal road.”  The missions were outposts established about a day’s ride apart, places where travelers could find rest, shelter, and sanctuary. 
            Our Lenten small-group meetings are like mission points along the road to Easter.  Each outpost has its own name: Justice, Shalom, Righteousness, Hope, and Healing before we find ourselves in hailing distance of the City of God.
            Ultimately, we are meant to live by God’s rules in God’s kingdom long before we all arrive there, perfected by God.  Let us journey together.  We will magnify the map of God’s word using the lens of the experiences of our brothers and sisters as reported in the daily meditations of The Upper Room.
           This study includes sessions for Holy Week and for the week after Easter – more than you will probably meet. So read through all the sessions and choose the five or six you will need for your group’s schedule of meetings. Each session also includes (at the end) suggestions for children’s sessions that are based on that week’s meditation from The Upper Room. If you will meet the week after Easter, be sure to invite participants a week or two ahead of time to bring favorite Easter treats to share with the group in your last meeting.