Hello,
Welcome to Holy Week.
Although the world might make a bigger deal of Christmas, for Christians
this week is the most important week of the year. This week is the week that Jesus gathered his disciples for
the last time around a meal (Thursday), engaged every evil in a battle to the
death (Friday), and changed everything forever with a stroll out of a stone
sealed tomb (Sunday).
Christians have a name for each of these days….Maundy Thursday (Maundy means command…Jesus gave two
commands: regularly eat this meal of his presence; to love each other has he
has loved us), Good Friday (a most terrible day
for Jesus, but a day that could be no “gooder” for all humanity), and Easter (as the sun rises in the east bringing light to
every day, when Jesus, the Son of God rose he brought light to enlighten all
creation night and day, and even when days come to an end).
This week is the heart of the Christian faith, and as we
live this week God sets us straight on what God is all about.
God is all about uniting all people. That is what Maundy Thursday is all
about. As he gathered his
disciples around that table for his final meal, he gave to his people the
treasure of his presence in their lives, a presence that embodied complete
self-giving love. He didn’t just
give a theological lecture on the importance of being nice to each other, lots
of people can do that (and it doesn’t work very well). But Jesus, doing only what God can do,
joins himself to those at his table, and pulls them together. We do a pretty good job of us’n and them’n…who are real
Christians, and who are not….who is saved, and who is not. The heart of God, however, is about, as
they say in Ohio…..about “we’s”, uniting all people in the body of Christ.
God is about freeing people. That is what Good Friday is all about. When Jesus died on the cross he took to
death with him everything that would want to enslave you. When he breathed his last so did
they. All the shame in which the
world would want to swallow you up ….dead. All the guilt that you feel constricting
you….dead. All the evil that
would spawn in the petri dish of your heart…..dead. God is not about making good people, lots of people can do
that (with questionable results).
God is about freeing people from any voice that would want to enslave by
taking their breath away…forever!
God is about in-livening people. That is what Easter is all about. When Jesus stepped out of that Easter tomb he stepped out
alive and into a new life. He
didn’t come out of the tomb like a baseball batter coming out of the dugout to
try again at the plate. He came
out of the tomb in victory having hit it out of the park and bringing the game
to a final end. When Jesus walked
out of the tomb, he did not do so in order to give principles to live (hit) by,
he did so to begin a lively
victory party that would never end, transforming how we live every moment of
this life with the victorious joy that neither time or space can hold in.
Do you wonder what the Christian faith is all about? Do you feel like the Christian faith
doesn’t have much relevancy in your life?
Do you feel like life has a suffocating death-grip hold on you and you
are helplessly gasping for breath?
Let me invite you to live this Holy Week. Come to church on Maundy Thursday and
receive the Lord. Come to church
on Good Friday and hear all the voices of enslavement breath their last. Come to church on Easter and find
yourself caught up in a victory celebration that will take hold of you
forever. This week is what the
Christian faith is all about…..let’s live this week together.
Have a great week.
God’s grace and peace, (GGAP)
Pastor Jerry Nuernberger
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