The Season of Lent is a time of self-reflection, of spiritual examination. While that is a healthy and necessary exercise, we don’t examine ourselves in isolation. Instead, we are invited to lay our lives alongside the life of Jesus. It is a sobering exercise to say the least. And yet, what we discover in this examination of his life and ours, is not condemnation or recrimination. Instead, we are overwhelmed, the farther we go on this journey with him, by the depths of love he has for all of us. Lent is a time for getting our spiritual house in order, that is true. But above all, it is an invitation to once again commit to love like Christ loves.
Join us for Ash Wednesday Service on March 5th @ 6:00 PM
Ash Wednesday is about refocusing and realigning ourselves in relationship to God and one another. We must encounter our sinfulness and frailty not with shame and blame but with honesty and truth, trusting that God receives our confession.
This first Sunday in Lent is quite the roller coaster ride, which is honestly quite typical of Year B in the lectionary cycle.
If Ash Wednesday and the First Sunday in Lent set us off on our Lenten journey, this week we find out just what this journey will require of us.
This Third Sunday in Lent is an opportunity to lead the congregation to reflect on the individual and communal work we do in worship.
This week, we continue our mid-Lent excursion into the Gospel of John by listening in on Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus.
At this stage of our Lenten journey, we encounter the fruit and the charge that comes with losing our life to find it in God—service.
As we return to Mark for Palm/Passion Sunday, it is striking that even Mark has slowed down the action a bit, filling in details about Jesus’ instructions to the disciples and the response of the bystanders who questioned them when they went to find the colt for Jesus to ride.
I think this is the point of Maundy Thursday: to be able to recognize when we are loving as Christ loves us because we’ve encountered and practiced that love together in worship.
We come to Good Friday and are able to remember it for what it was because we are Resurrection people who know Sunday is coming.
9:00 AM Beginnings Service
11:00 AM Mosaic Service