Clifton Kirkpatrick, stated clerk of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA)--the national body of our denomination--has strongly criticized President Bush's policy in the Middle East in a recent letter.
You can read his message to the president here.
Wednesday, April 28, 2004
Growing up, bit by bit
One of the delights of being a parent is watching your child progress through “developmental stages”—the points at which they develop new skills and abilities.
My son Ben, for example, is learning to draw with a pen he holds by himself, to recognize the letters of the alphabet, and to tell right from wrong. All of those activities reflect the “developmental stage” he’s working through. Psychologists tell us a child has to “master” one stage in order to progress to the next.
Our life with God goes through similar stages—points at which our relationship to the Holy One changes in significant ways. Often described as “stages of the journey,” the “developmental stages” we encounter in our life of faith can be identified in various scriptures.
One of the scriptures that clearly points to various “stages” in our life with God is the beloved Psalm 23. Although this psalm is usually associated with funerals, it also has a lot to say to the living and to those who aren’t grieving.
As you read it in preparation for worship, think about what parts of the psalm speak to you most directly. Why do those parts attract you? What do they have to teach you? How might God be providing care and guidance, given the parts of the psalm that speak to you?
Our other Sunday readings will be Acts 9:36-43, about Peter healing Dorcas; Revelation 7:9-17, in which all the world comes to worship the lamb who is also the shepherd; and John 10:22-30, in which Jesus speaks of himself as the good shepherd.
We’ll sing “Ye Servants of God, Your Master Proclaim,” “Amazing Grace, How Sweet the Sound,” and “Blessed Be the Ties That Bind.” We’ll also celebrate the Lord’s supper—and everyone’s welcome at this table!
My son Ben, for example, is learning to draw with a pen he holds by himself, to recognize the letters of the alphabet, and to tell right from wrong. All of those activities reflect the “developmental stage” he’s working through. Psychologists tell us a child has to “master” one stage in order to progress to the next.
Our life with God goes through similar stages—points at which our relationship to the Holy One changes in significant ways. Often described as “stages of the journey,” the “developmental stages” we encounter in our life of faith can be identified in various scriptures.
One of the scriptures that clearly points to various “stages” in our life with God is the beloved Psalm 23. Although this psalm is usually associated with funerals, it also has a lot to say to the living and to those who aren’t grieving.
As you read it in preparation for worship, think about what parts of the psalm speak to you most directly. Why do those parts attract you? What do they have to teach you? How might God be providing care and guidance, given the parts of the psalm that speak to you?
Our other Sunday readings will be Acts 9:36-43, about Peter healing Dorcas; Revelation 7:9-17, in which all the world comes to worship the lamb who is also the shepherd; and John 10:22-30, in which Jesus speaks of himself as the good shepherd.
We’ll sing “Ye Servants of God, Your Master Proclaim,” “Amazing Grace, How Sweet the Sound,” and “Blessed Be the Ties That Bind.” We’ll also celebrate the Lord’s supper—and everyone’s welcome at this table!
Saturday, April 24, 2004
Emerging concerns in the PC(USA)
Several times a year, the executive director and stated clerk of the Presbyterian Church (USA) General Assembly--our "national office"--send a letter to pastors sharing their observations about the life of the denomination.
Here is their letter that arrived this week:
Dear Friends and Colleagues:
We greet you in the joy of the risen Christ! This is the latest of our seasonal communications to you to offer a word of encouragement, to share some of our thoughts about the life of the church, and to invite your input to us. In this letter, we want to offer to you some of our experiences and learnings from these past three years of having held consultations with our presbyteries and synods across the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A). We hope our thoughts and questions will both challenge and encourage you in your particular ministries.
Many of you may have participated in one of the consultations. We, along with our colleague Gary Torrens, visited fifteen synod and 100 presbytery meetings. Perhaps the thought of being at 115 governing body meetings might not seem very exciting, but it has been a wonderful experience for us. In fact, we have said many times during these consultations that this may have been the most significant thing we have done in our second terms in these offices.
We set about these consultations in response to an action of the General Assembly to consult with our presbyteries and synods. Each of our consultations focused on the theme, "A New Testament Church in a New Century." That theme emerged from our conviction that we are living in a whole new context for ministry in a postmodern, 21st-century world. We believe this new context of ours has huge parallels with the experience of the New Testament church, namely, a Pentecostal world of people from every race, tongue, and nation living among us; a church struggling, like the church in Corinth, to find unity in the midst of our diversity; a dis-established church in a secular culture much like the Roman Empire; and a spiritual hunger much like Paul found at the Areopagus.
In the midst of just this kind of world, the Holy Spirit transformed the New Testament church from being a group of discouraged and divided followers of Christ into being a community of disciples that "turned the world upside down for the gospel." Just as the Holy Spirit was at work then, we believe the Holy Spirit is at work now, calling the PC(USA) to the same kind of renewal so that we can "turn the world upside down for the gospel" in our day and time.
While we have seen churches with real problems and struggles, we have also seen the Holy Spirit moving in congregations all across this denomination. The first question we asked everywhere we went was, "Where is God leading your presbytery (or synod)?" As you might expect, we got a wide variety of responses. What impressed us most was that, almost without exception, we found presbyteries and synods who are confident that God is leading them and their congregations in ministry! That sense of confidence that God is at work among us is a real source of strength and encouragement for all of us.
A number of common themes emerged in those dialogues and conversations:
· growing and widespread consensus that evangelism is our first calling and that justice is God's great intention for humankind;
· passion to revitalize our congregations;
· priority for reaching out to the rich multicultural reality of God's people;
· a focus on building a new generation of leaders, both lay and clergy, for the life and mission of the PC(USA);
· a growing number of partnerships with Christians around the world in ways that bring transformation there and here;
· a valuing of our polity with its emphasis on discerning the will of God through the collective and shared leadership of ministers and elders;
· hunger for the peace, unity, and purity of our church.
These priorities are expressed in very different ways in our diverse presbyteries. The churches and forms of ministry in the Presbytery of Alaska, where most churches are on different islands and only two can reach one another by road, look very different, from those in the Presbytery of New York City, where there are many churches on one island. Despite these marked differences, some very important common priorities are emerging among us across the denomination.
We are struck that, while there are deep disagreements on the "hot button" issues dividing our church, these are often not the primary concerns of our presbyteries or the congregations they represent. The primary passion and growing energy are around the common themes we heard expressed over and over again in our consultations.
We have made a commitment to shape our ministry and organizations to serve this emerging consensus of where God is leading us in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), and we encourage you to seriously and prayerfully do the same. Where do you see the parallels between the New Testament church and the PC(USA) today in your own context? Are the common themes we've identified the same themes at work where you are engaged in ministry?
Sharing these particular reflections with you seems most appropriate as we move from Easter into Pentecost. From these consultations we have an uplifting sense of hope for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). There are undoubtedly many painful changes that we need to make to be a faithful and dynamic community of faith in 21st-century America. However, we have sensed the Holy Spirit at work among Presbyterians across this denomination in powerful ways, and we look forward to continuing our partnership with you in building a New Testament church for the 21st century.
Yours in Christ,
John Detterick, Executive Director of the General Assembly Council
Clifton Kirkpatrick, Stated Clerk of the General Assembly
Here is their letter that arrived this week:
Dear Friends and Colleagues:
We greet you in the joy of the risen Christ! This is the latest of our seasonal communications to you to offer a word of encouragement, to share some of our thoughts about the life of the church, and to invite your input to us. In this letter, we want to offer to you some of our experiences and learnings from these past three years of having held consultations with our presbyteries and synods across the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A). We hope our thoughts and questions will both challenge and encourage you in your particular ministries.
Many of you may have participated in one of the consultations. We, along with our colleague Gary Torrens, visited fifteen synod and 100 presbytery meetings. Perhaps the thought of being at 115 governing body meetings might not seem very exciting, but it has been a wonderful experience for us. In fact, we have said many times during these consultations that this may have been the most significant thing we have done in our second terms in these offices.
We set about these consultations in response to an action of the General Assembly to consult with our presbyteries and synods. Each of our consultations focused on the theme, "A New Testament Church in a New Century." That theme emerged from our conviction that we are living in a whole new context for ministry in a postmodern, 21st-century world. We believe this new context of ours has huge parallels with the experience of the New Testament church, namely, a Pentecostal world of people from every race, tongue, and nation living among us; a church struggling, like the church in Corinth, to find unity in the midst of our diversity; a dis-established church in a secular culture much like the Roman Empire; and a spiritual hunger much like Paul found at the Areopagus.
In the midst of just this kind of world, the Holy Spirit transformed the New Testament church from being a group of discouraged and divided followers of Christ into being a community of disciples that "turned the world upside down for the gospel." Just as the Holy Spirit was at work then, we believe the Holy Spirit is at work now, calling the PC(USA) to the same kind of renewal so that we can "turn the world upside down for the gospel" in our day and time.
While we have seen churches with real problems and struggles, we have also seen the Holy Spirit moving in congregations all across this denomination. The first question we asked everywhere we went was, "Where is God leading your presbytery (or synod)?" As you might expect, we got a wide variety of responses. What impressed us most was that, almost without exception, we found presbyteries and synods who are confident that God is leading them and their congregations in ministry! That sense of confidence that God is at work among us is a real source of strength and encouragement for all of us.
A number of common themes emerged in those dialogues and conversations:
· growing and widespread consensus that evangelism is our first calling and that justice is God's great intention for humankind;
· passion to revitalize our congregations;
· priority for reaching out to the rich multicultural reality of God's people;
· a focus on building a new generation of leaders, both lay and clergy, for the life and mission of the PC(USA);
· a growing number of partnerships with Christians around the world in ways that bring transformation there and here;
· a valuing of our polity with its emphasis on discerning the will of God through the collective and shared leadership of ministers and elders;
· hunger for the peace, unity, and purity of our church.
These priorities are expressed in very different ways in our diverse presbyteries. The churches and forms of ministry in the Presbytery of Alaska, where most churches are on different islands and only two can reach one another by road, look very different, from those in the Presbytery of New York City, where there are many churches on one island. Despite these marked differences, some very important common priorities are emerging among us across the denomination.
We are struck that, while there are deep disagreements on the "hot button" issues dividing our church, these are often not the primary concerns of our presbyteries or the congregations they represent. The primary passion and growing energy are around the common themes we heard expressed over and over again in our consultations.
We have made a commitment to shape our ministry and organizations to serve this emerging consensus of where God is leading us in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), and we encourage you to seriously and prayerfully do the same. Where do you see the parallels between the New Testament church and the PC(USA) today in your own context? Are the common themes we've identified the same themes at work where you are engaged in ministry?
Sharing these particular reflections with you seems most appropriate as we move from Easter into Pentecost. From these consultations we have an uplifting sense of hope for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). There are undoubtedly many painful changes that we need to make to be a faithful and dynamic community of faith in 21st-century America. However, we have sensed the Holy Spirit at work among Presbyterians across this denomination in powerful ways, and we look forward to continuing our partnership with you in building a New Testament church for the 21st century.
Yours in Christ,
John Detterick, Executive Director of the General Assembly Council
Clifton Kirkpatrick, Stated Clerk of the General Assembly
Sunday, April 18, 2004
Showing your scars
A sermon on John 20:19-31.
She refuses to wear a bathing suit in public anymore. She’s too embarrassed by the stretch marks on her abdomen that record her transformation from “child-free young adult” to “mother.” She wishes her body still looked the way it used to look.
Men who are going bald use Rogaine and implants to hide their shiny domes.
Ronald Reagan, throughout his presidency and after, dyed his hair black to hide the gray that marked the passage of the years and the stresses of his life. (And there were plenty of good reasons for Ronald Reagan to go gray!)
Franklin Roosevelt carefully arranged photo opportunities so the public wouldn’t see his wheelchair or his legs mangled by polio.
The actor Johnny Depp, when his romance with Winona Ryder ended, was left with a tattoo reading “Winona Forever.” He had it altered so it wouldn’t be a constant reminder of the past.
We live in a culture that teaches us to hide our imperfections, our scars. Our bodies, our lives, our minds are supposed to be seamless—perfect, without blemish, without a hint of the hard times we’ve come through in the past. So many times, people who are dying have said to me, “At least I know when I get to heaven my body will be perfect and whole again”—as if simply being in heaven wouldn’t be enough.
We are obsessed, sometimes, with hiding our scars, those things that show that life has marked us. It’s easy to believe those scars keep us from being whole. They frighten us, and they cause us to hide parts of ourselves away.
II.
The disciples, according to the Gospel of John, have hidden themselves away behind closed doors on Easter, the day Jesus was resurrected. I imagine the windows are shuttered, and the followers of Jesus sit in a smoky room, in the dim light of an oil lamp, feeling deeply grieved. Their hearts are broken and they are afraid for their lives: Jesus was hung on a cross to die, and they have laid him to rest, but now his body is gone from the tomb. Mary Magdalene says she has seen the Lord, resurrected, but they don’t know whether to believe her. The future that had looked so bright a few days earlier as Jesus entered Jerusalem, a future that promised the coming of the universal rule of God, has grown dim and uncertain.
I wonder: Do the disciples feel safe behind the locked doors? Or do they feel like prisoners of their fear? Are they gathered to comfort one another or to avoid the powers of darkness that loom outside in the city streets of Jerusalem?
What have people said to them on the street and in the marketplace, what have they seen or imagined, that creates the fear that leads them to hide behind locked doors? What scars are they hiding from the world? Have they been robbed of their hope? Or are they waiting a revelation? It seems that “fear of what the authorities may yet do to obliterate the memory of Jesus still dominates them, and so they have locked the doors in self-protection.”
I imagine them sitting quietly, in groups of three or four, talking among themselves, doing what most people do when someone they love has died: They’re telling stories, sharing memories. You’ve heard those stories. “Remember when?” they say. “I always loved the way . . . .” “I just wish I’d told him . . . .”
And then, in the midst of the story-telling, as if their words had the power to raise him from the dead, Jesus stands among them and says, “Peace be with you.”
They don’t recognize him at first. But when he shows them the wounds on his hands and in his side, they know who he is and they rejoice. And he says it again: “Peace be with you.”
A week later, it happens again with Thomas in the room. The followers of Jesus are sitting behind closed doors when he appears to them and says, “Peace be with you.” He shows his hands and his side to Thomas, who immediately confesses: “My Lord and my God!”
When I read this passage, I wonder what it means that the followers of Jesus don’t recognize him until he displays the scars on his resurrected body, the wounds left by the nails and the spear. Even after he is raised from the dead, Jesus carries the scars inflicted by the world—they are, in fact, a key to his identity. He is the wounded healer who comes to his frightened disciples and says, “Peace be with you.” What power those words must have carried to people hidden in fear behind locked doors, with their stormy hearts full of grief!
III.
And how puzzling it is that the resurrected and glorified body of the Christ still carries the wounds of the world!
That puzzle has been very much on my mind, because an agnostic friend asked me to explain Easter and resurrection in a way that was simple. That’s very hard to do, especially when faith doesn’t matter to the person you’re talking with, because there is no simple explanation of resurrection.
The New Testament describes resurrection in several ways, and a key to making sense of the different portrayals is to know that for the writers of the New Testament, “body” or “flesh” were synonyms for “human being.” “Resurrection of the body” means resurrection of a person, an identity. It means that who “we” are, the essence of our identity, will live again.
But, says the bible, we won’t be exactly the same. The apostle Paul says we will be planted as physical bodies but be raised as spiritual bodies. The first letter of John says we do not know what we will be in the resurrection, but we do know that we will be like Jesus.
So Jesus is our best model for understanding what “resurrection” means. He clearly lived again after his death. He was the same person the disciples knew when he was alive. He ate, he drank, he could be touched; but his body was mysteriously different. He had been transformed; he couldn’t automatically be recognized. He could appear and disappear from a room even though the doors were locked. In fact, in the Gospel of Luke Jesus has to assure the disciples that it’s really him and not a ghost.
Thus, the resurrection accounts in the New Testament tell us the earthly Jesus and the resurrected Jesus were alike but not alike. He was the same person, only in a different way. And the resurrected Jesus still carried the scars of the earthly Jesus. Those scars were, in fact, a key to his identity, a way of being certain the resurrected Jesus was the same man who died on the cross.
“Something like that,” says theologian Shirley Guthrie, “is what we may hope for as we look forward to life in the ‘spiritual bodies’ Paul tells us about. . . . In an unimaginably different and better way we will still be the individual human beings we are now.”
IV.
But we know something about resurrection already. We experience a version of it over and over again throughout our lives.
Think about the successful executive or effective parent, raised to a new life out of addiction to drugs and alcohol. Or the troubled and lonely teenager who goes off to college and discovers a new identity as an intelligent and competent person. Or the people who’ve lost all they worked for—their businesses, their families, their careers—but nevertheless find ways to reimagine their lives and allow God to transform them through their experiences of adversity.
We know about resurrection, about the way God brings new life to what we think is dead, about the transformations God makes possible. We know about it because we experience it; but the ways in which we experience resurrection in this life are just a taste of what resurrection will be like when our physical bodies die. Through resurrection, we’re the same person, only different.
But so often we hide the scars left by those things that marked us before resurrection. I wonder if that’s not a mistake? If we shouldn’t instead show those scars to those we love so that they can know who we have been, who we are now, and in our identities recognize the power of the One who transformed us?
After all, only in seeing Jesus’ wounds does Thomas surrender to the power of God. Only in seeing Jesus’ wounds do the disciples understand his identity and the meaning of resurrection. Only in seeing those wounds do we recognize: God is stronger than death. God brings new strength, new life, out of those things that hurt us. People won’t recognize that if they don’t see our scars.
V.
I hid one of my own my scars for years. It was a mark left by chronic depression, which has stalked my family for at least five generations. My great-grandfather, my grandfather, my mother, her sister, my cousins and my brother have all wrestled with this particular demon. I have a cousin who committed suicide and another who attempted it; six family members rely on antidepressant and anti-anxiety medications to help them have abundant life; and for twenty years, I’ve taken antidepressant medications.
I used to hide what depression did and does to me. But slowly I came to see that not showing the scars left by depression—the impact on my marriage and my friendships and my professional life, the way depression made me feel about myself, the side effects from medication that I live with daily—not showing those scars cloaked the ways in which God had raised me to new life despite the depression. Others couldn’t see what God had done in my life because they didn’t know how deep my wounds had been.
Wounds like that hurt, but in my life God used them to teach me about myself and my family, to make me sensitive to the suffering of others, to show me what it means to take medication prayerfully rather than reluctantly. Living with depression has given me gifts for ministry. And through it I’ve learned that mental illness is not a moral failing or something to be ashamed of, but that when treated and respected it can bestow important blessings.
When I finally decided to show those wounds to others, I discovered that when other people saw my scars they were also able to see—and believe in—my resurrection. Knowing that I dance with depression gives some people hope that God can and will resurrect them from their own despair. When other people see my scars, they understand that the relatively strong and upbeat person they perceive me to be is the same person marked deeply by the wounds of depression.
Quite a paradox: wounded yet healed, broken but whole.
VI.
Each of us has scars that we hide, wounds that reveal who we have been and how God has worked in our lives to make us who we are now. If Jesus, who showed his scars to his closest companions, is the model for our own resurrection, maybe we are called to show our scars to others, too—to confirm that injured and broken people can be made whole again, that God does indeed raise us to new life, that God is stronger than death or any other power at work in our lives.
Jesus sends us as he was sent to say to the world, “Peace be with you” and show our wounds so that others might see the power of God in lives and thus know that they too are in a relationship with the God of infinite love who was revealed in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus the Christ.
Like the wind moving over the waters at the beginning of creation, like the breath of life God breathed into Adam and Eve, in this passage from John, Jesus breathes on his disciples to give them the power of the Holy Spirit, commissioning them to continue his work on earth.
We, too, are a part of that commission—people sanctified and sent by Christ when he says to Thomas, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” Through believing, we have life in his name and we are witnesses to that power.
Glory be to God Almighty, the One who is creating us, the One who is redeeming us, the One who is sustaining us, now and forever. Amen.
She refuses to wear a bathing suit in public anymore. She’s too embarrassed by the stretch marks on her abdomen that record her transformation from “child-free young adult” to “mother.” She wishes her body still looked the way it used to look.
Men who are going bald use Rogaine and implants to hide their shiny domes.
Ronald Reagan, throughout his presidency and after, dyed his hair black to hide the gray that marked the passage of the years and the stresses of his life. (And there were plenty of good reasons for Ronald Reagan to go gray!)
Franklin Roosevelt carefully arranged photo opportunities so the public wouldn’t see his wheelchair or his legs mangled by polio.
The actor Johnny Depp, when his romance with Winona Ryder ended, was left with a tattoo reading “Winona Forever.” He had it altered so it wouldn’t be a constant reminder of the past.
We live in a culture that teaches us to hide our imperfections, our scars. Our bodies, our lives, our minds are supposed to be seamless—perfect, without blemish, without a hint of the hard times we’ve come through in the past. So many times, people who are dying have said to me, “At least I know when I get to heaven my body will be perfect and whole again”—as if simply being in heaven wouldn’t be enough.
We are obsessed, sometimes, with hiding our scars, those things that show that life has marked us. It’s easy to believe those scars keep us from being whole. They frighten us, and they cause us to hide parts of ourselves away.
II.
The disciples, according to the Gospel of John, have hidden themselves away behind closed doors on Easter, the day Jesus was resurrected. I imagine the windows are shuttered, and the followers of Jesus sit in a smoky room, in the dim light of an oil lamp, feeling deeply grieved. Their hearts are broken and they are afraid for their lives: Jesus was hung on a cross to die, and they have laid him to rest, but now his body is gone from the tomb. Mary Magdalene says she has seen the Lord, resurrected, but they don’t know whether to believe her. The future that had looked so bright a few days earlier as Jesus entered Jerusalem, a future that promised the coming of the universal rule of God, has grown dim and uncertain.
I wonder: Do the disciples feel safe behind the locked doors? Or do they feel like prisoners of their fear? Are they gathered to comfort one another or to avoid the powers of darkness that loom outside in the city streets of Jerusalem?
What have people said to them on the street and in the marketplace, what have they seen or imagined, that creates the fear that leads them to hide behind locked doors? What scars are they hiding from the world? Have they been robbed of their hope? Or are they waiting a revelation? It seems that “fear of what the authorities may yet do to obliterate the memory of Jesus still dominates them, and so they have locked the doors in self-protection.”
I imagine them sitting quietly, in groups of three or four, talking among themselves, doing what most people do when someone they love has died: They’re telling stories, sharing memories. You’ve heard those stories. “Remember when?” they say. “I always loved the way . . . .” “I just wish I’d told him . . . .”
And then, in the midst of the story-telling, as if their words had the power to raise him from the dead, Jesus stands among them and says, “Peace be with you.”
They don’t recognize him at first. But when he shows them the wounds on his hands and in his side, they know who he is and they rejoice. And he says it again: “Peace be with you.”
A week later, it happens again with Thomas in the room. The followers of Jesus are sitting behind closed doors when he appears to them and says, “Peace be with you.” He shows his hands and his side to Thomas, who immediately confesses: “My Lord and my God!”
When I read this passage, I wonder what it means that the followers of Jesus don’t recognize him until he displays the scars on his resurrected body, the wounds left by the nails and the spear. Even after he is raised from the dead, Jesus carries the scars inflicted by the world—they are, in fact, a key to his identity. He is the wounded healer who comes to his frightened disciples and says, “Peace be with you.” What power those words must have carried to people hidden in fear behind locked doors, with their stormy hearts full of grief!
III.
And how puzzling it is that the resurrected and glorified body of the Christ still carries the wounds of the world!
That puzzle has been very much on my mind, because an agnostic friend asked me to explain Easter and resurrection in a way that was simple. That’s very hard to do, especially when faith doesn’t matter to the person you’re talking with, because there is no simple explanation of resurrection.
The New Testament describes resurrection in several ways, and a key to making sense of the different portrayals is to know that for the writers of the New Testament, “body” or “flesh” were synonyms for “human being.” “Resurrection of the body” means resurrection of a person, an identity. It means that who “we” are, the essence of our identity, will live again.
But, says the bible, we won’t be exactly the same. The apostle Paul says we will be planted as physical bodies but be raised as spiritual bodies. The first letter of John says we do not know what we will be in the resurrection, but we do know that we will be like Jesus.
So Jesus is our best model for understanding what “resurrection” means. He clearly lived again after his death. He was the same person the disciples knew when he was alive. He ate, he drank, he could be touched; but his body was mysteriously different. He had been transformed; he couldn’t automatically be recognized. He could appear and disappear from a room even though the doors were locked. In fact, in the Gospel of Luke Jesus has to assure the disciples that it’s really him and not a ghost.
Thus, the resurrection accounts in the New Testament tell us the earthly Jesus and the resurrected Jesus were alike but not alike. He was the same person, only in a different way. And the resurrected Jesus still carried the scars of the earthly Jesus. Those scars were, in fact, a key to his identity, a way of being certain the resurrected Jesus was the same man who died on the cross.
“Something like that,” says theologian Shirley Guthrie, “is what we may hope for as we look forward to life in the ‘spiritual bodies’ Paul tells us about. . . . In an unimaginably different and better way we will still be the individual human beings we are now.”
IV.
But we know something about resurrection already. We experience a version of it over and over again throughout our lives.
Think about the successful executive or effective parent, raised to a new life out of addiction to drugs and alcohol. Or the troubled and lonely teenager who goes off to college and discovers a new identity as an intelligent and competent person. Or the people who’ve lost all they worked for—their businesses, their families, their careers—but nevertheless find ways to reimagine their lives and allow God to transform them through their experiences of adversity.
We know about resurrection, about the way God brings new life to what we think is dead, about the transformations God makes possible. We know about it because we experience it; but the ways in which we experience resurrection in this life are just a taste of what resurrection will be like when our physical bodies die. Through resurrection, we’re the same person, only different.
But so often we hide the scars left by those things that marked us before resurrection. I wonder if that’s not a mistake? If we shouldn’t instead show those scars to those we love so that they can know who we have been, who we are now, and in our identities recognize the power of the One who transformed us?
After all, only in seeing Jesus’ wounds does Thomas surrender to the power of God. Only in seeing Jesus’ wounds do the disciples understand his identity and the meaning of resurrection. Only in seeing those wounds do we recognize: God is stronger than death. God brings new strength, new life, out of those things that hurt us. People won’t recognize that if they don’t see our scars.
V.
I hid one of my own my scars for years. It was a mark left by chronic depression, which has stalked my family for at least five generations. My great-grandfather, my grandfather, my mother, her sister, my cousins and my brother have all wrestled with this particular demon. I have a cousin who committed suicide and another who attempted it; six family members rely on antidepressant and anti-anxiety medications to help them have abundant life; and for twenty years, I’ve taken antidepressant medications.
I used to hide what depression did and does to me. But slowly I came to see that not showing the scars left by depression—the impact on my marriage and my friendships and my professional life, the way depression made me feel about myself, the side effects from medication that I live with daily—not showing those scars cloaked the ways in which God had raised me to new life despite the depression. Others couldn’t see what God had done in my life because they didn’t know how deep my wounds had been.
Wounds like that hurt, but in my life God used them to teach me about myself and my family, to make me sensitive to the suffering of others, to show me what it means to take medication prayerfully rather than reluctantly. Living with depression has given me gifts for ministry. And through it I’ve learned that mental illness is not a moral failing or something to be ashamed of, but that when treated and respected it can bestow important blessings.
When I finally decided to show those wounds to others, I discovered that when other people saw my scars they were also able to see—and believe in—my resurrection. Knowing that I dance with depression gives some people hope that God can and will resurrect them from their own despair. When other people see my scars, they understand that the relatively strong and upbeat person they perceive me to be is the same person marked deeply by the wounds of depression.
Quite a paradox: wounded yet healed, broken but whole.
VI.
Each of us has scars that we hide, wounds that reveal who we have been and how God has worked in our lives to make us who we are now. If Jesus, who showed his scars to his closest companions, is the model for our own resurrection, maybe we are called to show our scars to others, too—to confirm that injured and broken people can be made whole again, that God does indeed raise us to new life, that God is stronger than death or any other power at work in our lives.
Jesus sends us as he was sent to say to the world, “Peace be with you” and show our wounds so that others might see the power of God in lives and thus know that they too are in a relationship with the God of infinite love who was revealed in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus the Christ.
Like the wind moving over the waters at the beginning of creation, like the breath of life God breathed into Adam and Eve, in this passage from John, Jesus breathes on his disciples to give them the power of the Holy Spirit, commissioning them to continue his work on earth.
We, too, are a part of that commission—people sanctified and sent by Christ when he says to Thomas, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” Through believing, we have life in his name and we are witnesses to that power.
Glory be to God Almighty, the One who is creating us, the One who is redeeming us, the One who is sustaining us, now and forever. Amen.
Tuesday, April 13, 2004
The Spirit and cyberspace
As many Americans seek spiritual nurture on the Internet as in church. Yet being involved in a congregation increases the chance that people will turn to the Web for spiritual friendship and connections.
That's the finding of a study released this month by the Pew Internet and American Life Project.
In a comprehensive study of Web behavior related to religion, the Project discovered that:
* 64% of the nation’s 128 million Internet users have done things online that relate to religious or spiritual matters
* Those who use the Internet for religious or spiritual purposes are more likely to be women, white, middle aged, college educated, and relatively well-to-do
* Evangelicals are among the most fervent Internet users for religious and spiritual purposes.
* The "online faithful" are devout and use the Internet for personal spiritual matters more than for traditional religious functions or congregational work. But their faith-activity online seems to augment already-strong commitments to congregations.
But only 17 percent of those who pursue the Spirit in cyberspace use the Web to search for places to attend religious services.
Overall, the portrait that emerges in this study counters, somewhat, the concern that the Internet will serve primarily as a venue for privatized religion.
"This study found that the Internet does provide people with sources of information, symbolic resources, and opportunities for networking and interaction outside the boundaries of formal religious bodies or traditions," the authors write. "Yet it also found that the online faithful seem more interested in augmenting their traditional faith practices and experiences by personally expressing their own faith and spirituality, as opposed to seeking something new or different in the online environment."
[Crossposted on Spondizo.]
That's the finding of a study released this month by the Pew Internet and American Life Project.
In a comprehensive study of Web behavior related to religion, the Project discovered that:
* 64% of the nation’s 128 million Internet users have done things online that relate to religious or spiritual matters
* Those who use the Internet for religious or spiritual purposes are more likely to be women, white, middle aged, college educated, and relatively well-to-do
* Evangelicals are among the most fervent Internet users for religious and spiritual purposes.
* The "online faithful" are devout and use the Internet for personal spiritual matters more than for traditional religious functions or congregational work. But their faith-activity online seems to augment already-strong commitments to congregations.
But only 17 percent of those who pursue the Spirit in cyberspace use the Web to search for places to attend religious services.
Overall, the portrait that emerges in this study counters, somewhat, the concern that the Internet will serve primarily as a venue for privatized religion.
"This study found that the Internet does provide people with sources of information, symbolic resources, and opportunities for networking and interaction outside the boundaries of formal religious bodies or traditions," the authors write. "Yet it also found that the online faithful seem more interested in augmenting their traditional faith practices and experiences by personally expressing their own faith and spirituality, as opposed to seeking something new or different in the online environment."
[Crossposted on Spondizo.]
Sunday, April 11, 2004
Remember?
A sermon on Luke 24:1-12:
It’s an uphill walk from the bus station in Chihuahua, Mexico, toward the cathedral on the city’s plaza—not a walk you would normally look forward to with a 35-pound backpack strapped to your shoulders.
But we’d arrived at dusk, we were hungry, and the guidebook said there was a good, cheap, clean hotel—The Plaza Reforma—not far off the main square. So we hoisted our packs and started walking.
Now, I’d memorized the directions to the hotel during our bus ride, but finding your way through a strange city in the dark can be a challenge—particularly if you’re in Mexico and you don’t speak Spanish. So Karee and my brother were a bit skeptical when we got to the Hotel Reforma.
“I thought it was called the Plaza Reforma,” Karee said.
“Must’ve changed the name,” I said.
“Maybe we should ask to see a room first,” my brother said. The lobby was filthy.
But I was confident. “I’m sure it’s fine,” I said, “and it’s only for one night. Let’s just check in and find some dinner.”
Famous last words. I’ll spare the gruesome details, but suffice to say, we will never spend another night at the Hotel Reforma.
And in the morning, on our way to breakfast, we found the Plaza Reforma, a cheap, clean, well-lighted hotel just four blocks from the rat’s nest where we’d spent the night.
Without a word, Karee took the guidebook and read aloud the directions I thought I’d memorized:
“Going uphill from the bus station,” it said, “you will pass several small hotels, but this is Chihuahua’s red-light district. Best to keep going to the top of the hill, where there are three small, relatively quiet places to the right.” One of them was the Plaza Reforma.
Karee and my brother looked at me accusingly. “I guess I didn’t remember that part of the directions,” I said. But I was forbidden to choose the hotels for the rest of the trip.
What we fail to remember can change our lives forever. “The root of all sin,” some have said, “is forgetfulness.”
II.
It is just before dawn on the first day of the week, and the women who loved Jesus are walking in silence to the tomb. The chill of the desert air makes them shiver, and their bare feet are wet with dew. The fragrance of the spices they have prepared surrounds them. They are on their way to anoint the body of their master.
They are grieving, each in her own way, hearts heavy in their ribcages, dark circles under their eyes from a sleepless night. Every time they close their eyes they see his body and the nails being driven into his wrists. Their eyes are red from crying.
They have gotten up early, dressing in the darkness, careful not to disturb their sleeping families, to be faithful to their prescribed task. In their culture, the ritual of anointing the dead falls on their shoulders. It’s simply what you do when someone has died, much as we might make a casserole or pasta salad and drop it by the family’s house. Like us, they take comfort in that ritual task; it gives them something to focus on, something to do. They learned it from their mothers, and they will teach it to their daughters, and while it’s not much, they might say, it’s all we can do. Even saying that is a part of the ritual.
But when they arrive at the tomb, they find the stone door already rolled away. Looking at each other with furrowed brows, they duck their heads and shuffle in through the tiny door. But the tomb is empty. The body is not here.
The women are perplexed.
Here they are, ready to do their job, to get on with the business of ritual mourning, and the body is missing. Without it, their spices are useless. Without the body, what are they supposed to do, standing in the half-light of a rock-hewn tomb on the morning after the Son of God was put to death by human sin?
All that they had dreamed of, all of the hope they invested in Jesus, in the coming kingdom of God, was crushed at the crucifixion.
And now they stand there in the empty tomb, minds racing, trying to figure out where/what/how/why to go on. It’s an Alice-in-Wonderland experience: Nothing is quite what it seems. Looking at the empty tomb through the lens of their life experience, there’s nothing that allows them to make sense of it.
Just what are they supposed to do now?
III.
We all know that feeling: Sometimes we’re just not prepared for what life throws at us.
The baby we’ve dreamed about, anticipated, joyfully prepared for, the baby who was going to make us a family: the baby never makes it home. What are we supposed to do?
The job we studied for, paid our dues for, counted on to fulfill our dreams: the job turns out to be deadening, all-consuming, a black hole ruining our marriages, our health and our relationships, but we’re too far in to get out. What are we supposed to do?
The family we used to love, the family we used to laugh and cry with, the family that was the center of our lives—now it’s only a place where people yell and nasty words are spoken and we never feel quite safe. What are we supposed to do?
What are we supposed to do when our dreams don’t turn out the way we wanted them to? When our hopes shrivel up like a pasture during a drought? Or our spirit becomes as skinny and pitiful as a calf whose mother’s milk has gone dry?
What are we supposed to do when life isn’t what we thought it would be, when we’re at that place we never dreamed of, when nothing in our experience allows us to make sense out of what’s happening in our life?
Sometimes, in our anxiety, we look for something—some peace, some sense of grace, some comfort—in a compulsive addiction to booze or drugs or sex or money, in the grinding pace of work and family and community that leaves no time to brood on what we’ve lost, in the grade we get on a test or in how much money we make or in how quickly our church is growing or what somebody else thinks of us.
But none of those things make up for what’s missing. So what are we supposed to do? What have we failed to remember?
IV.
Like us, in search of comfort, the women at the tomb have turned to an ordinary task—anointing the body—only to discover that things are not ordinary. And that perplexes them even more.
Then suddenly two men appear and say: “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; he has been raised.”
And then come the words that are the pivot for the entire scene: “Remember how he told you.
“Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again.”
“Then,” writes Luke, “then they remembered his words.” And immediately they recognize what has happened: Jesus, the Christ, has been raised from the dead. What the Master has said is true—a truth they see only by remembering the words that point to it.
Those words are what they need to overcome their anxiety and confusion, and they leave the darkness of the tomb for a morning growing brighter by the minute, eager to tell the rest of the disciples what’s happened.
By remembering the words of Jesus, they were able to recognize the truth about the empty tomb. Through the spectacles of their own limited experience, it meant nothing.
But through the more powerful lens of the gospel story, their confusion suddenly became clear through the act of remembering.
V.
Remembering, for a Christian, is not just to recall past events; it is to be aware of God’s presence with us at all moments, to carry the ancient story of God’s relationship with us into the present and into the future. Remembering brings the Kingdom of God into the present moment, allows us to see our lives in the context of the gospel, to realize who we are, truly, and whose we are.
For the women that morning, remembering the words of Jesus is a wake-up call. Just as an early-morning phone call in a strange motel room jolts you awake, those words of Jesus bring the women at the tomb to a totally different consciousness. They are able to see reality differently, to wake up and recognize the empty tomb as truth, because they remember what Jesus has said.
This is good news! In God’s Word we find resources to overcome our doubt and anxiety. Through God’s Word, we know we are not alone. In remembering the gospel story—using it to look at the events of our life in a new way—we can see truth; we can wake up and see our ordinary tasks, our ordinary lives, in an extraordinary way.
Part of discipleship means seeing the world through Christian glasses—and Christian glasses are different than the glasses of rationality, the glasses of capitalism, the glasses of sexism, the glasses of racism, or even the glasses of the Presbyterian Book of Order. Christian glasses remind us of the ultimate context of our lives. They show us where God’s story intersects with our story.
So I ask you: Where are the sealed tombs of your life? Where, in a fit of confusion or grief or disappointment have you sealed off something you love or something you are afraid of or something you are ashamed about, some relationship that was once important to you? What would you do if you rolled that rock away and discovered the tomb was empty? Would it frighten you or confuse you? Would you stand there, perplexed?
Or would you turn to the gospel story to make sense of it? Could you remember what Jesus said and see that empty tomb—that place where a new and unprecedented life begins—could you see that empty tomb through the lens of the gospel? Could you trust that by remembering the Word of God, your confusion and anxiety would lose their power?
VI.
Many Easter Sundays ago, when I worked as a chaplain, I stopped to visit a woman about to be discharged from the hospital. She was still hooked up to IV’s; her face was drawn and sharp, and she was very thin. But she smiled when I walked into the room.
Holding her hand, I said, “You must be very happy to be going home.”
“I am happy,” she said. “I am going home to die.”
Her name was Carmen. Her cancer had spread, and she had decided not to pursue treatment. She made a joke, and we laughed. She assured me that dying did not frighten her. “I trust God,” she said. “I trust God. And I want my family, my children, around me.”
When I left, she handed me a hot-pink, plastic Easter egg. “Now don’t you open that and look inside,” she said, “until it’s time to go home.”
I was amazed at Carmen’s trust in God as she peered into the face of death, and I wondered how it was that she had avoided the anger, confusion, and anxiety I so often saw in people who were dying.
Hours later, as I left the hospital, I reached into my pocket for my car keys and found that pink egg. When I opened it, a handwritten slip of paper fell out, like the fortune in a fortune cookie. It said: “He is risen! He is alive! Hallelujah!”
Carmen was dying, but she had remembered the Word of God. She knew what it meant to find the tomb empty, and she understood her life and death in the context of the gospel.
May we be as wise as Carmen, remembering the words of Christ in the midst of our confusion and thereby understanding our lives in a new way.
He is risen! He is alive! Alleluia! And amen!
It’s an uphill walk from the bus station in Chihuahua, Mexico, toward the cathedral on the city’s plaza—not a walk you would normally look forward to with a 35-pound backpack strapped to your shoulders.
But we’d arrived at dusk, we were hungry, and the guidebook said there was a good, cheap, clean hotel—The Plaza Reforma—not far off the main square. So we hoisted our packs and started walking.
Now, I’d memorized the directions to the hotel during our bus ride, but finding your way through a strange city in the dark can be a challenge—particularly if you’re in Mexico and you don’t speak Spanish. So Karee and my brother were a bit skeptical when we got to the Hotel Reforma.
“I thought it was called the Plaza Reforma,” Karee said.
“Must’ve changed the name,” I said.
“Maybe we should ask to see a room first,” my brother said. The lobby was filthy.
But I was confident. “I’m sure it’s fine,” I said, “and it’s only for one night. Let’s just check in and find some dinner.”
Famous last words. I’ll spare the gruesome details, but suffice to say, we will never spend another night at the Hotel Reforma.
And in the morning, on our way to breakfast, we found the Plaza Reforma, a cheap, clean, well-lighted hotel just four blocks from the rat’s nest where we’d spent the night.
Without a word, Karee took the guidebook and read aloud the directions I thought I’d memorized:
“Going uphill from the bus station,” it said, “you will pass several small hotels, but this is Chihuahua’s red-light district. Best to keep going to the top of the hill, where there are three small, relatively quiet places to the right.” One of them was the Plaza Reforma.
Karee and my brother looked at me accusingly. “I guess I didn’t remember that part of the directions,” I said. But I was forbidden to choose the hotels for the rest of the trip.
What we fail to remember can change our lives forever. “The root of all sin,” some have said, “is forgetfulness.”
II.
It is just before dawn on the first day of the week, and the women who loved Jesus are walking in silence to the tomb. The chill of the desert air makes them shiver, and their bare feet are wet with dew. The fragrance of the spices they have prepared surrounds them. They are on their way to anoint the body of their master.
They are grieving, each in her own way, hearts heavy in their ribcages, dark circles under their eyes from a sleepless night. Every time they close their eyes they see his body and the nails being driven into his wrists. Their eyes are red from crying.
They have gotten up early, dressing in the darkness, careful not to disturb their sleeping families, to be faithful to their prescribed task. In their culture, the ritual of anointing the dead falls on their shoulders. It’s simply what you do when someone has died, much as we might make a casserole or pasta salad and drop it by the family’s house. Like us, they take comfort in that ritual task; it gives them something to focus on, something to do. They learned it from their mothers, and they will teach it to their daughters, and while it’s not much, they might say, it’s all we can do. Even saying that is a part of the ritual.
But when they arrive at the tomb, they find the stone door already rolled away. Looking at each other with furrowed brows, they duck their heads and shuffle in through the tiny door. But the tomb is empty. The body is not here.
The women are perplexed.
Here they are, ready to do their job, to get on with the business of ritual mourning, and the body is missing. Without it, their spices are useless. Without the body, what are they supposed to do, standing in the half-light of a rock-hewn tomb on the morning after the Son of God was put to death by human sin?
All that they had dreamed of, all of the hope they invested in Jesus, in the coming kingdom of God, was crushed at the crucifixion.
And now they stand there in the empty tomb, minds racing, trying to figure out where/what/how/why to go on. It’s an Alice-in-Wonderland experience: Nothing is quite what it seems. Looking at the empty tomb through the lens of their life experience, there’s nothing that allows them to make sense of it.
Just what are they supposed to do now?
III.
We all know that feeling: Sometimes we’re just not prepared for what life throws at us.
The baby we’ve dreamed about, anticipated, joyfully prepared for, the baby who was going to make us a family: the baby never makes it home. What are we supposed to do?
The job we studied for, paid our dues for, counted on to fulfill our dreams: the job turns out to be deadening, all-consuming, a black hole ruining our marriages, our health and our relationships, but we’re too far in to get out. What are we supposed to do?
The family we used to love, the family we used to laugh and cry with, the family that was the center of our lives—now it’s only a place where people yell and nasty words are spoken and we never feel quite safe. What are we supposed to do?
What are we supposed to do when our dreams don’t turn out the way we wanted them to? When our hopes shrivel up like a pasture during a drought? Or our spirit becomes as skinny and pitiful as a calf whose mother’s milk has gone dry?
What are we supposed to do when life isn’t what we thought it would be, when we’re at that place we never dreamed of, when nothing in our experience allows us to make sense out of what’s happening in our life?
Sometimes, in our anxiety, we look for something—some peace, some sense of grace, some comfort—in a compulsive addiction to booze or drugs or sex or money, in the grinding pace of work and family and community that leaves no time to brood on what we’ve lost, in the grade we get on a test or in how much money we make or in how quickly our church is growing or what somebody else thinks of us.
But none of those things make up for what’s missing. So what are we supposed to do? What have we failed to remember?
IV.
Like us, in search of comfort, the women at the tomb have turned to an ordinary task—anointing the body—only to discover that things are not ordinary. And that perplexes them even more.
Then suddenly two men appear and say: “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; he has been raised.”
And then come the words that are the pivot for the entire scene: “Remember how he told you.
“Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again.”
“Then,” writes Luke, “then they remembered his words.” And immediately they recognize what has happened: Jesus, the Christ, has been raised from the dead. What the Master has said is true—a truth they see only by remembering the words that point to it.
Those words are what they need to overcome their anxiety and confusion, and they leave the darkness of the tomb for a morning growing brighter by the minute, eager to tell the rest of the disciples what’s happened.
By remembering the words of Jesus, they were able to recognize the truth about the empty tomb. Through the spectacles of their own limited experience, it meant nothing.
But through the more powerful lens of the gospel story, their confusion suddenly became clear through the act of remembering.
V.
Remembering, for a Christian, is not just to recall past events; it is to be aware of God’s presence with us at all moments, to carry the ancient story of God’s relationship with us into the present and into the future. Remembering brings the Kingdom of God into the present moment, allows us to see our lives in the context of the gospel, to realize who we are, truly, and whose we are.
For the women that morning, remembering the words of Jesus is a wake-up call. Just as an early-morning phone call in a strange motel room jolts you awake, those words of Jesus bring the women at the tomb to a totally different consciousness. They are able to see reality differently, to wake up and recognize the empty tomb as truth, because they remember what Jesus has said.
This is good news! In God’s Word we find resources to overcome our doubt and anxiety. Through God’s Word, we know we are not alone. In remembering the gospel story—using it to look at the events of our life in a new way—we can see truth; we can wake up and see our ordinary tasks, our ordinary lives, in an extraordinary way.
Part of discipleship means seeing the world through Christian glasses—and Christian glasses are different than the glasses of rationality, the glasses of capitalism, the glasses of sexism, the glasses of racism, or even the glasses of the Presbyterian Book of Order. Christian glasses remind us of the ultimate context of our lives. They show us where God’s story intersects with our story.
So I ask you: Where are the sealed tombs of your life? Where, in a fit of confusion or grief or disappointment have you sealed off something you love or something you are afraid of or something you are ashamed about, some relationship that was once important to you? What would you do if you rolled that rock away and discovered the tomb was empty? Would it frighten you or confuse you? Would you stand there, perplexed?
Or would you turn to the gospel story to make sense of it? Could you remember what Jesus said and see that empty tomb—that place where a new and unprecedented life begins—could you see that empty tomb through the lens of the gospel? Could you trust that by remembering the Word of God, your confusion and anxiety would lose their power?
VI.
Many Easter Sundays ago, when I worked as a chaplain, I stopped to visit a woman about to be discharged from the hospital. She was still hooked up to IV’s; her face was drawn and sharp, and she was very thin. But she smiled when I walked into the room.
Holding her hand, I said, “You must be very happy to be going home.”
“I am happy,” she said. “I am going home to die.”
Her name was Carmen. Her cancer had spread, and she had decided not to pursue treatment. She made a joke, and we laughed. She assured me that dying did not frighten her. “I trust God,” she said. “I trust God. And I want my family, my children, around me.”
When I left, she handed me a hot-pink, plastic Easter egg. “Now don’t you open that and look inside,” she said, “until it’s time to go home.”
I was amazed at Carmen’s trust in God as she peered into the face of death, and I wondered how it was that she had avoided the anger, confusion, and anxiety I so often saw in people who were dying.
Hours later, as I left the hospital, I reached into my pocket for my car keys and found that pink egg. When I opened it, a handwritten slip of paper fell out, like the fortune in a fortune cookie. It said: “He is risen! He is alive! Hallelujah!”
Carmen was dying, but she had remembered the Word of God. She knew what it meant to find the tomb empty, and she understood her life and death in the context of the gospel.
May we be as wise as Carmen, remembering the words of Christ in the midst of our confusion and thereby understanding our lives in a new way.
He is risen! He is alive! Alleluia! And amen!
Sunday, April 04, 2004
India Calling
It started with an e-mail from God.
OK--not from God. From me. But perhaps God had a hand in it?
Read about church member Kay Pugsley's mission trip to India in February in an article from the April 1, 2004, issue of the Wise County Messenger.
OK--not from God. From me. But perhaps God had a hand in it?
Read about church member Kay Pugsley's mission trip to India in February in an article from the April 1, 2004, issue of the Wise County Messenger.
Friday, April 02, 2004
Understanding Holy Week
The period that Christians call "Holy Week" begins Sunday, with Palm (or Passion) Sunday--the entrance Jesus makes into Jerusalem for the final week of his life as a human being.
The website Faith and Values has an excellent collection of resources for understanding Holy Week in the various Christian traditions.
The website Faith and Values has an excellent collection of resources for understanding Holy Week in the various Christian traditions.
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