Dear Congregation,
It is all too easy to fast-forward from our triumphant celebration of palms into the joy of Resurrection Sunday. It’s easy to skip the brokenness and burial that lies between. But when we do, we miss the promise of a God who is with us in the hardest stuff of our lives.
There is nothing about Holy Week, or our observance of it, that is easy. Holy Week invites us to abandon the narrative of success on our own terms, of protecting our image and our power and our authority, and choosing instead a life of active surrender. We follow a Jesus who chooses to show up in the most humble of circumstances. He was born to an insignificant family under the weight of scandal, he gathered a ragtag band of people with objectionable lifestyles and trades, with obvious character flaws, to represent God’s way. Even knowing he would die, he rode into the fortress of his enemies not on a war horse, but on a common ass, pointing us toward another way of being in the world.
We can allow our fear of death to keep us in destructive cycles of denial and self-preservation, or we can learn from this example of Jesus. Yes, they might kill us, that is the truth, but either way all of us will die. Until that time, we can live fully now, open to the pain of others, conscious of the price that is paid for our power, practicing the wonder and possibility of living fully, loving extravagantly, and becoming all that we were created to be.
This Holy Week, we reflect on the Saviour who insists that we follow the wisdom of peace through justice, generosity over greed, selflessness over selfishness, mercy over vengeance, hope over fear, and above all love over hate. This is certainly an inconvenient way of living in 2022, our culture might even call it ludicrous, because living in a way that invites God’s kingdom here and now might mean that we don’t come out on top, that people will take advantage of us, it might mean sacrifice on our parts, it might even mean that we get killed. But like Jesus we will not die. For love never dies.
That is the story that reaches through generations and transcends time. That is the promise of unstoppable grace and unflagging hope. This is the story of our faith – the foundation on which the church stands – the sacred truth that conquered our chaos through the relentless, redeeming love of God. Nothing, not even death itself can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus, and that is a story that continues long beyond our final breath.
As followers of Jesus Christ, we stand in faith – anchored in hope – as we journey through Lent and walk toward that glorious Easter morning. We know the road reveals brokenness and burial. We know the road reveals loss and lament. And we know – we believe – the road reveals the presence of God at every turn.
With hope and in gratitude for God’s presence,
Pastor Olivia
