What a deal!

Call in the next 10 minutes and get our special deal! They won't last long at this price! Special financing available! Guaranteed to work!

Wow! All the promises I hear on the radio make me want to "pick up the phone and call NOW!!" I could lose weight in 20 different ways, get my eyes fixed by the NUMBER ONE eye surgeon in the Metroplex, solve all my credit problems with one quick fix, learn to invest by ordering a free book and video. It is amazing that I am able to drive at all with all the wonderful offers out there. I should just stay home and stay close to the phone, so that I won't miss any of the numbers to call.

I'm being facetious, of course, but I do have a good deal for those of you in my church. The only promise that I can make is that your life will be changed and that you will grow closer to God and to a group of fellow disciples. You can "try it and see" with no commitment, no cost and no pressure - and no continuing draft on your credit card! What am I talking about? Disciple Bible Study.

I really love this way of studying the Bible because it combines two things that I think are crucial for getting the most out of the Bible: personal engagement with the Bible and group reflection. Not only that, but as the group shares, week after week, we become close and are better able to help one another on our faith journeys.

My own journey into faith and eventually ministry came as the result of Disciple Bible Study. I experienced the power for myself and want so much to be able to share this with others.

You can come next Sunday evening (September 13) at 5:30 and check it out. If you have kids in the Children's choir or youth in the Youth Choir, then you have to come up to church anyway. Why not spend the time in a way that will feed your soul and embrace you in fellowship? Childcare will be provided for children who are not old enough for Children's choir and for the time after Choir. I am teaching the Disciple I course.


Check it out this week. We will have an introduction, get the books, and explain the format. You have nothing to lose and much to gain.

I hope to see you there!

Martha

P.S. Look at the Spring Valley website for other small group offerings! www.svumc.org. There is something for everyone.

A great link to another blog - highly recommended

I received this link from someone and it is a great example of what I will be talking about in my sermon this Sunday on "From Common Ground to Holy Ground."
The link is: http://experimentaltheology.blogspot.com/2009/08/bait-and-switch-of-contemporary.html

The article talks about the problem with Christians "working on their relationship with God" and somehow thinking that doesn't affect their relationships with others. If we are going to be disciples of Jesus Christ, then we have to love God, love neighbor, and serve the world. Those three things are inseparable. So, while I think that obviously "spiritual" things like prayer, bible study, worship, etc. are necessary ways for "working on our relationship with God," if they don't lead us to loving our neighbor and serving the world, then something is wrong with our prayer, study, worship, etc.

Gay Marriage, Democracy, and the Courts

This is an argument from the Wall Street Journal that I found quite interesting. (Click on the title to go to the article.) It is grounded in something other than the typical religious point of view. I would be interested to know what others think.

Life on the Edge - Sharing my journey

As I prepared for my sermon "Life on the Edge" last Sunday (see http://www.svumc.org/sermons.html to listen), I wondered exactly who my audience was. Was I going to be speaking to people who felt like they were at the center or people who felt like they were living on the margins. I must say that the folks at my congregation look pretty together and like they are "center" people, not folks that feel "marginalized," but I know that looks can be deceiving.

Personally, I feel like I have always lived on the edge. As a girl I was too tall, too smart and too quiet to run with the "in" crowd. I was perceived as "snobby," but I really just didn't know how to interact with all the cool people, so I stayed on the sidelines. That was pretty much true at church as well, unfortunately.

When I got to high school, I attended an all-girl school where it was okay to be smart and nerdy (although we didn't have the word "nerdy" yet!). I loved it there and felt at home for the first time in my life. I was still not a part of the group that was wealthy and socially elite, but there were enough of us who just loved to talk about Shakespeare and weird science and history to have a good group.

Church, however, continued to be a place where I was on the margins. I went to a different school from the other kids in youth group. My hobbies were reading and horseback riding; not the usual things. My family was not as wealthy as most of those in the church. My youngest sister died when I was 15, so that set me apart as well. I was persistent enough to just keep coming until I was accepted. And I needed the Christian community even though I didn't always feel at home in it.

As an adult, I have grown to enjoy life on the edge. I now bristle if anyone assumes I am "normal." At seminary all the conservatives thought I was a liberal and the liberals thought I was a conservative. I homeschooled my kids which by definition made me countercultural. I always take a different path toward my goals than the expected one. I also find that I relate to those who are marginalized for whatever reasons better than I relate to those who are in the center of society.

I think this is why Jesus is such a powerful figure for me. Jesus broke the rules and yet fulfilled the spirit of why those rules were created - to form a holy community. Jesus loved those who were unlovable and forgave the unforgivable. In coming to the point where I am better able to center my own life on God and God's kingdom, I can rejoice in who God is forming me to be without so much concern about how others perceive me. I am also a bit wiser in perceiving others; I know now that almost everyone feels on the edge in some aspect of their lives, no matter how "together" they look.

How do you see yourself? Where are you on the edge in this world? Are you able to center yourself on God or does that concept even make sense to you?

Grace and peace,
Martha

Another great quote

I can't resist posting this one as well: "The command of the gospel is a summons to give the allegiance of body and mind, heart and soul, to Jesus; and its basis is neither more nor less than the event that constituted him in Paul's eyes as Messiah and Lord--namely, his resurrection. And it is in the proclamation of this gospel, and its acceptance in faith, that people begin to glimpse a great curtain being drawn aside and the covenant faithfulness and justice of God displayed to view." (Wright, p. 427)

Yes! That is exactly what I would say about my own experience of God. At some point I realized that I could give my allegiance to God because God was and is absolutely trustworthy. And that continues to be the case. Whenever I start to worry, God enters into my life in a way that reminds me that God is in control.

What Romans is teaching me

Sometimes I am amazed by what excites me these days. I am working through N. T. Wright's commentary on Romans found in the New Interpreter's Bible, Volume X. I find this incredibly fun and fulfilling. Maybe that shouldn't be surprising for a pastor, but 20 years ago I would not have thought, "Yippee! I get to spend a morning with just the bible, my commentary and my computer!" Especially the letter to the Romans, which, until I discovered N. T. Wright, has always been a bit hard to read. So, since I have this blog going, I think I will post some of my reactions here.

Today I am reading about Romans 1:16-17. This is the quote from Wright (p. 424) that struck me:

"In the gospel, God’s righteousness is unveiled. This revelation happens, not just in the events referred to in the gospel, true though that is, but in the very announcement of the gospel. . . .

The gospel message about Jesus . . . opens people’s eyes to see for the first time that this was what God had been up to all along. It enables Jews to see how the promises they had cherished had been fulfilled, quite otherwise than they had expected. It enables Gentiles to see that there is one true God, the god of Israel, the creator; that this god has purposed to set the world to rights at last; and that this god has now in principle accomplished that purpose. . . . Paul believed that the announcement of the gospel wielded a power that overcame the unseen forces, inside people and around them, that prevented them from responding in obedient belief and allegiance."

What I find interesting about this is that it is the announcement of the gospel that has power. I find myself hoping that Paul is right. Because that is what I do; I announce the gospel. And if it is the announcing that has power, that means that I can relax a little about explaining the gospel. Being who I am, I want to explain things, but I don't always know how to explain the gospel. I didn't come to relationship with Jesus because the benefits were explained to my satisfaction. I came to relationship with Jesus because somehow I met Jesus in the course of my experience with the Christian community. Can't really explain it, just know it happened!

So this word about announcing the gospel both rings true to my own experience and gives me the courage to keep on announcing in my own preaching without the burden of having to explain everything. Of course, this doesn't mean that I shouldn't make sense in what I say or that I shouldn't try to be coherent! But it does mean that I can trust the power of God working through my imperfect words to enable people to respond to God's faithfulness with faith of their own. Hallelujah!

Love in Any Language

Do you know your love language? Do you know the love language of your spouse/children/friend?
Dr. Gary Chapman helps us understand why we feel loved and how we can be better at loving intentionally. He speaks of the five love languages:
1)Words of Affirmation
2)Quality Time
3)Receiving Gifts
4)Acts of Service
5)Physical Touch

The premise is that we all have a primary and secondary love language, and if we are not loved in those languages we may not feel loved at all!

I have always had trouble figuring out my own love language. When I reread the book this time a statement jumped out at me: If your love tank is either very full or very empty, you may have trouble deciding what your love language might be. I have been blessed to always have felt loved in my family of origin and in my marriage, so I have never paid much attention to my own love language. But this book and its ideas have helped me to become better at loving others.

I would love to hear from some of you in reflecting on this.

Blessings,
Martha



For more information on the five love languages, go to Gary Chapman's website:
http://www.fivelovelanguages.com/

The Good Enough Dad

It's funny how little things can make us remember those we love. I heard a radio commercial the other day about McDonald's new sweet tea. My first thought was how Dad would have loved that! He always put 6 or 7 teaspoons of sugar in his tea. And he spent many hours in McDonald's drinking cokes and figuring out how to make money on napkins. He never did make the money; he was not a perfect Dad, but he was good enough. He taught me how to love, he taught me how to dream, and he encouraged me to be who I was.

I talked about a less-than-perfect Dad in my sermon today. Abraham--despite the grand sounding name that actually means "father of peoples"--wasn't really much of a father. He sent one child into the wilderness and the other he took up the mountain to sacrifice on an altar. Abraham was caught, as all fathers are caught, between difficult choices. He was caught between God's promise of many children and God's command to sacrifice his only child. He had to learn that God's promises and God's commands could never contradict one another. Abraham may not have been a perfect father, but he was good enough, because, in the end, he learned to trust God. In the end, both of his sons received blessings from God. And that is all a father can really ask for.

Okay, fathers out there, what do you feel caught between? What apparent contradictions make it difficult for you to be the father you want to be? Can you accept that your heavenly father loves and forgives you and can strengthen you for the work of fatherhood? For those of you who do not have biological children, are you aware that you are not off the hook? That you are responsible for fathering the children in your community (here I am talking to those who are Christ followers)?

If you would like to comment on any of this, on my sermon or on your own father, feel free to post.

Blessings and Happy Fathers Day!

Filling the W/hole: Your challenge

So, I preached a sermon yesterday on "Filling the W/hole." Here are the basic points:
We have an emptiness inside of us that only God can fill.
We try to fill that emptiness with other things: work, family, church, relationships. All of those things have a proper place in our lives, but if we try to fill the place within us that is made for God then eventually our lives will be as distorted as if we were trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. We may no longer feel the emptiness, but neither will our lives be whole and healthy.


Lots of scriptures talk about how we are made for God, but the scriptures that I suggested were these: Psalm 42:1-6; Psalm 84:1-12; Colossians 1:9-23; Ephesians 4:10-32; 1 John 4:1-21. (See http://www.biblegateway.com/ for a searchable online bible if you need one.)

I also used the story about the loaves and fishes from Matthew 14:15-20

15 When it was evening, the disciples came to him and said, "This is a deserted place, and the hour is now late; send the crowds away so that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves." 16 Jesus said to them, "They need not go away; you give them something to eat." 17 They replied, "We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish." 18 And he said, "Bring them here to me." 19 Then he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. 20 And all ate and were filled; and they took up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full.

My point here was that Jesus filled them not only with bread but with the bread of life, his presence. He first gave it to the disciples and then the disciples shared it with the people. As people who are moving towards more faithful discipleship, we are to receive from Jesus, be filled with his Spirit and then share with the world the life-giving love and forgiveness that we have received. (If you want to hear the sermon, go to www.svumc.org and click on sermons.

I ended the sermon with a challenge: spend an hour this week by yourself, with perhaps only the scriptures above for company. No music, no tv, no computer, no phone. Spend an hour thinking about what you are filling your life with. If you would like to share what insights you have gained, then feel free to post here.

Blessings,
Martha

Musings

I am reading a book called Lost and Found: The Younger Unchurched and the churches that reach them. I am also working on my sermon, "Filling the W/hole." At the moment those are parallel activities, but I think that by Sunday they will be intertwined.

I am always struggling with how to let my passion for Jesus come through (I LOVE JESUS!!) and thus being authentic in my preaching, without being too overwhelming (and "preachy").

I am also struggling, as a result of reading this book, with thinking about why younger persons seem to find church unnecessary to being Christian. Not because I don't understand intellectually, but because my experience of the church has always been so crucial to my following Jesus. Now I will admit that the formal structures of the organized church haven't always been helpful, but, for me, the church is the people that I journey with as a community of faith. And that community of faith is facilitated by those formal structures, even though I don't always like them or agree with them.

We just had Annual Conference this week, one of those formal structures. The meetings weren't all that fun, and the sitting for hours is difficult for me, but the sense of being together with a large group of people who are trying hard and faithfully to reach the same goal is just a rush. It was particularly strong at the service of ordination and commissioning where the crowd at Custer Road UMC read the prayers, recited the liturgy, and sang the hymns with this huge community voice. I get chills.

I have discovered that what is needed is double vision: the ability to see clearly that this is a very human organization with all the problems that entails, but that somehow it is also the body of Christ and a work of the kingdom of God.

We talked in small (well, relatively small) groups about the need to reach younger people and be authentic (so here I am back to the topic this post began with and that word 'authentic.') I hope that the younger generations can see that we are authentically trying, even though we sometimes fail at being Christlike.

So back to thinking about the sermon. (Yes, this really is a post of "musings") I am thinking about all the things we fill our lives with instead of God. If you have any thoughts on that, let me know.

Common Ground Worship

After a time of sharing the preaching in both traditional and Common Ground services, my Senior Pastor and I are going to settle! I will be settling in Common Ground. This will enable me to have more of a voice in and an impact on the worship. So I have been thinking about what it means to have "contemporary" or "alternative" worship. I like what it says on our website (www.svumc.org): "We are striving to discern the common ground between ancient and modern forms of worship that will enliven and strengthen us for lives of discipleship."

Here are the thoughts I have had on what I would like to see in our worship in Common Ground.
1) Scriptural: I love to preach sermons that are topical and I love to preach series, but these types of sermons have to be carefully grounded in scripture. Even more than that, I want to find ways to let the ancient texts become the Living Word whether through the sermon, drama, music, or other arts. The ancient church used many different ways to preach the Gospel. We can do the same by being . . .

2) . . . Multisensory: We know that people learn through hearing, but they also absorb through seeing, smelling, touching, etc. Ancient Israelite worship involved all five senses by command of God. Charles Wesley wrote hymns because he knew that sung theology was more likely to be accessible theology than spoken theology. For those of us who are kinesthetic learners, touching or moving while learning is important. We all realize that children need multisensory experiences, but that is true of adults as well. We will be exploring how to involve all of our senses in worship as we both experience and praise God.

3) Interactive: The word "liturgy" has often been understood to refer to boring, repetitive elements of worship that have lost their meaning! However, "liturgy" literally means "work of the people." We need to return to that understanding of liturgy! Whether it is interactive sermons where the congregation participates, singing with fervent voices, praying together and for each other, or other ways in which people are involved, authentic worship is always the "work of the people," not just the work of the worship leaders!

4) Loving: The goal of worship is to actively show our love for God and to experience God's love for us. An integral part of showing our love for God is showing our love for each other. So when we come together as the worshipping community everything we do must reveal our love for God and one another. Part of this ability to love is the ability to trust. I hope we can love and trust one another enough to verbally share during worship our own experiences of God's care for us. If you would feel comfortable doing this (what some call "giving a testimony") let me know!

5) Experiencing and Encountering: In Hebrew, the verb "to know" means not just head knowledge, but also knowledge in the sense of "to experience intimately, to acknowledge." So our worship seeks not simply to relay information about God but to provide an environment in which we can encounter God, or intimately experience God. That will be the goal for me as our team designs worship.

Yes, this makes an acronym: SMILE. :) I love acronyms; they help me remember!

If any Common Grounders read this, I would love for you to provide feedback. What would you like to see in Common Ground worship?

Becoming a wanderer

Back in seminary I learned that one of the earliest "creeds" of the Israelite people began like this, "A wandering Aramean was my father . . ." (Deuteronomy 26:5 ff). It reminded the people that all they had was a gift from God and that they shouldn't get too comfy or self-righteous because they were a wandering people at heart. Their only stability was in God.

This week I have been a wanderer, a status that seems to be true of me with some regularity these days. My office flooded out on Sunday morning and I had to move everything out to let the carpet dry. Thus, all my books are boxed up and my office is in a state of disrepair. The sense of being a wanderer comes from just having moved into my office and arranging those 1000 books just three months ago. In the past few years I have also wandered from one appointment to another, from one home to another, from one set of relationships to another. So really, this just heightens my identity as wanderer.

But as I wander, I am once again reminded that, like the ancient Israelites, my stability is only in God. It is so easy to fall into the fiction that there is such a thing as "normal" life that we will get to eventually after all these "problems" are past. But reaching for stability or normality in the everyday course of life really is fiction. So when the storms of life are raging (all too literally in this case) I am grateful that God does indeed stand by me. I am blessed to be reminded that wholeness and stability are found in one's approach to challenges, not in the lack of challenges.

I am particularly thankful for the amazing worship that we had last Sunday when we had to rearrange everything at the last minute and the glorious spirit of cooperation that prevailed throughout the church.

My prayer is that when things get back to "normal" we will not forget that God is still standing by us and that our challenges are still opportunities to grow towards wholeness.

Blessings,
A Wandering Methodist

Immersed in Spanish

This week I am participating in a Spanish Immersion Course sponsored by the North Texas Conference. We have 2 amazing teachers and 4 students. We are having a lot of fun and I think I am actually learning something this time. I took 2 semesters of Spanish in college and have tried for years to learn. I can understand a fair amount of Spanish, but I have never been able to speak it - mainly because of my own perfectionism. I hate to make a mistake; thus I refuse to speak if I am not absolutely certain that I am speaking correctly. This class is helping me to get over that.

The class came about because last year at conference we passed a resolution saying that 20% of the pastors in the conference should be conversational in Spanish by a certain year (2020 maybe?). However, there was no provision in the resolution for helping to meet that goal. Some leaders in the conference heard the problem and decided to help meet the need. They created this course for pastors and church leaders. Evidently it has been difficult for pastors to find the time to do this, but I highly recommend this program. This is the jump-start that I needed.

Tonight we attended a Spanish-language prayer service in Dallas. It was simple, beautiful, and powerful. The faith of those attending and their commitment to serving God and sharing the kingdom was awesome. This is a new Spanish-language congregation and they are seeking God's will and way in all they do. We had the privilege of praying with them and praying for those that had asked for intercession. I didn't understand all the words they used, but I understood the spirit and that was sufficient for now.

Learning enough Spanish to minister to people has been a dream for a long time. I pray that God will enable me to make full use of this opportunity.

The Rivals of Jesus

This is a show that was made by National Geographic. I found this show particularly funny in some places, mainly because of the contradictions. So here are a few of those contradictions:

• According to the show, a fellow named Apollonius was not successful because he appealed to the upper classes. Evidently the peasants that followed Jesus had better marketing skills than the upper classes. Those peasants really knew how to organize! On the other hand, Christianity was evidently not successful until, you guessed it, Christianity made it to the upper classes with Constantine. OK, guys, can’t have it both ways. Does appealing to the upper classes make you successful or unsuccessful?

• According to the show, Simon Magus is virtually unknown today because he “lost the debate.” Evidently “history is written by the winners.” Well, that may be true, but it could also be true that Simon Magus was simply a guy who had some good magic tricks but didn’t change people’s lives.

• The narrator claims that Jesus’ crucifixion becomes a “rallying point” for his followers. Hmm, I thought that his resurrection became the rallying point!

• Simon bar Kochba is a rival of Jesus? The narrator claims that “like Jesus, [Simon bar Kochba] speaks out against Rome.” I was under the impression that Jesus spoke out against the Jewish leaders, you know, the scribes and the Pharisees! As far as I can tell Jesus never said anything about Rome, except , "Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor's,” Matthew 22:21. They do finally get to that, in the show, but never do explain what they mean by saying “Jesus speaks out against Rome.”

• It’s not really a contradiction but I love the part where Jonathan Reed says he would have put money on Mithraism becoming the official religion of the Roman empire rather than Christianity. I’m not sure how Mithras slitting the throat of a bull is equivalent to Jesus shedding his own blood.

• The comparison with Isis is pretty funny also. The claim is that the pictures of Isis and Mary show a “stunning” similarity because both show mothers holding a child. Maybe both Isis and Mary are shown as mothers holding their child because they are both mothers with a child. Duh. And though the claim is that Isis worship offered a personal relationship with Isis just as Christianity offered a personal relationship with Jesus, how can this be a significant rival to Jesus when even Carole Fontaine admits that “one scholar has said that people adhere to the Isis cult but they are converted to the religion of Jesus.” She also notes that Isis worship didn’t require a person to change their way of life, whereas Christianity had specific rules about how one should live. Don’t these seem like pretty major differences?

• The biggest ‘rival’ to the “Jesus of the New Testament” is—wait for it—Jesus from the Nag Hamadi texts! In other words, the Gnostic Jesus. And I particularly like the part where they first say that the Gnostic Jesus was “less god-like and more human” and then proceed to relate the story about how Jesus comes out of his body and watches his crucifixion from the sidelines, mocking the Roman soldiers’ attempt to kill the immortal Son of God. How exactly does this portray Jesus’ “humanity” as “more appealing to the common man?”

These are just a few of the things I found odd and funny. Probably the biggest laugh was Peter with a Scottish accent, but I guess that isn’t really any funnier than Peter speaking English in the first place.

Good Friday

Good Friday is always a moving experience for me. Whether I am the one presenting a service for just a few, or participate in a Tenebrae service of darkness such as we had on Thursday or am part of an incredible experience like the one last night of singing The Seven Last Words by Dubois, I need this time to prepare for Easter. When I celebrate Communion on Maundy Thursday I feel the presence of Jesus as the real host at the table. And I realize how much each of the persons I serve is beloved of God. It helps me to love them too; even the ones I don't really know, even the ones I do know and don't really like!

I need to be reminded that I am a part of the crowd that cries "He is death guilty, Let us crucify him!" But I also need to remember that no matter what I have done, I can come to the point of praising, "Christ we do all adore thee."

These last two days have made the sacrifice of God in Jesus real for me once more. I am looking forward to Easter. We may live in a Good Friday world, as someone has said, but Easter's coming! Praise the Lord!

Bad TV and Good Books

Every year before Easter on the History Channel we are subjected to a wide variety of programming that focuses around “religious” topics. This year some of the offerings were: Jesus’ Arrest, The Devil’s Bible, a series on the Seven Deadly Sins, Banned from the Bible I and II, Bible Battles, God vs. Satan, The Quest for the Lost Ark, The Exodus Decoded, Crucifixion, and, my personal favorite—UFO’s of the Bible. I will admit to watching these shows; they hold a strange fascination for me. But often I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Does a program like UFO’s of the Bible show that people have an avid interest in all things religious and biblical? Or does it show that people have an easier time believing in alien abductions than in miracles or true experiences of God?

To be fair, some of the shows do present some interesting information and occasionally even accurate information. But I am not sure that I like the attempts, in so many programs, to ‘prove’ various parts of the Bible. One example of this is the Exodus Decoded which tries to show the physical basis for the plagues in Egypt. If you want to read an excellent review of this particular show go to a blog by Professor Christopher Heard at http://www.heardworld.com/higgaion/.

I would love to study the Seven Deadly Sins, the apocryphal books (which were “banned from the Bible), the Exodus, the details of Jesus last days, the miracles and God visitations in the Bible, etc. with folks. So if you are in my congregation, let’s chat. If you aren’t, then we might find a way to chat anyway!

On another topic: if you are looking for a good book try out Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt and Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana, both by Anne Rice. Yes, the same woman who wrote the Vampire books. She had a conversion and has written these incredible books about Jesus. The first takes place when Jesus is a young child of 6 or 7, the second when he is about to begin his ministry. They are fiction, but they use excellent historical research and take an orthodox view of Jesus as the Christ. They are also very well written; they do not present a boring and pious view of Jesus, but a portrait that is believable and deals with what it would be like to be “fully human” and “fully divine.” And, yes, I have both books if you want to borrow.

Easter eggs, Easter bunnies and Easter crosses.

We had the Easter egg hunt and festival today at church. You know the drill: plastic eggs stuffed with melting chocolate eggs inside, go-fish games in little vinyl pools of water, ring-toss, face-painting, the space-alien bounce house, and wafting over all of it the smell of freshly popped popcorn and new-spun cotton candy.

As I was watching the kids bouncing and squealing, I realized what picture was presented to those driving by on the main road in front of the church: There was the bounce-house, but in front of it were the three large wooden crosses that we put out for Holy Week. For a moment I had a theological crisis. What does it mean to juxtapose eggs, bunnies, bouncing and crosses? What does it mean to have laughing children in the shadow of the cross?

I will admit that I was a bit uncomfortable. And maybe the conclusion I came to is simply justifying my own discomfort; but I think that the joy of the day in the shadow of the crosses reflects hope. Don't get me wrong: I want those children and their parents to understand what it means to put empty crosses (symbols of Roman execution) in the front yard of the church. I want them to understand how it was that Jesus turned the sign of despair and death into a sign of life and hope. But that understanding will only come if those who attend Easter Egg hunts and play in bounce houses feel for themselves the joy of the family of faith. It will only come if those young (and sometimes not-so-young) parents recognize that they are important to us. They won't know right away that it is obedience to the Lord who died on the cross that drives us to reach out and share joy with them, but they will feel the joy and the love.

Tomorrow is Palm Sunday and we start into Holy Week. The Easter eggs will be put aside and we will turn to the deeper things of God. But even as we contemplate the betrayal, arrest, and execution of Jesus, I pray we remember that it is precisely joy and love that are the deeper things of God.

When Easter Became Real

I remember Easters from my childhood: gooey candy eggs hiding in the yard, dyeing hard-boiled eggs in the kitchen, shopping for the perfect new Easter dress, putting on the white patent-leather shoes for the first time. I remember church parts too: Easter lilies filling the altar area, glorious music, church full of families and friends. We went home to Easter dinner and a lazy afternoon. I always loved Easter, but one year Easter became more than just a day of beauty and celebration, and became real and powerful.

In 1973, my youngest sister Nancy came down with the chicken pox. She had a condition (unrecognized at the time) that made her unable to fight such infections. The chicken pox progressed to a massive staff infection and she died on April 6 at the age of 5. I was 15 at the time. I had lost another sister 12 years previously from measles and the same condition, but I had not been affected as much when I was a 3-year-old. This time, my sister's death hit hard. We were surrounded by the love and care of our church family, and yet I heard comments like: "God needed another angel." Well, I wasn't impressed by a God who thought he needed my sister more than I did. I was angry and I was sick at heart.

I don't remember much about the next few weeks, except that I was trying to remain strong for my parents, and trying to get through my own grieving process without much help.

What made a difference was Easter Sunday. It came on April 22nd that year and we went to church as usual. If I am remembering correctly, we were actually in San Francisco taking a vacation from the sorrow and the memories in our home. But because it was Easter and because that is just what we did on Easter, we found a church and showed up on Easter morning. I don't remember the service, or the music, or the sermon. What I remember is this: Easter became real that day. I needed the resurrection in a way that I never had. I needed to hear that death and sorrow and suffering had been overcome and that day I knew that the story I had known since my earliest childhood was true. I can't explain how I knew, just that I did; that God revealed Godself to me in a special way on that Easter Sunday.

Easter is my favorite "holiday" because for me it truly is a "Holy day." It isn't just a nice story, but the reality upon which I base my life. One of the prayers in the Service of Death and Resurrection (in the UM Worship Book) says, "Help us to live as those who are prepared to die and when our days here are accomplished, enable us to die as those who go forth to live, so that living or dying, our life may be in you, and that nothing in life or in death will be able to separate us from your great love in Christ Jesus our Lord." Amen. Have a blessed Easter!