A message from the Pastor Lent and Holy Week

Dear friends,

Easter is quickly approaching and we look forward to the celebration of Jesus’ resurrection. But before Easter comes Holy Week. Sometimes we may be tempted to skip over the pain and the questions and the struggles of Holy Week – Jesus’ last supper, his arrest, his death – and go straight from the excitement of the Palm Sunday parade to the joy of Easter: from glory to greater glory.

But that would leave us with a hollow Easter celebration happy, perhaps but without spiritual depth. To truly experience the power of the resurrection in our own lives, we must first be willing to walk the hard road with Jesus. We have discovered something of that in our own lives when we realize that very little that is profoundly meaningful has come easily or without a cost to us. And it is true for faith as well.

The truth is, Jesus knew pain and sorrow, fear and death. At the end of his life, he felt alone, abandoned by God. There’s no getting around it. And that, in itself, is a part of the good news. For Jesus’ story is our story as well.

Emily Dickinson, near the end of her life, wrote this in a letter to a friend:
“When Jesus tells us about his Father, we distrust him. When he shows us his home, we turn away. But when he confides to us that he is ‘acquainted with grief,’ we listen. For that is also an Acquaintance of our own.”