The weather is so changeable these days. Today the sun is bright and it feels like spring is right around the corner, but in New England, who knows what tomorrow will bring? As we move toward Easter, we celebrate a holiday that is punctuated by the fickle nature of human beings. On Palm Sunday we will reenact the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem as we play special music, wave palms and parade into the sanctuary repeating the joy of the crowd that greeted Jesus that special day. For Jesus, who seemed to understand human nature better than most of us, the day must have been bittersweet. He knew only too well what was going to happen during that same week.

And yet Jesus, faced with what must have seemed like an insurmountable situation, loses his hope only once. At the Passover meal with his disciples on Thursday evening, his strength is almost palpable. At the Garden of Gethsemane his prayers are strong, focused and deeply heartfelt, and though he asks God if at all possible to change what is about to happen, he adds, “...yet not what I want but what you want.” Jesus never seems to shrink before Caiaphas the high priest or Pilate the Roman governor of Jerusalem who held Jesus' life in the balance. It is not until Jesus is on the cross that he hits the very depths of despair and in a loud voice cries out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

It is perhaps at this point that we see the true humanity of Christ. He had hit his limit and could go no further. Lost, angry, and feeling deeply forlorn, he cries out quoting from the beginning of Psalm 22. I am sure that many of us have found ourselves at just such a point. It is in many ways the low point of Holy Week and at the same time the high point. Jesus came into the world to seek the lost and those in need and is willing to go to the very depths of existence to find us. God who created the universe and all that exists is willing to experience and live in the gut wrenching and horribly painful parts of our lives. It speaks of a commitment to our world and to us that can only be expressed in the story of Holy Week.

If we turn to Psalm 22 we will find in it the very depths of human deprivation, pain, loss and misery reaching to a true faith in God that is born in the midst of the most difficult experiences we will ever know. The Psalm ends with a declaration of faith and joy in God's goodness and care for all of humankind. Jesus with the words, “My God, my God why have you forsaken me,” sets the world on a new road that will find its completion on Easter Sunday morning. We hit the depths of despair on Good Friday as Jesus dies. And the Gospel of Mark 15:42-47 makes it very clear that Jesus is dead. The words dead, dead body (soma in the Greek means dead body) and tomb are used eight times in these six sentences.

The world for the disciples and the women who followed Jesus grinds to halt not knowing if God's love can overcome human hate and anger and if Jesus can be raised out of the depths of despair and death into which he has plunged. It is not until Sunday morning that the road Jesus started by quoting the beginning of Psalm 22 winds itself through the valley of the shadow of death to the Good News that “HE IS RISEN.” That even our worst actions cannot turn God away from seeking us and that in the miracle of Christ's resurrection death no longer holds sway over us! Come and enjoy the miracle of Holy Week and Easter Sunday by living and celebrating these events with us.

In Christ, 
Pastor Eric

On Ash Wednesday we have started the season of Lent, which is forty days (not including Sundays) and the day before Easter Sunday. The number draws on other great events of the Bible. In the great flood of Noah’s time, it rained for forty days and forty nights. The Hebrew people wandered for forty years in the wilderness as they made their way from slavery in Egypt to the Promised Land. And finally, Jesus was driven into the wilderness after he was baptized where for forty days he fasted (ate no food) and was tempted by the devil. In each of these periods of forty, we see a time of preparation that new life may spring forth.

In the time of Noah the human race had become so destructive and cruel to each other that God felt that only by using the cleansing of the floodwater could life start anew. God freed the Hebrew people from slavery in Egypt and promised them a land filled with milk and honey, but God also knew they were not ready to live in such a land peacefully and were not yet able to exist as a nation. They needed a time of preparation. That time came with forty years in the wilderness. Only after the wandering were they allowed to enter the land, hopefully now more prepared than they were when they first set out on their journey.

In the Gospels we learn of Christ’s forty days in the wilderness. After his baptism “the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness” (Mark 1:12). Here Jesus fasts for forty days and is tempted by the devil. We believe that it was in this time of fasting, praying, and dealing with the many temptations, that Jesus prepared himself for his ministry. Throughout his ministry he would be faced with powerful temptations. Perhaps the most powerful and compelling would be to simply give up, though I am sure, there were many more besides that. The forty days of preparation gave Jesus the strength to complete his journey to the cross and change the history of the world.

We now begin our journey to the cross during these forty days of Lent that will be marked by the high point of Palm Sunday, and the misery of Good Friday. The Christian faith traditionally asks us to take these forty days and put them to good use. Study the Bible more closely during this time. Increase our prayer time each day. Perhaps choose to fast for a meal a day and use the money saved for a project at the church or another cause you feel demonstrates God’s love for the world. Join in the church’s Lenten Bible Study on Wednesday evenings at 7:00pm. Take time to contemplate what God is calling you to do and the ways in which you can best serve the people around you.

Lent is a very important time in each of our lives. Please, use it wisely. We live in a difficult time with much going on around us. The path that God sets before us is often blurred by the events of our world, and we are surely tempted every day to give up seeking God’s path and simply walk the road of our world. It is during Lent that we can take these forty days to prepare ourselves for another year of living our lives in the joy of Christ’s Resurrection on Easter Sunday morning. Let us all join together during these forty days and renew our strength that we may “mount up with wings like eagles” (Isaiah 40: 31) and serve our Lord to our fullest!

Peace,
Pastor Eric

As we enter Advent we begin a faith journey that will literally change the world. It starts with God overwhelmed by love for us, and overwhelmed by the cruel way we so often treat each other (John 3:16-17). If we shift our gaze from the heavenly realm down to the gritty world in which we live, the journey begins so quietly that if you weren’t right on the scene you would never have heard it. The Angel Gabriel comes to a young woman named Mary and tells her that she will bear a child and will name him Jesus (Luke 2:31).

After which, things begin to move quickly. When Joseph (Mary’s husband to be) finds that Mary is pregnant he decides to quietly break off the engagement.  However, an angel of the Lord informs him that the child was conceived by the Holy Spirit to fulfill the scriptures (Matthew 1:18-23). Now together Mary and Joseph embark on a faith odyssey that will shake the very foundations of the world.

Traveling to their ancestral home, Bethlehem, they find there is no room in the inn and Mary gives birth in a cattle shed. In the night shepherds journey across many fields to come and see this newborn told to them by a host of angels. Within a year wise men travel thousands of miles to bring gifts to the child, but have to leave the country secretly in fear for their and the child’s lives. And Mary, Joseph and their son must travel to Egypt to avoid arrest and death.

These events also mark the start of Jesus’ journey. From a poor family, living in the incredibly poor town of Nazareth, with carpentry as a trade, Jesus heads off into the world. His journey winds its way to the cross, where if one sees with eyes focused only on this world, there could not be a more hopeless ending. But, as people of faith, we believe that we need to see with eyes set on this world and at the same time on eternal matters.

The journey that begins this week with Advent and ends in the most hopeless of all places — is the journey that shakes the very foundation of the world and brings a new way of living to all who place their faith in this little baby, born to poor young parents, wanted within two years of his birth by the law, convicted of treason and hung on a cross. A journey started by God, entered into by Mary, Joseph, the shepherds, the wise men, twelve disciples and innumerable believers, and of course a small, small child. All are invited on this journey!

When we profess our faith in Christ we embark upon this faith journey as well. For each person it starts at different times of our lives, it goes in different directions, sometime it moves swiftly and other times it meanders like a river moving through flat lands, there are times that it consumes us and other times when we are hardly aware of it, but each journey is inextricably tied to the journey that started because, “God so loved the world …” and came to express itself most fully in the life, death and resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

This Advent I would like to start the process of exploring our faith journeys. Whether we know it or not our journeys started long before we were born and will continue long after we have left this world. Our journeys spring from a community of believers some are with us now, others have gone before us and yet others are so far in the past that we don’t even know their names and there will be many to follow. Our faith journeys are like a beautiful tapestry; a tapestry that was started long ago, to which each of us will add our own piece.  

As the book of Hebrews tells us

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.

Join us on Wednesday evenings in Advent as we explore the Christmas journey and our faith journeys as well.

In Christ’s Love,
Pastor Eric

What is the Bible trying to tell us through these passages? Is all of life simply vanity? Do our efforts add up to nothing? Well I believe they do, if we live only for ourselves, if we are not part of a larger plan. But Moses was part of something greater!

Moses answered God’s call at the burning bush and lived it out. It was not ever easy, and he had more than his share of frustrations. However, I am sure after 40 years of life and death struggles in the wilderness, he understood that he was part of something greater—he was part of God’s plan. Wherever his journey ended was the goal, because Moses had let God be in charge.

Turning our lives over to God is not easy. As human beings we want to be in charge. We want to determine our own destiny. In the Western world we highly treasure freedom, independence and the willingness to go it alone. But in the end that is not the Christian faith.

Our faith speaks of dependence on God and on each other. God created us for each other and to have a personal relationship with God. The book of Ecclesiastes says that God is so far away we cannot hope to understand God’s plans. I believe that is at the heart of the faith crises expressed in Ecclesiastes. God answers that fear, by sending Jesus Christ into our world. God loves us so much that God personally reaches out to every single human being.

In Matthew 22:34-40, Mark 12:28-34, and Luke 10:25-28 Jesus lays down the road map for our lives when he tells the reader the most important law of all: “You shall love the Lord your God, with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind.”

And, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” And for Jesus your neighbor is anyone who is in need.
After telling us what gives life meaning Jesus then lives it out. He fully empties himself into God’s will and his life ends on the cross, which was the most meaningless ending possible. The cross was the place for terrible criminals. It was the most excruciating death one could imagine. What good could come from death on a cross? However, because Christ fully trusted God, his death brought eternal life to all who believe. What would seem to be the most meaningless ending possible becomes the most earth-shattering event for all human history!

Following the two greatest commandments is not easy—just ask Moses. Life was frustrating. Moses often was afraid that God was not with him. Moses was often deeply frustrated and angry with his neighbors as he led them through the wilderness. More than once Moses lived through heart-rending events. The only way Moses and the people of Israel made it through the wilderness of life was that God was with them and in times of crises they turned back to God.

We may fear that that life is nothing more than a wilderness. Our hearts may dread what is coming. Our minds may come to believe that all of life is vanity. To answer those fears we need to live in the knowledge that God loves us deeply. We need to believe that God walks with us every step of the way. And we need to hold in our hearts that God has a greater plan than we can imagine and that we, through our faith, are part of that plan!

In Christ,
Pastor Eric

Our Bible invites us into a bigger world than the one we so often see around us. The Apostle Paul in the thirteenth chapter of the first letter to the Corinthians writes: “For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.” (To add just a little clarity to this passage, in Paul’s day a mirror was usually a flat piece of burnished copper, which would give you a reflection, but it was not all that clear.) How true this passage is. I know that I never do or ever will fully (in this lifetime) understand the world around me. More often than not it seems like a total muddle. Paul acknowledges that reality of life, but then he goes on to promise that the time will come when God will give us a much greater and deeper understanding of what this life is about.

Paul then adds what almost seems like a throw away statement, “even as I have been fully known.” How easy it is to miss that quick addition at the end of an extremely powerful sentence. How often don’t we feel badly misunderstood by the world around us, our friends, and even at times our very closest loved ones? And I have to admit; I often don’t even understand myself. Paul assures us that as fully as we will come to understand what our lives have been about, God understands us that fully right now!

These are powerful statements and invite us into a new way of understanding our lives. God understands the world that we live in. God has a plan for the world that we live in and that plan is being worked out. God fully understands us, who we are, what good we are able to do, and how much bad we can do as well. And finally God invites us to be a part of God’s kingdom, which is coming to be in the world around us.

Perhaps a good analogy is getting caught in a forest and losing sight of the forest for the trees. How easy it is to get so caught up in the day-to-day events of our lives that we lose sight of the fact that there is a bigger picture. Life brings with it so many pressures, so many frustrations, and so many annoying and at times downright terrifying situations. I am not saying that we should not pay attention to the events that are happening right in front of our noses, but that we need to see them all in a larger context.

A few months ago we heard the parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10:25-37. It is a powerful passage about seeing the larger picture of life. It starts with a man who is beaten and robbed and left for dead on his way from Jerusalem to Jericho. Three people go by him. The first two are leaders in the faith community, a priest and a Levite. To touch a dead body would have made them ritually unclean and they would have been unable to lead worship and do their jobs until they had been through the long and arduous task of being made ritually clean. Since they could not tell if the beaten man was dead or alive they quickly went around him.

The next to come along was a Samaritan. The Samaritans had themselves been made victims when they had been left behind in Israel during the Assyrian captivity of 722 BC. (To greatly weaken the country of Israel the Assyrians took their political and religious leadership, skilled laborers, and wealthier members of society back to Assyria.) The faith of those left behind evolved in a different direction than those who were in captivity and when the leaders and wealthy members returned, the group left behind were treated as outsiders and denigrated.

With that knowledge, the question becomes what will the Samaritan do? Will he get lost in his resentment, his pain of being treated as an outsider, and his anger for all that had happened to him personally and to his Samaritan community, or would he act out of compassion? The answer comes swiftly as he rushes to the beaten man’s aid and does everything within his physical and financial ability to help heal and repair this man’s torn life.

The Samaritan saw beyond the events of his life that so directly impacted him to something much greater. He saw and understood the depth of God’s love for each and every one of us. He saw the “path of life” that leads through the veritable jungle of events, good and bad, that constantly impact our lives and can so negatively affect us.

Jesus invites us to walk the path of compassion and love. We can join that path, because God does love each of us, and fully understands who we are, and will always be there to guide us. Paul lets us know that we will never fully understand the world around us or even the events that directly affect us, yet with the assurance that God does fully understand our world and each of us, we can choose to be part of God’s Kingdom coming into our world and walk the path of compassion and love. And finally we can walk that path because Jesus walked the path to the cross, placing his faith totally in God, laying his life down for each of us out of a trust in God’s knowledge and out of an unfathomable love for each and every one of us. And God raised Christ from the dead giving each of us eternal life!

The choice is always before us. How will you choose to live your life? Like the priest and the Levite who walked by the one in need or like the Samaritan that looked beyond the pain of his own life to the infinite nature of God’s love and reached out to the one in need? As Moses tells the Hebrew people as they are about to enter the Promised Land (Deuteronomy 30:19b-20): “Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying him, and holding fast to him; for that means life to you and length of days, so that you may live in the land that the Lord swore to give to your ancestors, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.”

Faithfully yours,
Pastor Markman