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A Message from the Pastor.....
Dear Members and Friends of First Church,
With our Ash Wednesday evening service, we joined with churches all over the world in inaugurating the season of Lent- that forty-day period of self-examination and preparation that extends through Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, and Good Friday. With Ash Wednesday, Christians all over the world begin a personal pilgrimage marking the days with meditation, the confession of sins, fastings, and prayers. I find it to be really the most significant season on the Christian calendar, moreso than even Christmas, for it so prepares us mentally, emotionally, and spiritually that when the stone is rolled away on Easter morning and Jesus emerges victoriously from the tomb, we are filled with unconstrained excitement; we feel a part of it because we know that Christ's victory is meant for US!
What is going to make this Lenten period especially meaningful for me (and I hope for you) is that on Sunday mornings, we are focusing in on Jesus’ Beatitudes, those eight sayings at the beginning of his Sermon on the Mount which sum up the essential principles of his kingdom. In effect, they serve as his personal creed, informing every one of his teachings and deeds. When Moses gave the Ten Commandments, he presented his people with a series of "Thou shalt nots" or evils one must avoid in daily life on earth. In contrast, the message of Jesus was a positive one based in humility, charity, and brotherly love. He taught not conformity to an external law but transformation of the inner person.
Each noon on Wednesdays throughout Lent, the staff is presenting the church’s annual luncheon and Bible study in Calvin Hall. Using a video series on the last twenty-four hours in the life of Christ, we will be examining the various stages and personalities involved on the way to our Lord’s cross. Jan, Thomas, and I will each be taking turns in leading the study and I think you will find that along with the fine lunch, each week’s study will prove to be quite stimulating and meaningful. Plan on bringing a friend with you.
The great Episcopal preacher, Phillips Brooks, has a memorable passage in one of his sermons entitled "Going up to Jerusalem":
"Every true life has its Jerusalem, to which it is always going up. At first far off and dimly seen, laying but light hold upon our purpose and our will, then gradually taking us more and more into its power, compelling our study, directing the current of our thoughts...so every live man's Jerusalem, his sacred city, calls to him from the hill-top on which it stands...The man who is going up to NO Jerusalem is but the ghost and relic of a man..."
Well Lent becomes for us that time for "going up to Jerusalem," to begin preparing our hearts and minds for the drama of Holy Week. Only as the cross "lays hold upon our OWN purpose and will, taking us more and more into its power, compelling our study, directing the current of our OWN thoughts" will the truth and power of his resurrection seize our own imagination and lives. The empty tomb has meaning for us only if we have first followed Christ to the cross. If we never begin to prepare ourselves inwardly for Easter through prayer and fasting and meditation upon the scriptures, if we fail to sense our own unworthiness in the light of Christ's sacrifice for us, then Easter will signify little more than chocolate bunnies and colored eggs. Lent is a call to RELIVE THE DRAMA, for it is through "reliving" it that the drama will in fact "live" in US.
May you all have a most blessed Lent and Easter season!
Pastor Dave
