Holy Week

“For the average American Christian who is genuinely committed to his or her faith, the most a church can expect is 3 hours of participation each week.”
 
Before Incarnation opened its doors, I received this warning from a priest who reads surveys on church life and growth. Don’t ask me to cite the study (I don’t have it!), but the claim seems right. Sunday morning Eucharist, small group, Bible study—life is busy and most of us can only make two of the three. Anything more endangers the balance on the scale and only dilutes participation at the rest. So why in the world do we add three extra services (plus a picnic) during Holy Week?!!
 
The answer is simple: Our only hope is Jesus Christ, and we need a moment every year when we stop everything to remember and rehearse that.
 
We spend hundreds of hours every year making money, cooking meals, cleaning the home, going on vacation, watching TV, going to our kids’ activities, answering emails, studying for school—the list of what consumes our time is large. But our only hope is in Jesus; nothing else (even the good and necessary things) truly offers life. He alone is a secure foundation.
 
We need a yearly moment when we rehearse and re-enter this hope and foundation. We aren’t computers, where information can just be downloaded and then it remains there perpetually. We are living creatures with affections, wills, and minds, and creatures have to practice and celebrate things regularly if they want them engrained in their hearts. Our practices and habits shape our souls more than we know.
 
During Holy Week, we are given the chance to re-center our life on Christ in an explicit way. It is our yearly call to grow in the faith in the only way our faith can actually grow—through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. The services work together to draw us into Jesus’ death and resurrection. Each service is beautiful on its own, but together they are more than their sum. By following him from the Triumphal Entry to the Last Supper; from his agony, betrayal, and arrest at Gethsemane to the mockery of his trial; from the darkness of his crucifixion into the glory of his resurrection—by following him in each of these moments, we have the chance to re-center our life on him.
 
Even though life is busy, make a point to set aside every other pursuit during Holy Week. There is nothing more important for us to do! Let following Jesus from the Triumphal Entry to the empty tomb be the only goal for the week.

Steven+

Scripture Reflections

One of the most beautiful aspects of the story of the Samaritan woman in John 4 is the way she witnesses about Jesus: “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?”
 
Most of us aren’t likely to walk into work, church, or even our own home and say, “All my deepest secrets—the places of shame and guilt and fear—are on the table! Come meet the guy who revealed them to me!” The normal human impulse is to hide the things that we have done that are shameful. Her witness is so uniquely bold—she has lost her sense of shame over her past.
 
We can acknowledge, at least logically, that when one person admits his or her guilt and shame, it opens the door for others to do the same. Most of us fear that we will be rejected if we speak the truth about ourselves, yet when people courageously confess to others, they usually find that the others have also struggled and sinned, and also need to confess in return. One brave soul can open the floodgates of honesty in a friendship, a small group, or a church.
 
But it is still profoundly difficult to take that first step. How was this woman able to do it? The answer is simple: Jesus knew her past, and she discovered that he did not reject her for it. The fact that the Messiah actually wanted her gave her the security to venture into the terrifying territory of speaking truthfully to the people in her town. “Even if they reject me, HE doesn’t, and that is enough for me!”
 
Our fear of confession to one another may reveal that we still struggle to believe that Jesus actually wants us. Our insecurity with him means that too much is riding on our relationships with others. But if he is who he claims to be, and if he actually accepts us, there is nothing to fear.
 
Even if my father and my mother forsake me, the Lord will take me in. (Ps. 27:10)
 
This I know, that God is for me. In God, whose word I praise, in the Lord, whose word I praise, in God I trust; I shall not be afraid. What can man do to me? (Ps. 56:10-11)
 
For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Rom. 8:38-39)
 
My prayer is simply that you know that you are accepted by the Messiah, and that this gives you freedom.
 
In Christ,
Steven+

Scripture Reflections

In his sermon on Sunday, Justin+ mentioned that there were a variety of threads in John 3. He wisely avoided them (I probably wouldn’t have been able to avoid all of them, which is why Justin is capable of something I am not—a sub-20-minute sermon…) and kept his sights on the goal: living in the new creation through walking in the light. But the newsletter devotion presents me with a chance to chase one of those threads!
 
In John 3:5-6, Jesus puts three things together in the new birth—water, blood, and the Spirit. The consensus of the historic Church is that this reference to water is a reference to baptism. A few modern theologians argue for a metaphorical understanding of water, and a few believe it refers to the “water” in the womb of a natural birth, but by and large, this is understood as Jesus saying, “Unless one is born again through baptism and my blood; that is, unless one is born of the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.” (That the water refers to baptism is made fairly obvious by the fact that, right after this discourse with Nicodemus, Jesus and his disciples went into the countryside and started baptizing people!)
 
The strange thing, though, is that only a few verses later, Jesus says, “whoever believes in [me has] eternal life.” We now have four things—baptism, the blood of Jesus, the Spirit, and belief—presented as essential for new birth and new life.
 
Modern analysis asks the question, “Which is it? Does new birth come in baptism? When we believe? When does the Spirit apply the blood of Jesus to us? When we are baptized? When we truly believe? How do these four fit together??” Denominations have split over the answers to these questions, and much theology has been written to describe the relationships between our belief, the sacraments, the blood of Jesus, and the work of the Spirit!
 
But Jesus doesn’t answer these questions. He never presents the sacraments, our faith, his blood, or the work of the Spirit in opposition to one another. He doesn’t arrange them logically. For example, in John 6, he says that we must “eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood”—highly sacramental words!—and yet, in the same discourse, he says, “whoever believes in me shall never thirst.” Which is it? The sacrament? Or our belief? Which truly brings the life of Jesus Christ to us?
 
Throughout John, Jesus speaks of these things—his blood, the work of the Spirit in us, the sacraments given to the Church, and our individual belief—as the door into the kingdom and the place where we receive Jesus’ own never-ending life. My point in this devotion is simple: do not discount any of them. Each of us likely prioritizes one or two of these things—either believing in Jesus, receiving the sacraments, the presence of the Spirit, or being cleansed by the blood of Lamb. But each of us is likely also a bit reserved—even skeptical—about one or two of these things. Whichever it is that you tend to overlook, remember that Jesus himself speaks of all four! By his blood, through the work of the Spirit, as we believe, in the sacraments, he offers life to us.
 
Steven+