Throughout the year, the Southern New England Conference of the United Church of Christ reproduces the Daily Lectionary for use by churches.  These are the suggested readings for April 8th:  Psalm 31:1-4, 15-16; Lamentations 3:1-9, 19-24; 1 Peter 4:1-8; and Matthew 27:57-66.  I would encourage you to read these short selections as part of your Lenten practice.

Today is Holy Saturday.  Today Jesus lies dead in the tomb.  Passive.  Acted upon.  In Jesus, God experiences the reality of death, the reality of separation and the sorrow it brings.  Today, some scholars wonder, does God permit the division of God’s perfect wholeness.  On Palm Sunday, we read the Philippians passage that speaks of Jesus emptying Himself of His divinity.  Jesus’ humanity, in other words, is authentic.  This places self-imposed limits on the divine relationship between God the Father and God the Son Incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth, but the relationship continues although modified.  Is it broken as Jesus lies dead in the tomb?  Is this profound separation experienced by God personally?  We cannot know, but the reality of Jesus’ death and entombment, if we carry Jesus’ Incarnation forward until the moment of the resurrection’s transformation, forces us to consider this theological possibility.

On Holy Saturday, the community of the church waits, the people of faith wait.  Jesus had spoken of His impending death, but also of His being raised again to life.  His followers could not make sense out of this prophecy.  They kept reinterpreting it according to their own expectations.  However, the seed of hope had been planted. 

Today’s reading from Lamentations gives expression to Jesus’ anguish as the one who suffers “under the rod of God’s wrath; [God] has driven and brought me into darkness without any light; against me alone [God] turns his hand, again and again, all day long.”  However, the one who suffers also says, “‘The Lord is my portion,’ says my soul, ‘therefore I will hope in him.’”  The intent of this connection between Jesus and the Hebrew Scripture’s lamentation of a suffering, faithful servant is that Jesus suffers because of His God-given ministry, and that Jesus hopes in this same God.

Holy Saturday is a time of hope for believers, but remarkably maybe also for Jesus Himself, God Incarnate who accepted the reality of human death.  Maybe the inspired words of Lamentations convey the depth of Jesus’ despair:  “Though I call and cry for help, [God] shuts out my prayer;  [God] has blocked my ways with hewn stones.”

I share these musings on this last day of Lent, this last of this year’s Lenten Blogs, because it puts into perspective the majesty of the joy and triumph that is hoped for in Easter.  The death of Jesus of Nazareth is real.  The totality of its separation may be allowed by God.  And for Jesus there was hope but not certainty when He went to the cross, when He accepted even the reality of death.  To imagine the wonder of that glorious moment when God raised Him off of that burial slab where His marred, dead body had been thrown unceremoniously, raised Him to the full glory of the divine nature that Jesus had emptied Himself of at the Incarnation, this is the hope and power of Easter Sunday.

I invite you to join with us at worship to share in this most profound mystery, to share in triumphant and lasting joy.  If you would like to join us online, please send an email to randyc1897@gmail.com for the Zoom login.  It is exciting to think of tomorrow’s Alleluia’s.
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If you’d like, here is the link to the Southern New England Conference’s daily reading schedule:  www.sneucc.org/lectionary.

Throughout the year, the Southern New England Conference of the United Church of Christ reproduces the Daily Lectionary for use by churches.  These are the suggested readings for April 7th:  Psalm 22; Isaiah 52:13—53:12; Hebrews 10:16-25; and John 18:1—19:42.  I would encourage you to read these short selections as part of your Lenten practice.

Today is Good Friday, the day of Jesus’ crucifixion, death and burial.  This is a day to be treated with exceptional reverence.  The church will be open from 12 – 3:00pm this afternoon for private meditation and prayer.  Please be mindful of the silence of these hours.  Today’s biblical readings are the longest of Lent.  They are intended to help us spend more time in conversation with the still-speaking Word of God.  The Gospel passage tells the harrowing account from John’s perspective of Jesus’ Passion.  It begins with Jesus’ arrest and ends with His burial.

John’s chronology is different than that of the other three Gospels.  Mark tells us that Jesus had been crucified at 9AM and that the skies grew dark at noon. (15:25, 33)  John tells us in today’s Gospel that at noon Jesus was paraded before the crowds by Pilate and that the crowds shouted, “‘Crucify him!’” (19:14-15) 

The oldest Gospel, Mark’s, informs the reader that Jesus dies at 3PM. (15:33)  John offers no specific time of Jesus’ death, but he does share that the bodies of all the crucified needed to be removed from their crosses before sunset “because that sabbath was a day of great solemnity.” (19:31)  This would equate roughly with Mark’s mid-afternoon.

These are the reasons why on this most solemn day the hours between noon and 3PM are especially sacred.  This is why the church building will be open for the faithful. 

As we can see, the details of Jesus’ crucifixion may vary, but they do not effect the principal message that we gather on Good Friday to honour our crucified God.  Again, the details are just that – details.  However, one detail that I find interesting, especially this year, is the scholarly hypothesis that the actual, historical date when Jesus of Nazareth was crucified under orders of the Roman Governor Pontius Pilate, under the titulus “Jesus of Nazareth King of the Jews,” (In Latin this charge is often rendered and seen on crosses as the initials INRI.  There is no “J” in Latin, thus the “I.” The “N” is for Nazareth and “R” is for rex, which is king.), which is a charge of insurrection against the Roman Empire, is today. 

The well-respected biblical scholar John P. Meier writes in “A Marginal Jew:  Rethinking the Historical Jesus, Vol. 1” that Jesus “died on Friday, April 7, 30.” (p. 406)  This means that today is the actual 1,993rd anniversary of Jesus’ crucifixion.  This is only a calendar detail.  It is insignificant in comparison to the teaching of the crucified God.  However, if this calendar coincidence helps you to feel more powerfully the impact of Good Friday, then that is not a bad thing.

We began this journey on February 22nd, Ash Wednesday.  We have now reached the event that is the reason for Lent’s preparation.  The public shaming and tortured death of Jesus, whom we recognize as our Saviour, is a sacred scandal.  Jesus is Isaiah’s Suffering Servant.  Jesus is God’s perfect revelation that there is a divine love for us that is greater than God’s love for God’s own self.  How can we not treat this event, this day, with the utmost respect? 

When Jesus’ body is removed from the cross and placed in the tomb, Lent has reached its completion.  We have mentioned that Advent prepares for Christmas.  Lent, however, prepares for the death and burial of Jesus.  It needs to be this way because the empty tomb must be always recognized as a surprise.  To do otherwise is to devalue that completeness of Jesus’ sacrifice as one of us.  Not only must the pain of the cross be real, the fact of death must be just as real, if Jesus’ crucifixion is as one of us for all of us.  Let us, therefore, not rush past Good Friday in unnecessary haste to get to Easter.  We have prepared too long for the cross to not spend some time in its shadow. 

Again, the church is open from noon until 3PM today.
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If you’d like, here is the link to the Southern New England Conference’s daily reading schedule:  www.sneucc.org/lectionary.

Throughout the year, the Southern New England Conference of the United Church of Christ reproduces the Daily Lectionary for use by churches.  These are the suggested readings for April 6th:  Exodus 12:1-14;  Psalm 116:1-2, 12-19; 1 Corinthians 11:23-26; and John 13:1-17, 31b-35.  I would encourage you to read these short selections as part of your Lenten practice.

Today is Maundy Thursday.  Our Lenten journey has entered its final stages.  On the evening of this day, Jesus will gather with His disciples for a final meal.  The church’s worship for practical reasons must sometimes conflate the different biblical accounts of an event in Jesus’ life.  Take Christmas for example.  The two different stories of the manger and the shepherds, and then the Magi and the star are often blended in worship.  Our church manger scenes have everyone gathered for Jesus’ Bethlehem birth even though this obscures the distinction between the Infancy Narratives of Luke and Matthew.  Worship is allowed a bit of poetic license in this way.

This evening we run into a similar occurrence.  When we gather for the Maundy Thursday Worship Service, we will focus on the Institution of Communion and we will also read the Gospel account of Jesus washing the feet of His disciples.  It is the same Gospel as we share here.  This account is not found in any other Gospel; it is unique to John.  Another uniqueness of John is that there is no account of the words of Institution at the Last Supper.  There is no reference to the sacrament of Communion at John’s Last Supper as there is in the other three Gospels.

John shares his “‘I am the bread of life’” Communion message much earlier in the Gospel at chapter 6.  In John, the discussion of Communion takes place among the crowd, not within the smaller circle of the Twelve.  It takes place well within the life of Jesus’ ministry, not at its completion as Jesus awaits His execution.  There is merit to this theological treatment that should be kept in mind when we speak of Communion.  However, what I would like to have us think about now is that for John the Last Supper’s memorable act is not the bread and wine, but the washing of feet.  In the liturgy of the church, the Institution of Communion and the washing are forced together, but this is not to be found in the biblical text.  This, again, is the church’s liturgical poetic license.  It serves a practical purpose, but also it blurs John’s message.

The title Maundy Thursday is derived from the Latin word for commandment, and it is based upon Jesus’ words after he washes the feet of His disciples:  “‘I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.’”  For John the emphatic image of the Last Supper is not the gift of Communion, it is the new commandment.  The culmination of Jesus’ life, in John’s Gospel, is not the “Do this in remembrance of me” Communion.  It is “love one another just as I have love you.”  It is the new commandment of seeing glory in humble, loving service.  “Love one another” is not left nebulous so as to be interpreted as we choose.  It is defined quite strictly by Jesus.  It is to love as Jesus loves.  It is to imitate the startling humility of Jesus taking on the role and appearance of the servant as He offers a loving, final gesture to His companions. 

Both the Communion and the new commandment will be combined this evening, as they should, but there is so much to contemplate in John’s reformulation of the Last Supper centered on holy Service rather than holy Communion.  We treat Communion with the profound sanctity that it rightly deserves.  John’s message is that we should treat the new commandment of humble service with an equal sanctity.  Both are communions with Christ.

I invite you to join with us in Hatfield this evening at 7:00pm as we will gather as God’s People in God’s House to remember the Last Supper’s Communion and the washing of feet, and also the beginning of Jesus’ Passion.  Liturgy in a profound way can help us not only remember but feel the power and presence of Christ’s life.  In a mystical sense, there is in our worship a timelessness we share in.  
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If you’d like, here is the link to the Southern New England Conference’s daily reading schedule:  www.sneucc.org/lectionary.

Throughout the year, the Southern New England Conference of the United Church of Christ reproduces the Daily Lectionary for use by churches.  These are the suggested readings for April 5th:  Psalm 70; Isaiah 50:4-9a; Hebrews 12:1-3; and John 13:21-32.  I would encourage you to read these short selections as part of your Lenten practice.

It is rather difficult to understand the proceedings shared with us in today’s Gospel selection.  As in the other Gospels, John’s account begins with Jesus’ warning that one of the Twelve will betray Him.  Similarly, they are all in denial.  In John, however, the Twelve should know who the betrayer is.  Peter turns to the Beloved Disciple and asks him to inquire of Jesus who the betrayer is.  Jesus answers by saying it is the one to whom He will give the piece of bread, and Jesus then gives it to Judas.  Jesus has identified quite plainly that the betrayer is Judas, and yet the message does not seem to be received.  I have no idea how it could be missed.  When Jesus prods Judas to do quickly what he intends, Judas leaves their company and goes out into the night.  The other eleven witness this and have no clue as to what is unfolding.  How is this possible?

John is an accomplished author.  There must be something to help explain this blatant inconsistency.  It may have something to do with the fact that the Johannine Jesus is much more comfortable with His divinity than the Jesus of the Synoptics.  One such attribute of the Johannine Jesus is His supernatural knowledge.  Jesus knows things before they happen.  Jesus knows, for example, that Judas will be His betrayer even before Judas does (cf. 6:70-71).  John’s Jesus is always in control and not even His betrayal is outside of Jesus’ influence.  This is why Jesus says to Judas, “‘Do quickly what you are going to do.’”  Jesus prods Judas to action with these words. 

The other eleven are somehow oblivious, but Judas understands well what Jesus means.  He exits the community around Jesus and goes out into the night.  With the act of betrayal now put in motion by Jesus, Jesus turns to the remaining eleven and speaks in terms of glory:  “‘Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him.’”  The betrayal has been transformed into an act precipitated by Jesus and falling within the divine plan, and thus the theme of glory.  Again, the Johannine Jesus is much more comfortable with His divinity than the Jesus conveyed in the other Gospels.

This theme of glory in the face of betrayal repeats the Isaian theme shared in another of today’s readings.  The Suffering Servant is confident of the presence and power of God and this gives him the fortitude to stand firm.  We read today:  “The Lord God helps me; therefore I have not been disgraced; therefore I have set my face like flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame; he who vindicates me is near.  Who will contend with me?  Let us stand up together.  Who are my adversaries?  Let them confront me.  It is the Lord God who helps me; who will declare me guilty?”  Jesus is prepared for all that will befall Him as His Passion plays out because who are these human actors when compared to God?

I think it is John’s insistence on Jesus’ supernatural abilities that lead to the confusion in today’s Gospel.  Jesus must know who the betrayer is.  It can no longer be knowledge shared only within parentheses with the reader.  It is a foreknowledge that must be made plain to the others around Jesus.  Thus, Jesus exposes Judas to the eleven.  The fact that the others cannot process this information testifies to the abhorrence of the idea that among them is a traitor.  It was a scandal among them and the earliest believers that one of Jesus’ closest followers betrayed Him.  Jesus rose above this human denial in His supernatural wisdom, but the others could not.

It is a strange revelation that equates glory with suffering.  It is even stranger to ponder the revelation that God is the one who suffers and through this suffering is glorified.  A suffering Saviour, a crucified God, is maybe as baffling as the disciples imagining that instead of betrayal Judas was just going out into the night to buy something for the party or to give something to the poor.  What lies ahead of us, regardless of how many times we have gone to Golgotha, is a mystery that will always challenge us.  Even if we know the answer as did the disciples in the Upper Room, the cross should still lead us to ask all sorts of why’s.
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If you’d like, here is the link to the Southern New England Conference’s daily reading schedule:  www.sneucc.org/lectionary.

Throughout the year, the Southern New England Conference of the United Church of Christ reproduces the Daily Lectionary for use by churches.  These are the suggested readings for April 4th:  Psalm 71:1-14; Isaiah 49:1-7; 1 Corinthians 1:18-31; and John 12:20-36.  I would encourage you to read these short selections as part of your Lenten practice.

I think the last part of John 12:36 is one of the saddest verses in the Bible.  It is preceded by the account that some Greeks try to approach Jesus.  Philip is a Greek name.  The Greeks try to meet with Jesus by going through Philip, a disciple of Jesus, and one they may have viewed as sympathetic to their request.  It is interesting to wonder why they felt this need.  Philip then confers with Andrew and the two of them approach Jesus with the request of the Greeks. 

This passage indicates Jesus’ renown is spreading.  It is not confined to Jews in Galilee.  Jesus is no longer only a small-town celebrity.  Jesus is now a recognized name among a far larger and more influential group.  These are most likely Hellenized Jews because they have come to Jerusalem in order to participate in the Temple’s Passover celebration.  They are Jews, but cultured in the ways of the Greco-Roman world.  This is a definite expansion of Jesus’ sphere. 

The Gospel reader may expect this to be good news, that Jesus’ message is expanding.  However, when Jesus receives this request through His two disciples, He does not address their inquiry.  Rather, Jesus speaks about His approaching death.  Jesus realizes that if the Greeks have heard about Him and seek Him out, then His ministry and message have grown to the point where His enemies will feel compelled to act.  Jesus also sees this as His ministry reaching its maturity.  Jesus does not see His impending death as the end of His work.  He speaks of it through the imagery of a stalk of wheat that is fully ripe.  The grain of wheat then falls to the earth and dies, but from that grain new life will emerge.

Jesus is not unconcerned about the torture and pain that His death will require:  “‘Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say – “Father, save me from this hour?”’”  But neither will Jesus pull back from it in order to protect Himself.  Answering His own question, Jesus says, “‘No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour.’”  The physical reality of the cross is not unknown to Jesus, but even so Jesus will accept it in order to fulfill His ministry.  The grain must fall and die for new life to be born.

 Before Jesus is ready to die, however, there is the latter portion of 12:36:  “After Jesus had said this, he departed and hid from them.”  Jesus came into the world to share God’s love and grace, to bring us peace and to share the promise of eternal life.  Jesus healed the sick, comforted those in distress, treated with kindness those who were rejected, and yet, when His mission reached its maturity, He needed to depart and go into hiding.  God came into the world in Jesus and we forced Him to go into hiding, to depart from our presence. 

Jesus went into hiding in order to concentrate on preparing His closest followers for what would ensue.  Jesus needed to make sure that they would be able to recover from the horror and confusion of the cross, and would then be able to continue His work and ministry.  This is why Jesus went into hiding.  It was not to avoid death.  It was in order to prepare for His death.  But that message of Jesus having to go into hiding is distressing.  It says something terribly worrisome about humanity.  When faced with Jesus’ radical message of a loving and inclusive God, humanity became so violent in its opposition, in its willingness to protect power and the powerful, that Jesus was chased from human society.  Jesus had to go into hiding.  Is this still a reality today?  Do we still chase Jesus away either overtly or more surreptitiously?  In other words, do we ignore Jesus in one sense, and in another do we so water down His radical message that it is no longer His gospel?  Either way, Jesus is forced from our presence.

This Holy Week let us counter this scenario.  Let us bring Jesus back into our lives and through our lives back into our world. 
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If you’d like, here is the link to the Southern New England Conference’s daily reading schedule:  www.sneucc.org/lectionary.

Throughout the year, the Southern New England Conference of the United Church of Christ reproduces the Daily Lectionary for use by churches.  These are the suggested readings for April 3rd:  Psalm 36:5-11; Isaiah 42:1-9; Hebrews 9:11-15; and John 12:1-11.  I would encourage you to read these short selections as part of your Lenten practice.

A couple of Sundays ago I preached on the Johannine passage of the raising of Lazarus.  The sisters Martha and Mary enter the biblical tradition independently through both the Lucan source and the Johannine source.  Surprisingly, Lazarus does the same.  With that said, however, most everything about these three New Testament characters is shrouded in mystery.  We cannot mark where history ends and tradition begins, and it is not the best form of biblical study to conflate their different stories from different Gospels into one blended story.  I assume that Martha, Mary and Lazarus were somehow important in the lifetime of Jesus and that memories of their special relationship with Him become the source-material for the biblical accounts which they inhabit. 

Luke shares uniquely the story of the day Jesus visited the two sisters (10:38+).  Also, Luke alone records Jesus’ parable of Lazarus and the rich man (16:19+).  There is no connection between the sisters and the imaginary Lazarus in Luke, but none of these three names are ever mentioned in Matthew or Mark.  They are, however, all three mentioned in John’s Gospel.  Luke’s two sisters are sisters still in John, but the imaginary Lazarus of the Lucan Jesus’ parable becomes Lazarus, the brother of Martha and Mary, and the one Jesus raises from the dead.  Something is going on here, but that something is lost to us.

From what we have in Luke and John, we can imagine that Jesus once told a parable about an anonymous rich man and a poor man named Lazarus.  In Jesus’ “the first shall be last” world, the rich man’s name is ignored and the poor man’s name is remembered.  Why the name Lazarus was chosen would be exciting to know, but we cannot.  Was there someone near and dear to Jesus by this name?  We can’t know.  Maybe ten or fifteen years later John writes his Gospel and Lazarus is now a real person not a character in a parable.  As in the parable, Lazarus in John’s Gospel flirts with that boundary between life and death.  Is there a connection here?  Possibly.

For all the glory and wonder associated with Lazarus in both cases, Lazarus himself is a rather dull character.  He never speaks a word.  He is much more acted upon than someone who acts.  The sisters are his opposite.  For the sake of brevity, in both different Gospel accounts, Martha is the one who busies herself with household tasks.  In Luke, Mary sits at the feet of The Teacher as a disciple among the other disciples.  In John, Mary is again at Jesus’ feet, but this time anoints them with a costly perfume, which Jesus accepts and acknowledges as preparing His body for burial.  Lazarus was simply one who was at the same table.

I would like to think that these three, Martha, Mary and Lazarus, were all important in some special way to the historical Jesus, but in possibly mundane ways.  Maybe they were simply friends of Jesus, a home where the tired Teacher could find rest, nourishment and companionship.  When Mark and Matthew tell the story of Jesus’ anointing, it is at another’s house (Simon the leper) and the woman is left unnamed.  Does John receive this tradition and alter it to the house of the sisters and to Mary’s generous act?  I think so.  Are these names created out of whole cloth, however?  I think not.  I imagine these are the actual names of people near and dear to the historical Jesus.  Maybe not the anonymous woman who anointed Jesus, maybe much more pedestrian than this, but nonetheless, these three loved Jesus and were beloved by Jesus.

As we enter Holy Week, I hope we have grown closer to Jesus.  I hope we are like a Martha, Mary or Lazarus, someone close to Christ even if our stories are ordinary.  It’s not as important that what we did because of our faith in Jesus is remembered as extraordinary.  It’s important that our faith is remembered as an ordinary, everyday, commonplace part of our lives.  How wonderful it must have been for Martha, Mary and Lazarus to be the proverbially house where Jesus could just show up and be welcomed.  May Lent help us to foster this familiarity with Jesus and He with us so that we may be as ordinary in our relationship with Christ.  We have no idea who Martha, Mary and Lazarus were, but I think they mattered to Jesus, and really, that’s all that matters.   
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If you’d like, here is the link to the Southern New England Conference’s daily reading schedule:  www.sneucc.org/lectionary.

Throughout the year, the Southern New England Conference of the United Church of Christ reproduces the Daily Lectionary for use by churches.  These are the suggested readings for April 1st:  Psalm 31:9-16; Lamentations 3:55-66; and Mark 10:32-34.  I would encourage you to read these short selections as part of your Lenten practice.

Today is April 1st, commonly known as April Fools’ Day.  The New Year was once recognized as beginning at the Spring Equinox and its celebration lasted until April 1st.  The observance of the New Year was subsequently moved to January 1st.  The ones who resisted this change and who stuck with the April 1st celebration of the New Year were called April Fools.  Their obstinacy was mocked by others.  They held onto a tradition that was no longer meaningful.  They were locked into a tradition but only for the sake of the tradition.  Everything else had changed. 

Traditions are to be cherished.  If you are like me, you have traditions associated with Holy Week and Easter that are a beloved part of these sacred days.  The traditions become a hallmark of these occasions.  I have been dying Easter eggs with red onion peels since I did so with my grandmother when I was a child.  Those Easter eggs are an important part of Easter for me.  Traditions, however, cannot be allowed to become straightjackets.  They can’t lock us in place for their own sake.  Life requires the ability to change.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus tells His closest followers for the third time that He will suffer and die when they come to Jerusalem.  On each of those occasions, the disciples could not hear what Jesus was saying.  The traditions they associated with the Christ, the Messiah, were of a powerful and triumphant leader.  They held onto their Messianic traditions with such a deafening-obstinacy that they could not hear what Jesus was saying to them plainly the first time, the second time, and not on this third occasion. 

Tomorrow is Palm Sunday.  The citizens and pilgrims in Jerusalem for the Passover hail Jesus with Hosanna’s, basically save us, deliver us in Hebrew.  They claim Jesus as Son of David, thus the Messiah.  They cut down branches of palm to lay on the road in front of His beast as a sign of honour.  They, like the disciples, have an immovable tradition in their mind as to the image of the Messiah.  When Jesus does not fulfill the expectations that their traditions have ingrained in their minds and hearts, they turn against Him.  The same people who hailed Jesus with Hosanna’s on Palm Sunday are the ones who will cry “Crucify, crucify Him!” on Good Friday – because their traditions were straightjackets. 

As we prepare to enter Holy Week, let us look at the expectations our traditions hold before us.  Are we open to a Saviour who constantly surprises?  Are we willing to adapt as change alters our lives and our world … and our faith?  Do we hear Jesus, as did the disciples in today’s Gospel, but are we not willing to listen, just like they could not?  Are we like the people of Jerusalem who rejoice at Jesus’ approach when Jesus is the Saviour we make Him out to be, but who then pull back when Jesus challenges us with an unexpected, maybe unwanted, revelation? 

I invite you to come and join us for our Palm Sunday worship tomorrow.  Take one of the blessed palms home with you.  Keep it visible throughout the year.  Let it remind you of the example of the first Palm Sunday when words of praise were not sincere because they were offered without listening to what Jesus had to say.  Let them help us to make the conscious effort to listen for God’s still-speaking Word.  If you would like to join us online for our worship Service, please send an email to randyc1897@gmail.com for the Zoom login.
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If you’d like, here is the link to the Southern New England Conference’s daily reading schedule:  www.sneucc.org/lectionary.

Throughout the year, the Southern New England Conference of the United Church of Christ reproduces the Daily Lectionary for use by churches.  These are the suggested readings for March 31st:  Job 13:13-19; Psalm 31:9-16; and Philippians 1:21-30.  I would encourage you to read these short selections as part of your Lenten practice.

Today is the sixth Lenten Friday, days of heightened solemnity during the already solemn Season of Lent.  Fridays are times when we are called to especially meditate upon the meaning of the cross and of the crucified Saviour of us all.  There are often two theological terms associated since early Christianity with the cross.  One is more familiar than the other.  The more familiar term is redemption.  This is the theology that Jesus redeems us from our sins through His sacrificial death.  Jesus paid the price for our sins by dying for us, in other words.  I imagine this must have been an almost immediate theme of justification among believers who were struggling to explain the public execution of Jesus. 

The three Synoptic Gospels present Jesus at the Last Supper on Passover, which means that the Passover lambs have already been sacrificed.  A generation later John shares a different tradition.  Jesus is on the cross a full day earlier than in the Synoptics as the Passover lambs are being slaughtered in the Temple (cf. 19:14, 31,42).  The Passover meal has not yet been eaten.  For John’s theology this change is warranted.  From the very beginning of his Gospel, Jesus is acclaimed by John the Baptist as he declares, “‘Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!’” (1:29) 

The blood of the Passover lamb in the Exodus story was smeared on the doorposts of the homes of the Hebrews in Egypt.  The blood alerted the angel of death to “pass over” those homes as the rest of Egypt suffered through the death of their first born.  The blood of the sacrificed lamb saved the people of God.  It is not difficult to see the immediate connection between this well known and beloved tradition and Jesus on the cross.  It must have been comforting and clarifying to equate Jesus’ death as sacrificial, as the perfect sin offering to God on the altar of the cross. 

In the Epistle to the Hebrews, Jesus is referred to as both the High Priest making the offering and as the offering itself:  “This [Jesus] did once for all when he offered himself.” (7:27)  Jesus the High Priest is the only biblical reference to a Christian priesthood.  Those first Christians were confronted with the scandal of the cross and the theology of redemption akin to the Passover lamb was an obvious and dignified response.  Jesus is both the singular High Priest and the perfect offering.

Another biblical theme resulting from the crucifixion is what is termed regeneration.  The cross serves to regenerate us, renew and refresh us.  The cross is not so much about taking away sins as it is about regenerating our spiritual selves.  As one example, in Romans we read, “For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life.” (5:10)  What this means is that the cross’ salvation is not through the death of Jesus in isolation.  It is through the cross as the final statement of Jesus’ life’s ministry and message.  We are “saved by his life” writes Paul, and the cross is not Jesus’ death per se, but the climactic, conclusive final act of Jesus’ life.  We are reconciled by living like Jesus, by having our faith regenerated by such a love as is manifest by the life of Jesus including the end of that holy life on the cross.

There is much to ponder in the cross of Christ, its scandal and its sacredness, its forgiveness and its regeneration.  And the cross is also a challenge and this is what we read today in Philippians:  “For he has graciously granted you the privilege not only of believing in Christ, but of suffering for him as well.”  How will the cross affect the way we live?  I hope these six Lenten Fridays and all the other Lenten days as well have provided us the opportunities to think more deeply about what Jesus, and He crucified, means to us today, and also what it implies for how we live today.
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If you’d like, here is the link to the Southern New England Conference’s daily reading schedule:  www.sneucc.org/lectionary.

Throughout the year, the Southern New England Conference of the United Church of Christ reproduces the Daily Lectionary for use by churches.  These are the suggested readings for March 30th:  Psalm 143; Jeremiah 32:1-9, 36-41; and Matthew 22:23-33.  I would encourage you to read these short selections as part of your Lenten practice.

Let me begin by apologizing for my mistake.  I copied the readings intended for today but used them accidentally in yesterday’s Lenten Blog.  So now I am copying yesterday’s biblical selections for today’s post.

Jeremiah is confined “in the court of the guard that was in the palace of the king of Judah.”  This was a rather practical decision on the king’s part.  The Babylonian army had already marched through the lands of Israel and Judah and were now besieging the capital city of Jerusalem.  The situation was obviously dire.  The city’s defenders did not need to have a prophet running around Jerusalem telling everyone that their cause was hopeless, that the city would fall to the Babylonians and the king would be dethroned and taken away captive.

Neither did Jeremiah relish this task of preaching defeat and destruction.  The Book of Jeremiah is probably the most psychologically revealing of any in the Bible.  Jeremiah gives utterance to his internal conflicts that arise as he remains faithful to God’s word while simultaneously regretting what is revealed.  In today’s passage, however, there is a prophetic compromise between the two.

Jeremiah’s nephew asks him to purchase a field that he owns.  The field is already within the control of the occupying Babylonian army and yet Jeremiah buys it.  This is testimony of future restoration.  Yahweh has revealed through Jeremiah that the nation will collapse, but through this act Yahweh also promises that this destruction is not final.  There will be a time of return and Yahweh promises, “They shall be my people, and I will be their God.”

In today’s Gospel passage, Jesus shares the extraordinary message of restoration.  Death is not final as the Sadducees believed.  Death’s destruction would give way to eternal life.  Death would not only be defeated by life’s restoration, but death would be a passage to an entirely new existence.  Physical descriptions will become inadequate.  Social conventions will no longer suffice.  Rather, says Jesus, “For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.” 

Jeremiah’s prophecy brought hope to people under siege by allowing them to believe that they would someday return.  Jeremiah’s purchase of his nephew’s land gives evidence of a return to normalcy.  Jesus’ prophecy, on the other hand, is a radical departure from the normal.  Jesus’ promise is a revelation of an entirely different existence. 

May Lent’s focus on Jesus’ death help us to deal with, one, our mortality, and two, the meanness and savagery of this world.  Jerusalem would fall during Jeremiah’s ministry, but it would be rebuilt.  Jesus will die on Good Friday, but it is called “Good” because His death promises eternal life and also a different life in this world.  Just as Jeremiah’s purchase of a piece of occupied land sent a message of hope so may Jesus’ life-affirming death help us to deal with yet another school shooting, yet more children sacrificed because we cannot control guns but let guns control us.  May the cross be like Jeremiah’s land purchase, a sign of a better future.  May it give us hope that those six murdered by another gun-wielding murderer, three just 9 years old, may find that other life that surpasses all our descriptions.

If you’d like, here is the link to the Southern New England Conference’s daily reading schedule:  www.sneucc.org/lectionary.

Throughout the year, the Southern New England Conference of the United Church of Christ reproduces the Daily Lectionary for use by churches.  These are the suggested readings for March 29th:  1 Samuel 16:11-13; Psalm 31:9-16; and Philippians 1:1-11.  I would encourage you to read these short selections as part of your Lenten practice.

I enjoy the lesson shared in the story of David’s anointing.  Samuel has a rather familiar relationship with Yahweh.  Just prior to today’s 1 Samuel passage, the prophet has been sent to the household of Jesse to anoint a replacement king for the discredited King Saul.  Jesse presents his eldest son Eliab to the prophet.  When Samuel sees Eliab’s appearance and the height of his stature, he assumes that this must be the one Yahweh has chosen to lead Israel.  But he is not.  Jesse processes six of his other sons before Samuel for a total of seven.  Seven is a biblical figure of completeness.  But again, none of these are Yahweh’s chosen one.

Samuel is confused because every son of Jesse, he assumed, had appeared and was rejected by Yahweh.  Samuel thought one of these must have been the one.  Yahweh needed to remind his prophet that as familiar as they were in conversation that God will always see differently than do we.  I love this message that God sees differently.  So our confused prophet asks Jesse if these are all his sons.  (How amazing it would have been if instead of sons the prophet had asked, “Are these all your children?” and how startled and affronted would everyone have been if Yahweh had chosen a daughter to rule over God’s people?  This would have amplified the message that God sees differently but to a decibel point that would have been deafening for a people of that age, and well, I guess many of this age too.)  Jesse informs the prophet that there is one more, the youngest, but he was not even invited to join the family to meet Samuel.  The youngest boy was left to his chores; he was tending the sheep.  This unexpected son, the almost forgotten one, is the person Yahweh had chosen to be Israel’s next king.

What a glorious message this is.  The fullness of seven sons had come and gone – complete, and yet Yahweh was far from done.  God sees differently than do we.  When we imagine there is no more, when we are ready to give in to hopelessness, Yahweh still sees what is possible.  This is a message of encouragement when we may feel at wit’s end.  This is also a message that we not rush toward judgment.  In the context of Lent, we are following after a Saviour who was judged an utter failure.  Jesus was betrayed and deserted, crucified as a failed insurrectionist by the Romans and rejected by most all of His people as a failed Messiah.  This is what people saw, but this is definitely not what God saw.  When we judge others, we should be warned away from superficial views by remembering how Jesus looked on Golgotha.

Paul writes to the Christians at Philippi:  “And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help you to determine what is best.”  Paul is asking the members of his church to lead with love not with judgment, and that this love benefit from increased knowledge and insight so that we may “determine what is best.”  What is best will not be rash or prejudiced attitudes absent love, knowledge or insight.  Lent asks us to be cautious and patient in our judgment of others, and it expects that others will do the same.  In this way, we may even begin to see as God sees, as God sees through the eyes of the one crucified.
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If you’d like, here is the link to the Southern New England Conference’s daily reading schedule:  www.sneucc.org/lectionary.