April 2025
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Dear Church Family,
This month marks the transition from Lent into Easter - when we truly celebrate the reality that Jesus is ALIVE! I have many memories of Easter throughout my life, from being in the kids choir at church, epic Easter egg hunts, special treats in my basket, certain Easter toys that only came out for that special holiday, getting a new dress for the occasion. Quite a few things that have nothing to do with Jesus, but still warm my heart. I wonder what memories you hold of this holiday? And I wonder even more, what message about God has been cemented in you at the celebration of Easter?
As I raise my kids, I recognize the challenge of communicating what this holiday is really about. It is joyful, full of sugar, often has cute furry animals associated with it, and Jesus isn’t often the first thing that comes to my kids’ minds. If you were to share about the Christian purpose of Easter, what would you say? Sometimes narratives about Christ, particularly around Easter, center more on our sin and the price Jesus paid. Yet if we focus too much on the problem of sin, we tend to cultivate more guilt and shame than is necessary, and we might miss the point of God’s generosity and power. Ironically, we can focus more on his death than his resurrection, which is the whole point of the holiday! I recognize this as a similar pattern to scaring someone into faith with the threat of hell, or dangling heaven as a kind of bribe. It can miss the invitation to consider the story of what God has been writing and continues to write with us, here and now.
All through Lent we have been sitting with passages from the Gospels, these stories of interactions with Jesus that remind us of the crucial work he was doing on earth. When we walk this road of Lent alongside Jesus, intentionally knowing the cross lies ahead, we recognize how it was his compassion, inclusion, healing, and challenge to everyone to receive a clearer understanding of God that felt like a threat to people. These characteristics of God made flesh led to riots within God’s people, and ultimately their forcing his arrest and crucifixion. It is rather important for us to sit with the uncomfortable reality that God’s own people rejected him while he walked the earth - teaching, preaching, and showing the way of Salvation. We would be wise to consider in what ways we may today push against the challenging invitations God places in front of us in the very lives we live.
The beauty of Easter then is not a simplicity to the word Salvation, thinking it’s simply a ticket that leads to heaven. Instead it is the complexity of the word Salvation in what it means for us today as we live and breathe. The path Christ walked has always been the invitation to us - to be people reflecting his compassion, inclusion, healing and reorientation to God’s ways. To evaluate our motives - do they come from fear? Selfish preservation? Or do they come from God? What will it cost us to follow after Christ, and will we hold the glory of resurrection and hope in the living Christ all the higher so we will not be afraid of what God is calling us to?
NT Writes, “The crucial thing is that Jesus’ resurrection is not about proving some point, or offering people a new spiritual experience. It is about God’s purpose that must now be fulfilled. They must see Jesus, but that seeing will be a commissioning, a commissioning to a new work, a new life, a new way of live in which everything he told them before will start to come true.” (p154)
I love reading scripture with our congregation and seeing how it changes us, how it challenges us. I love being in proximity to each of you and hearing the stories of how God has changed your life. The reality is Jesus changes everything - not just in eternal terms of heaven, but in the kingdom of God which we pray to come each week in our services, and likely more often throughout the week! May you hold Christ more dearly this Easter season, unafraid to take his hand into the invitations before you! Amen!
Blessings,
Pastor Becca
