I’ve always struggled with that Easter Sermon because of the pressure to preach a cheery, positive message. Nobody wants to come on that Sunday and hear about a gruesome death on the cross, the depravity of our sinful nature. They want to hear that Jesus lives and we will live, too. But when I read the story, I’m struck by the darkness, the confusion, and the weeping that make up the tale of the resurrection. The resurrection happens while the world is asleep, and those who are awake are deep in grief. It’s that juxtaposition that makes it so incredible. We need to know what Jesus has been resurrected from, and we need to know what depths he brings us up from, too!
–Pastor Travis Norton
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We will keep it simple this Holy Week. Remember that our God is not just a transcendent and holy God we worship; in the humanity of Jesus and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, God is also an imminent Person we love. Please spend some time this week contemplating this quote from Ruth Haley Barton:
“As challenging as it is, walking with Christ during Holy Week is part of our discipleship. It is an act of love and friendship with Christ, a gift of staying present with him during the hardest and most unnerving part of his journey. We do this because he has asked us to remain near him, awake and alert. It is the gift of ourselves, which is the truest gift we have to give.”
“Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David! Hosanna in the highest heaven!” Mark 11: 9b-10
Jesus comes into Jerusalem in triumph and glory. Jesus finally receives all the acclaim and attention that he deserves, the world is finally able to see the Messiah. But, how quickly things turn and in a matter of a week Jesus faces the same crowd with cries on their lips of “Crucify Him!” Jesus is the same Messiah on Palm Sunday and Good Friday and Easter Morning and yet the crowd has changed drastically at all three of those days.
What expectations do we bring to our Christian leaders? To our God? What about the church? What expectations do we hold and how often are those expectations met? How often do we consider the unrealistic optimism we bring to a broken world. I am sure Jesus saw on Palm Sunday all that Jerusalem and Israel could be and yet a week later saw the broken reality up close and personal. Our Messiah is our example, a strong and steady presence in an unstable world.
-Vicar Michaela Eskew
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Before reading today, please take a few moments with God and consider these questions together: What do the words “personal relationship with God” mean to you? What do they mean for you?
As alluded to in the last Emmaus, over the past few hundred years the Western Church has championed a reasoned and intellectual (left-brained) faith. While good and necessary, it has left the emotional (right-brained) side of the human person largely spiritually impoverished. In parallel with what Pastor Travis said recently in the Ekklesia’s ‘From the Pastor,’ neurotheologian Jim Wilder puts it this way: “When we neglect right-brain development in our discipleship, we ignore the side of the brain that specializes in character formation. Left-brained discipleship emphasizes beliefs, doctrine, willpower, and strategies but neglects right-brain loving attachments, joy, emotional development, and identity. Ignoring right-brain relational development creates Christians who believe in God’s love but have difficulty experiencing it in daily life….” I’m convinced that God desires for us to deeply experience his love in daily life, and that experience comes from a personal, face-to-face relationship, where each beholds the other.
Now, please consider these words sung by the Psalmists, words we are also invited to sing:
As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. (Ps. 42, NRSV)
You, God, are my God, earnestly I seek you; I thirst for you, my whole being longs for you…. (Ps. 63, NIV)
How lovely is your dwelling place, Lord Almighty! My soul yearns, even faints, for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God. (Ps. 84, NIV)
Longing, thirsting, seeking, crying out, fainting, yearning. This is compelling language of desire. It is language of deep personal relationship.
How are you feeling about your personal relationship with God? Do you find yourself wanting something more, maybe something deeper? Do you want to want something deeper? Pay attention to the desires of your heart—they are the whispers of the Spirit drawing you into deeper communion with God (Psalm 37:4). I’ll leave you with this quote from Aslan, the Jesus character in C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia, to a child: “You would not have called to me unless I had been calling to you….” If your heart is calling out for more of God, it is a reflection that God is calling out for more of you. Please feel free to come talk to me if you would like to explore these ideas in your spiritual life. Let’s walk together.
We at First Lutheran are blessed. We have a beautiful building where we gather together to share in God’s love. The week of April 7th through the 14th we are truly blessed once more. We, you and I, the congregation of First Lutheran, will once again share our beautiful church with Family Promise families currently in need of a home. All we have to do is volunteer to do everyday activities that we would do for guests in our homes: set up a place for them to sleep, cook them a nourishing meal, share the night with them, and set things back to normal after their visit with us. If we each volunteer to do just one thing, for one day, we will all be blessed. The first step is to volunteer, the rest will be just like everyday. Click here if you’d like to help!
“Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle” John 2:15
In each of the gospels there is this event at the temple. Jesus causes a scene. He angrily drives out the money-changers and the sheep and the cattle being sold for sacrifice. He shuts the temple down, at least the business part of it. John’s gospel has it as one of his first acts. The other gospels have it as the act that comes on the heels of Palm Sunday and leads directly to his arrest and crucifixion. Something happened and it was remembered forever. The act of publicly interfering with “business as usual” challenges Christians to consider the role we are called to play in public affairs. What would Jesus shut down today? Where would he cause a scene? What does it mean for us to be his followers?
–Pastor Travis Norton
Looking for last week’s worship? You can find it here!
Last week we considered how important it is to our spiritual health and growth to behold God. Because God is Personal, forever existing in an eternal relationship between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and because in Christ God has invited us to dwell inside that relationship with The Three-in-One, I believe we’ve all experienced times of beholding God, even if we haven’t recognized them as such. Perhaps you’ve experienced moments of transcendence while watching a sunrise, or looking at the vastness of the night sky, or gazing into the eyes of a child, or singing a hymn of praise. If you have, is it possible for you to put words to that moment of bumping into the Holy, of brushing up against the Divine? What was it like? Can you identify how it may have changed you, how it moved your heart? If you can, consider talking with God about it right now, expressing thanks or, praise or whatever feels appropriate to you.
Maybe that’s not your story. Maybe you can’t identify a time when something like that happened, where you surely experienced God. That wouldn’t be unusual because, overall, our society isn’t very good at thinking and teaching that paying attention to those kinds of things is good and holy and healthy; we’re much more focused on the value of intellectual study (and it is valuable) than on emotional experience (which, indeed, is also valuable). I would ask, though, if you might be able to recognize within yourself even just a desire for that kind of moment. If so, you’re in good company.
Scripture sings with language of desire for beholding and being with God. We’ll look at some of those verses next time. Until then, consider holding this word in your heart while thinking about your relationship with God: longing. (hint: look at Psalm 84:2, NRSV)
“Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” John 3:17
I wish this verse were more popular than the verse before it that we all grew up knowing. So many Christians preach a gospel of condemnation and hell, of worry and fear. But here we have this intention from God to save the world. Our faith is in a God who loves this world and has done everything needed to save the world. We have this good news to share with people. The world should look at the church’s message with gratitude and appreciation because they hear us telling them of a good God who loves the world He made. I’m excited that First Lutheran proclaims this message of grace and love that we are united in getting this good word out to our community.
–Pastor Travis Norton
Looking for last week’s worship? You can find it here!
After the last couple of weeks, you might be thinking that I’m a bit obsessed with imaginative contemplation. You might be right. Here’s why I’m such a proponent: If, as poet William Blake suggests, we become what we behold, then knowing how to regularly behold God is of critical importance for those of us who love God and desire to be increasingly changed into his likeness. Information about God can help us grow, of course, which is why we continue to study and learn things about God. But, as Dallas Willard says, when it comes to change, especially deep, interior heart-change: “Our will is transformed by experience, not information.”
Imaginative contemplation puts us in a posture to experience and behold God personally and anew; it allows us to encounter Jesus face-to-face for ourselves as he interacts with people in the Gospels. Beholding Jesus as he interacts with those he heals, frees, teaches, and loves—putting ourselves in the place of the one he heals, frees, teaches, and loves—cultivates deep personal knowing, which blooms into deep heart change. It doesn’t happen overnight—transformation into Christlikeness is “the slowest of human movements”—but, by the grace of God, it does happen as we practice beholding God.
How do you practice beholding God? Could imaginative contemplation be an additional way to help you move deeper into relationship with Jesus by beholding him anew? As we come to the end of today’s Emmaus journey, prayerfully consider this quote from the early church father, Irenaeus of Lyons: “The glory of God is a human being fully alive; and to be alive consists in beholding God.”
First Thoughts at First 