April 29, 2012

Special guest Rev. Mary Jacobs will be with us to bring the message. Drawn from Matthew 25:31-45, the title of her sermon will be, “How Will They Know.” This text shares the parable of the shepherd dividing the sheep from the goats. Please join us!

April 15, 2012

This coming Sunday, the second Sunday of the Easter Season, we will explore the resurrection of community. Psalm 133 speaks of how pleasant it is when people live in harmony, like “the dew of Hermon on Mt. Zion.” The New Testament lesson comes from Acts 4:32-35. It describes the community of the early church. It was a community of union where people took care of each other, bearing one another’s burdens. The unity we experience with God finds expression in the loving unity that holds a community together. So interesting it is, that the root word for community and communication is the same as for “communion” -- "common." Communion is “common-union.”

April 8, 2012

Easter carries the fundamental and underlying theme of Christianity. This is our witness. This is our Gospel. This is what we are all about. It is as relevant and life changing today as it ever was.

Why does the date of Easter bounce around the calendar every year? Sometimes it is as early as March 22. Sometimes it is as late as April 25. The early church wanted to keep it as close to Passover as possible. Since the Jewish calendar is a moon calendar and ours, a sun calendar, Easter was chosen to be on the first Sunday after the Paschal (“the passing over”) Full Moon. Before the year 325 and the Council of Nicaea, the spring equinox was brought into the calculation. “Passover” began the Jewish journey to freedom. Full moon, spring equinox—the earth itself proclaims rebirth, renewal, resurrection.

Nature proclaims resurrection—lilies blooming, colored Easter eggs as symbols of the joy of hatching, the dawn of a new day shining upon countless sunrise services, wormy caterpillars unto beautiful butterflies—all proclaim the joy of new beginnings. The scriptures tell us that unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it cannot possibly live again. But if it falls into the earth and dies, it will produce a thousand fold.

Such is the pattern and paradigm for all life. And such will be the theme for our Easter Sunday morning service.