Moving to the Cross

15 Mar Moving to the Cross

Dear Friends,

I can hardly believe it, but when we gather for worship on Sunday, Holy Week will be just two weeks away. I want to encourage you to use these final days of Lent to immerse yourselves in what this season offers: an opportunity to slow down, be still, and contemplate the tremendous gift we have been given in Jesus Christ. 

One way to more fully appreciate this gift is to avail yourself of one or more Holy Week services. Maundy Thursday will be a unique service at Heritage. We will begin in the fellowship hall to partake of a Seder meal together before moving to the sanctuary for Communion. On Good Friday we will gather at Mt. Vernon for a traditional Tenebrae service. And in a new addition, Bush Hill will host a Holy Saturday service of music and prayers. 

Easter is a day of glory and triumph, of course, but it is all the more powerful when we follow the arc of Jesus’ life, descending with him to the anguish of the cross before rising with him to embrace the joy of resurrection life.  We experience this cycle over and over again in our own lives—dying and rising, death and new life, losing and gaining, letting go of the past to embrace the future. Sometimes we can get stuck in the pain portion of the cycle, but the promise of Easter is that new life awaits us. Our task is to keep moving through the letting go, through the dying to self and our old ways of thinking, believing, and acting so that we can move into the new. It is almost never easy, this dying and rising stuff.  But we never go it alone. Christ has already blazed this path, reminding us that it leads somewhere, somewhere very good. It leads to an empty tomb.

But first there is a cross. Let’s not skip this step. It provides the context and the backdrop for everything else. But at the same time, we need not live as Good Friday people. We are Easter people, living in a Good Friday world. And that means that there is always hope and grace, peace and love to be shared, just as Christ shares them with us.

Yours for the Kingdom,

Michelle