Passion Week
Passion week is upon us. The last week of Jesus’ earthly life.
The week began with Jesus cleansing the temple of Yahweh from all the greed, deceit and misrepresentations of the Father heart of God. With intense zeal Jesus scattered those making it harder for the marginalized to know God’s love, peace and truth.
Throughout the week Jesus taught in the temple courts. As He taught, the Pharisees tested Him — much like the Passover lamb would be tested in order to prove it was a spotless and worthy sacrifice.
During this week Jesus attended a party in His honor put on and attended by people who had been healed and/or freed by Jesus. There, Mary anointed Jesus with an extremely costly perfume as a way of worshipping Him and preparing Him for His burial.
After all this, Jesus washed his disciples’ feet and celebrated the Passover in an intimate, prophetic, profound, and heart-wrenching last meal with them. On that Maundy Thursday all those years ago, Jesus instituted the communion meal, which is still refreshing and uniting people all over the world today.
After the meal, Jesus spent the night in a garden, wrestling with the Father to the point of sweating great drops of blood. There He withstood His fear and surrendered His worry and stress to the will of His Father. That same night Jesus was arrested and taken to different judicial courts throughout the night. In those courts people made up lies about Him, fostered hatred for Him, and ultimately pronounced Him guilty and worthy of death.
Then, on a Friday we call good, Jesus was horrifically pierced for our transgressions and brutally bruised for our iniquities. The torture continued until His body and breath finally gave way.
After Jesus died, darkness came in the middle of the day as creation groaned and mourned the death of the Author of life. Some courageous, distant friends laid Jesus in a tomb on the most silent and heavy Sabbath day the world has ever known.
But out of the silence, while creation stood still, and those who loved Jesus were weighed down with despair, the earth shook. The tomb’s stone rolled away and some angels appeared. They announced to everyone paying attention that Jesus is alive. And that announcement — which shattered the silence of that day — is still ringing out all these years later. All over the world people are still encountering the living Christ and shouting out the message that Jesus is alive.
Those three words make up the greatest sentence, the most poetic song, the most powerful phrase to ever form on a person’s lips.
If Jesus is alive, then, though we have tribulations in this world, we can have hope-filled hearts because Jesus has overcome the world.
If Jesus is alive, then God is able to do exceedingly abundantly above anything we could ever ask or imagine.
If Jesus is alive, then nothing can separate us from the love of God or keep us from being more than conquerors in Christ.
If Jesus is alive, then the righteousness of God is more powerful than the unrighteousness of men
If Jesus is alive, then no matter what sin and death have caused, it can be undone.
If Jesus is alive, then Heaven is real.
Hallelujah!
This weekend we will be celebrating Jesus. Whether you have encountered the living Jesus, or are ready to encounter the living Jesus, please join us this weekend for one of our gatherings.
At noon on Good Friday we will spend time prayerfully contemplating the pain Jesus went through to pay the price for us to enter into a new life, free from all pain.
From 6-8pm on Good Friday we have an artistic drive-through experience featuring the stations of the cross. The drive-through will take about fifteen minutes and will produce some good moments of contemplation and prayer.
For our Sunday Easter celebration we will be gathering at our normal Sunday morning times of 8, 9:30, and 11am. We are also having a Saturday evening service for those who are not yet ready to be around a lot of people. All of those services will be available in-person as well as live-stream. If at all possible, please join us in person and bring some people with you, so the gospel can reach more ears and, hopefully, more hearts.
All the best,
David