We welcome all to join us on Sundays for worship. We have two worship services on Sunday, 9:00 am Traditional and 10:45 am Contemporary. We hope you join us!

This Sunday, May 20

Jeff Lindsay is preaching “One Step at a Time”. Scripture is from Matthew 14: 22-33.

Next Sunday, May 27, One Service at 10:00 am

Daniel Harrell is preaching “Fire Alarm”. Scripture is from Acts 2:1-21.

Annual Meeting Info
Our Annual Meeting will take place at 6:00 pm on the 29th. Click here to register for the dinner and to find out more

Youth Programs Offered on Sundays

CRASH AM
9:00 am and 10:45 am, Pond Room
Students are welcome during EITHER service in the Pond Room for a time just for them! We will dig deep into the Bible, play games and even have some bagels!

Children’s Programs Offered on Sundays

We offer a full range of excellent programming for kids from birth through 5th grade during worship services. Nursery is provided for children birth through 23 months in the Nursery Hallway. Preschoolers, two through five years old, participate in age-appropriate learning in Stepping Stones down the Nursery Hallway. Elementary kids, Kindergarten through fifth grade, gather down the elementary hallway for FaithTrek. Parents can check in their kids up to ten minutes before each worship service.

Sunday Morning, 9:00 am
Nursery for babies, birth – 23 months
Stepping Stones for preschoolers, 2 – 5 years
FaithTrek for elementary kids, Kindergarten – 5th Grade

Sunday Morning, 10:45 am
Nursery for babies, birth – 23 months
Stepping Stones for preschoolers, 2 – 5 years
FaithTrek for elementary kids, Kindergarten – 5th Grade
Elementary kids are dismissed from the worship service

To speed up the process on Sunday morning, click here to register.

by Daniel Harrell

Tickets available at the door.
Adults: $10
Seniors/Students: $8
Children 12 and Under: Free

Tweens are just beginning to enter in to the cognitive development stage called Formal Operational. And what that means is they are beginning to develop abstract thoughts and reasoning. So they are moving away from their childhood faith of WHAT do I believe, into their teenage faith of WHY should I believe? And as a parent I believe there are 3 things you can do to help your children answer that question, WHY should I believe.

The first, consistency. Make going to church a habit as much as you can in your busy lives. If your child grows up going to church as the norm for your family, then that not only implies priority but it becomes their routine. And the longer you can develop this habit as your children get older, studies show the more likely it will be that they will maintain this habit when they move out on their own, simply because it’s their normal routine.

Second, tweens have an incredibly difficult time expressing their faith. You as parents can help your teens form those skills to articulate their faith when you can be specific and tell your kids what you believe and why. You don’t need to be a theological expert, just practice bringing God up in normal conversation. You can share stories from your life when you encountered God. Why do you read the Bible? Why does God care about the music you listen to in the car? When has God answered your prayers? How do you know Jesus loves you’re Your children need to see how faith is a part of their every day life, and who better to teach them than the people who are with them every day. When you talk about your faith to your children, they begin to develop the tools to imitate that process with their own faith.

The third thought I’d like to offer you is this, let your children experience the faith you talk about. For example, if service is a big part of your faith, allow your child to determine a family service project they are interested in. If musical worship is a big part of your faith than introduce them to some of your favorite songs next time you are in the car. If reading scripture speaks clearly to you, spend some time opening up your Bible together. In creative ways, demonstrate to your children how you live faithfully. . in big and little ways, those moments will become sacred memories of times when God showed up.

And that is what we hope to support you in at CRASH. We love creating mountaintop moments for your children to encounter God like Pyro 2 for example, but we know how much more significant faith development is when children experience God alongside their parents. Myself and my leadership team know what a privilege it is for you to trust us with your children each week. Our ultimate goal is to carry on what you are doing at home. We love teaming up with you as your child begins answering the question, why should I believe? Thank you for allowing us to be on your team.

-Nicole

Acts 4:1-22

by Daniel Harrell

With the Titanic Centennial having sunk back below the surface, it is time to recognize another 100^th Anniversary, that of the “lyric little bandbox” known as Fenway Park (yesterday’s disaster of a game against the Yankees notwithstanding. Thankfully they’ve got the Twins starting tomorrow.). My thanks to Rob Kirsch for bringing me a commemorative copy of the Boston Globe. And my greetings to Boston friends here today, one of whom works for the Globe. They’re visiting their daughter at Carleton. I don’t know if you caught any of the Fenway Centennial celebration on Friday. Every former Red Sox player was invited back, with over 200 of them emerging onto that ancient field of dreams: Carleton Fisk, Jim Rice, Pedro Martinez and of course Carl Yastrzemski, Bobby Doerr among so many others. I had the pleasure of being there for 25 of those hundred years, mostly as a guest of the team itself. For years the Red Sox passed out free admission to ministers. You’ve never seen a city with more ordained people. I’m sure the free pass was out of deference to the Kennedys and the Catholic priesthood, but we Protestants were more than happy to go Roman if it got us into Fenway.

The team held chapel before Sunday’s games and customarily invited a local Reverend to bring some inspiration—Lord knows they’ve needed it. I don’t ever remember being as nervous as I was when my turn came. I read some Scripture, gave a short meditation and then said a prayer, after which I went and did the same for the visiting team who had to have their chapel in the shower room (it was the only space available). I’d like to think that the Holy Spirit calmed my nerves, giving me the worlds to say like with Peter here in Acts 4. All I can say is that the Red Sox did go on to win the World Series for the first time in 86 years. Pedro Martinez also came to a service at our church, though I don’t know what the Holy Spirit did to him. I do know he didn’t tithe. Our treasurer would have noticed that.

If Peter and John were nervous before the Jewish ruling Sanhedrin, they didn’t show it. Jesus promised them back in Luke that because of him they’d get dragged before the authorities, but not to worry about it, “the Holy Spirit will teach you at that very hour what you ought to say.” Peter and John’s only crime was healing a panhandler who’d been crippled from birth. When he begged Peter and John for money, he given his legs back instead. Calling on the name of Jesus, Peter commanded the crippled beggar to rise up and walk, using the sweet language of resurrection. The man rose up and danced and gave glory to God, astonishing the crowd who marveled at the surge of power. It was much more impressive than the surgeon was able to do with my knee. I’ll not be dancing for a few weeks yet. Modern medicine is amazing, but it’s not miraculous.

Peter went on to hit a homerun sermon—his third in Acts—and church membership exploded to more than 5000. However, the gospel’s popularity with the people threatened the religious establishment, especially the Sadducees who get special mention here because they did not believe in the resurrection. This is what made the Sadducees so sad, you see. They were a by-the-book bunch who rejected the resurrection on the grounds that they couldn’t find it explicitly mentioned in the Old Testament—even though there are lots of hints. The Sadducees were also a practical bunch, choosing to cozy up to the Romans for the sake of the benefits (much like baseball-loving Protestant ministers did in Boston). And they were well-heeled. The Sadducees controlled the Sanhedrin by virtue of their pedigree, a privileged DNA stretching back to Israel’s bluest blood.

We read that they were “much annoyed” about Peter’s sermon—we preachers can relate. But it was the real life application that really got their gevalt. It’s one thing to preach Jesus heals. It’s another thing to do it on the spot. If the Sadducees didn’t nip this in the bud, they’d lose their entire membership to this upstart church plant.

As the ruling aristocracy with political power, the Sadducees had the authority to haul in Peter and John for questioning, just like they’d done with Jesus back in the gospels. Peter had crumpled up like a Kleenex that time, but now filled with the Spirit, he was both bold and brassy. His newfound nerve was nothing to sneeze at. He stepped up to the plate and said to the Sadducees: “You’ve locked us up because of a good deed done to someone who was sick? And now you want to know by whose name we did it?”

Peter told them, of course: “Jesus of Nazareth, whom you killed, but whom God raised from the dead” (sticking it to the Sadducees one more time). Peter went on to quote their own Bible: “the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, has become the cornerstone.” The religious establishment had likely understood this stone from Psalm 118 to be referring to them, the rejected nation of Israel, a small rock of a people whom God would make into the cornerstone of creation. But Peter reinterpreted the Psalm in light of Jesus. As their Messiah, Jesus single-handedly fulfilled Israel’s destiny. Because God’s chosen people failed to keep faithful, God kept faith for them in Christ. All they had to do now was to believe in Jesus as their true Cornerstone. Reject him instead, and things would end up as Jesus predicted when he quoted Psalm 118 in Luke’s gospel. “Everyone who stumbles over the stone will be broken to pieces, and it will crush anyone it falls on.”

Peter put this same message in different words here in verse 12: “There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved.” There is a double meaning here. “Saved” means both “restored to health” and “resurrected to life.” Again, it’s why Peter told the crippled beggar to rise up and walk. Peter deftly moves from the restored physical health of the panhandler, to address the sad spiritual health of the Sanhedrin.

Christians struggle with this verse. It brings up the sticky doctrine of Christian exclusivism, the assertion that Jesus is the only way to God; inappropriate for our pluralistic and more tolerant times. It’s Jesus fault. He’s the one who drew the line: “no one comes to the Father except through me.”

It may be helpful to remember that at this point in the Biblical narrative, salvation is solely a Jewish concern. As I mentioned last Sunday, there are no Christians yet in the non-Jewish sense of that word. So far, only Jews believed in Jesus. Only Jews, for the most part, had ever heard of Jesus. Even Peter, bold and brassy as he was about sharing the gospel here with the Jewish leaders, doesn’t say a word to non-Jews for six more chapters. Gentiles were unclean. Peter never would have said anything to them had God not given him that vision with the sheet full of non-kosher animals from heaven and declared them fit to eat. A voice will say to Peter, speaking of Gentiles, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.” The gospel welcomes the whole world to the table. This passage isn’t so much about the exclusivity of Jesus as it is about the identity of Jesus as Israel’s Savior, the one their Scriptures had promised and their hearts had longed for. And the one through whom all the world would come to God.

Jesus may be the only road to God, but many roads lead to Jesus. Nobody was more surprised about this than Peter once it became clear that the Holy Spirit had come upon Gentiles too. “And since God gave them the same gift he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ,” Peter declared, “who am I to stand in the way of what God is doing?” –be that the communion of the saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, life everlasting, all things made new, or that inclusive multitude from Revelation that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands, worshipping together in one voice, singing, “Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!”

Certainly the Sadducees did not appreciate Peter taking them to school like this. Who was he to preach to them? They had their pedigree and their seminary degrees, he had his fishing license. But what could they say? What could they do? Peter delivered the better sermon. He made a lame man walk. He had the Spirit. But they had the political power. So they ordered him to keep quiet and say no more about Jesus. However, keeping a Spirit-filled preacher quiet is like trying to keep the wind from blowing. Peter replied, “You’ll have to judge whether it’s right in God’s sight for us to listen to you instead of Him. How can we keep quiet about what we’ve seen and heard?” Scoring them points for their courage, and concerned about inciting a popular riot, the Sadducees just let them go.

Peter and John’s boldness made an impression on the Sanhedrin, and it impresses me too. Theirs was an act of moral courage—something you don’t see a lot of anymore. Sure, we see occasional acts of bravery now and then: the New Jersey mayor who rushes into a burning apartment building, the Minnesota State Trooper who lined up tractor trailers to break the fall of a suicidal man. But then again, we’ve taken to calling baseball ballplayers who dive for line drives “courageous.” On the other hand, it’s rare to see acts of moral courage, like that American Airlines CEO who resigned rather than file bankruptcy because he didn’t think it right to use the law to avoid financial obligations to workers. Or the Goldman Sachs fund manager who publically resigned on the Opinion Pages of the New York Times because he could no longer in good conscience work for a firm that so devalued its customers.

Even more rare, and less admired, are acts of courage staked out explicitly because of one’s Christian faith: be it the public rejection of violence and cruelty, the deep suspicion of worldly wealth and power, the insistence on chastity, monogamy, and fidelity in personal relationships, the resolve to forgive at all costs. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Marilynne Robinson asserts that such acts of faithful courage suffer due to what she calls “the tyranny of petty coercion.” Courage,” she writes, “is rarely expressed except where there is sufficient cultural consensus to support it.” This is why people are generally so quiet about being believers. Coming clean about one’s Christianity is un-cool, unless you can play football like Tim Tebow, or dribble like Jeremy Lin, or pitch with a bloody sock like Curt Schilling (who by the way didn’t show up at Fenway Park on Friday). Take away the celebrity, and it’s hard to do the Jesus thing acceptably in America.

Marilynne Robinson’s friends, who know she’s a Christian, poke fun about her being “born again.” They try to rescue her with little lectures about her religion being a cheap cure for existential anxiety. Is she not worried about the embarrassing associations? The assumption that she’s a Jesus freak in cahoots with the lunatic fringes? The fundamentalist home-schoolers and the science-deniers? Though Robinson has spent decades immersed in the virtues of her faith, virtues she’ll carry to her deathbed, she admits being affected by these little coercions. Trivial failures of courage in response, keeping quiet about what you believe because it is un-cool and uncomfortable, may seem minor enough in any particular instance. And yet they have changed history and society. Martin Luther. John Calvin. William Wilberforce. Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Rosa Parks. Chuck Colson. Even Tim Tebow. Robinson writes how “cultures commonly employ the methods of cults, making their members subject and dependent. And nations at intervals march lockstep to enormity and disaster. A successful autocracy rests on the universal failure of individual courage.” Abdications of conscience can never be trivial.

Who would have ever imagined a faithful band of uneducated fishermen upending the Roman Empire? Who would have ever thought that individuals convinced of the resurrection enough to die for it would shape all of Western civilization, law, economics, art and science? Even now, courageous believers in China and Indonesia and throughout Africa are subversively reforming governments and shaping a new status quo. “How can we keep quiet about what we have seen and heard?” Peter’s rhetorical question still applies.

Not that I am very courageous myself. Even as a professional Christian, I can be pretty quiet about Jesus in public. I’d like to say that I’m reluctant to talk about my faith because it can’t be reduced to simple statements; but mostly it’s because I feel those petty coercions too. I keep quiet even though the dangers I face are pretty insignificant—a little ridicule here, a slight professional disadvantage there, some awkward silence now and then. Never mind that Jesus said if I’m ashamed of him and his words “in this adulterous and sinful generation,” he’ll be ashamed of me “when he comes in his Father’s glory with the holy angels.”

I want to be more courageous. Or at least less ashamed. Maybe that means refusing to take offense when people say things I don’t like. Or better yet, refusing to participate in the offending things that get said about others. Maybe it’s choosing to be more generous than I usually am, or volunteering more time to people who might need me. Maybe it’s choosing to do the right thing instead of the easy thing, to support a just cause, to stand up for the disadvantaged, to say something un-cool. And then when people ask me why I act like I act, I can come clean about my faith in a way that brings glory to that name above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow and tongue confess he is Lord. If Jesus is Lord, how can we keep quiet?

Summer Worship

May 27 Memorial Weekend, One service at 10:00 am
July 1 4th of July worship, 10:00 am, Rosland Park, more info to come.
July 8 – September 2 One worship service at 10:00 am.
September 9 Celebration Sunday!

Colonial Summer Series: Living in the Lion’s Den

Wednesdays, June 13 – July 18 (except July 4) 6:30 – 8:00 pm

Who?

There is something for everyone in every age group at Colonial Church

What?

Colonial Church Summer Series: a church wide experience of studying the book of Daniel, building community, and growing in faith.

When?

Wednesday evenings June 13, 20, 27 & July 11 & 18. Come for dinner between 5:30 – 6:30 pm. The Summer Series begins at 6:30 pm.

Why?

Because many people are scattered to different places on Sunday mornings throughout the summer. This Wednesday experience provides a time to stay connected while growing in faith together.

The lion’s den, the fiery furnace, living in a foreign culture. It’s what Daniel and his friends faced while in captivity in Babylon. Today, we must live our faith in a faithless culture not much different than Babylon’s.

Summer Series Description

Click here to register
In this weekly program, adults explore the themes in the book of Daniel, such as the sovereignty of God, the difference our faith needs to make in how we live our lives, and the importance of relationships through the teaching of Bethel Professor, Christian Winn. Meanwhile, elementary kids are transported back in time to an exotic Babylonian bazaar where they must defend their faith and learn that God is always with them.

There’s something for everyone! Kids and middle schoolers attend separate programming while adults and high schoolers attend the concurrent Bible study. Dinner will be offered at minimal cost every evening at 5:30pm. Since the goal of this series is a shared family experience, children who attend this series must be accompanied by a parent who volunteers or attends the study. Cost: $10/person. $25/family.

Youth Summer Info

CRASH for our middle school students! Joining the wider church, we will be taking a look at the book of Daniel, through a middle school perspective. These nights will be different than our school year CRASH nights and will each include extreme summer fun. Students currently in 6-8th grade as well as the upcoming 5th graders are invited to summer CRASH! June 13th we will kick off with our annual CRASH lock in! Registration for the Lock In is required, sign up HERE. The Lock in is for current 6-8th graders only-upcoming 5th graders are invited to stay until 8pm.

So, simple ramblings are what this last blog will be as well.

Truth be told, there’s not that much left to say. The importance of family. The power of prayer. The significance of heartfelt obedience. The beauty of God’s invitations. All things you know already.

Maybe this blog is about all of the above as we each step into the future in faith.

Sometimes God’s invitations look scary and heartfelt obedience is required to lean into the unknown. The only way we have the courage to meet Jesus in the obscurity is because we’ve encountered Him in our past and know Him to be trustworthy. While we do not know what the future holds, we know the One who holds us.

I have great faith for the future of Colonial. Tested and refined, as only hard times will do, Colonial is on the verge of something amazing. We’ve learned to lean on God and on each other, through thick and thin. Stepping out in faith really only works when you’re leaning.

Although it is hardly my place to leave you with a charge, I ask for your indulgence.

Colonial, give God’s Spirit the freedom to breathe and blow in your midst, embrace the call to being authentic with one another and step out in faith, even if it means doing the thing that will only work if God shows up. The best part: He will. He always does.

Let us then “press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of us.” Phil. 3:12b

With love, Anne-Marie

It was “friendliness.”

An overwhelming 86% who felt their youth group experience was very satisfying said their youth group was a very friendly place. Because of the perceived friendliness, they felt loved and accepted and experienced a deeper sense of belonging.

Healthy friendships build you up and draw you closer to God; unhealthy friendships bring you down and cause you to compromise what you know is right. Your friends help determine the direction and quality of your life!

As youth leaders, we commit to working hard to make youth group an environment that is a comfortable place to invite guests. But guests won’t return for a second visit unless they experience real friendships among their peers. Ultimately, the level of friendliness within a youth group is determined by the youth themselves!

Well, we all know that among youth culture cliques are the norm. In order to foster friendships within the youth group we work hard to break down those cliques.

• We work hard to get to know students interests so we can introduce them to other students who have those same interests, creating an “affinity group” to gather around. For example: basketball lovers, musicians, Hunger Games fans (actually, that’s just about all of them).
• We are intentional about offering a “quick plug-in.” Students need not “apply” or jump through hoops to join us at youth group. They are welcomed into small groups right away.
• Students (and leaders) are encouraged to get together outside of regular Wednesday times. In fact, we’ll occasionally program in these “spontaneous” hang-out times, like one of our “Man-fests” for instance.
• Gossip, slander and jealousy are not tolerated. We have a zero tolerance policy for our adult leaders so that it is modeled and leaders aren’t shy about calling it out if they see it in students. Gossip, slander and jealosy are the viruses which infect teenage friendships (well, all relationships!). This must be modeled from the top down.
• Students are habitually encouraged and praised by caring adults to step “outside of their comfort zone.”
• Our leadership team works to model healthy friendships outside of youth group. You must practice what you preach.
• Adult leaders in the youth ministry will commit to speaking to three or more kids individually each week to tell them something good that was noticed about them that week (a good question, a great catch, a sincere prayer, and so on). And also to ask them in small groups to give us something specific we can pray about for them.

The prayer is that more students will be infected with a passion for friendship-building, modeled from the top down. It will be contagious friendliness that then can influence the culture of the youth group from the bottom up.

Another finding from The Gallup Organization was that those who thought their group to be friendly was that they experienced spiritual transformation. If students are drawn to a youth ministry’s friendship climate, they’ll likely grow spiritually for at least two reasons:

1. First, if they’re not very alive spiritually, they’ll be exposed to spiritual role models and biblical teaching.
2. Second, since the Christian life is meant to be lived in community, they’ll experience the joy of connection to like-minded peers who support their spiritual journey.

I just sent a first time visitor a follow-up text. He replied, “Oh thanks a lot! It was a lot of fun being there. Good welcoming environment!” It is text messages like that that remind us that our youth leaders are doing their jobs and makes everything worth it.

Mark 16:1-8

by Daniel Harrell

I stand before you this Easter morning because I did not win the Mega Millions jackpot. No 640 million dollars for me! I know, I’m supposed to tell you that my life would not have changed had I won. Lottery winners always say that. It’s what the three actual winners will probably tell you if they ever go public. But life always changes for lottery winners—and not always for the better. Take Jack Whittaker who was a wealthy businessman already when he won what was at the time the largest jackpot ever by a single ticket: $315M on Christmas Day, 2002. After collecting his winnings, $113M after taxes, Whittaker was sued for bouncing checks at Atlantic City casinos; was ordered to undergo rehab after being arrested on drunken driving charges; had his vehicles and business burglarized; was drugged in a strip club by robbers who took more than $500,000 from his car; was sued by the father of an 18-year-old boyfriend of his granddaughter found dead in his house from a drug overdose, and most recently sued by a woman who claims Whittaker assaulted her. Regarding his lottery win, Whittaker said, “I wish I’d torn that ticket up.”

Even responsible winners have ended up miserable. One couple took home a cool million dollar prize, paid their taxes and deposited the rest into a retirement fund. But due to the publicity, they got hounded relentlessly by get-a-lifers wanting them to participate in all kinds of questionable investment schemes and causes. Folks grabbed at them on the streets hoping some of their good luck might rub off. Others, so-called “lotto snobs,” turned up their noses in disdain at the couple’s fate, verbally deriding them for being so fortunate. And yet, despite countless more stories like these, millions of people still buy lottery tickets. $1.5 billion was spent to win that huge Mega Millions jackpot. Households earning less than $13,000 a year reportedly shockingly spend 9% of their income on these games—games they most always lose.

As for me, I can honestly say that my life couldn’t have changed by winning Mega Millions because I didn’t play. I wish I could honestly say this was because of my righteous lottery scruples, but it actually has more to do with how the lottery messed with my head the one time I did play it. I picked some numbers once when the payout was a big one, knowing full well I had no real chance to win. I held tight to my ticket though, fantasizing about how I’d blow my windfall, the luxuries I’d splurge on, the places I’d go, all the envy I’d generate. I amassed enough imaginary plans to work myself into a tight neurotic knot, glued to the TV in a compulsive sweat on the night the numbers were revealed. Not a single one showed up on my ticket. The letdown was dramatic and hard. I sat there stunned and dismayed, all my dreams of glory reduced to a worthless scrap of paper. I was embarrassed for misplacing my faith onto something that could never have done anything but disappoint me. It was a pathetic display I swore then and there I’d never repeat.

Was this how it was for the disciples who put all their money down on Jesus? Watching their own dreams of glory vaporize with his arrest, does this explain why Peter, who was Jesus’ best friend, denied ever knowing who Jesus was? Remember that story? Jesus gets hauled in for questioning, accused of being blasphemous and seditious, a threat to Rome for calling himself King and a threat to God for saying he was God’s only son. Jesus performed all sorts of fancy tricks and made all kinds of fancy promises about moving mountains and answering prayer and then rising from dead. And gullible Peter had been taken in like so many others. He’d left his wife and kids and house and job to follow this pretender. And for what? I bet he wished he’d torn up his ticket. It was a pathetic display which he swore three times he’d never do again.

At least Jesus was dead now. He couldn’t delude anybody anymore. No more misplaced faith. No more false hopes. No more dashed dreams. Granted, there’s a bunch of silly women still feeling sorry for him. They show up at the graveyard to pay their respects. But clearly they didn’t believe any of that crazy “rising from the dead” talk. You don’t show up in a graveyard with burial spices if you’re not looking for a corpse.

What were the odds of somebody being raised from the dead anyway? Better than the odds of winning the Mega Millions jackpot? Lottery officials placed those odds at 176M to one. What kind of ridiculous odds are those? Perhaps you caught the story of the Wichita, Kansas, man who bought his Mega Millions ticket and then joked to a friend how he had a better chance of getting struck by lightning than he did of winning the jackpot. Then he walked out into his backyard and got struck by lightening. BOOM!—a powerful jolt knocked him flat to the ground, sent his heart to thumping and scared the living daylights out of him.

Sort of like the angel did to these unsuspecting women in Mark’s version of the Easter story. Mark doesn’t explicitly say “angel,” but his description of a “young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side” of the empty tomb is only missing the halo and wings. The angel told the women to “fear not.” Angels always say that. The stunned women tremulously tip toe backwards, away from the empty tomb, their hearts thumping, their eyes and mouths wide with panic. This was not what they were expecting. The angel asked if they’re looking for the crucified Jesus, but then adds the obvious, the words you came to church to hear this morning: “He’s not here. He has been raised. Go tell his disciples. Even Peter. He’ll meet you in Galilee like he told you he would.” Even Peter. I’ll say this for Jesus. He’s loyal. He specifically remembers Peter even after Peter did everything he could to forget him.

The women, however, were too terrified to tell anybody anything. Mark reports that “they fled and said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.” And that’s it. End of story. End of gospel. Happy Easter. Now go have brunch.

Mark’s abrupt Easter ending reminds me of one summer vacation with my family. We decided to take advantage of a beautiful Cape Cod evening and grill lobsters outside. The house where we stayed had this huge brick gas grill, but I neglected to check whether the tank was low on propane. It was. There was enough gas to get the grill lit, just not enough to keep it lit. Thinking it was heating up, I got the lobsters prepped, popped a cold one, set the table. My mom and sister, the women in this story, joined me on the patio to enjoy the sun set. Meanwhile, the grill flame flickered out. But fumes from the tank still collected underneath the grill lid. Noting that the thermostat registered zero, I absent-mindedly pushed the automatic igniter a few more times to see if I could get it going again and… BOOM!! The lid blew off, followed by flying iron grates that whizzed past my sister’s head. My mom’s mouth fell open and her eyes bugged out at the blast. The rest of the family came barreling down from the house, including a neighbor from a block away who had heard the explosion. My wife Dawn remained inside, bracing herself for her pending widowhood. But I was not dead. I was raised! Well, the hair on my head was raised. And my eyebrows were singed off. Soot and grease splattered my face. It scared the living daylights out of everybody. But we were still hungry. So we ordered pizza.

And that’s it. First fear, then food. The end.

Naturally the early church couldn’t tolerate such a non-ending to a gospel, so somebody decided to cobble together a more fitting conclusion. Twelve and a half extra verses which your pew Bible labels with parentheses as “the shorter” and “longer” endings for Mark. The cut-and-paste job on Mark features Mary Magdalene being possessed by seven demons. Jesus appears to a couple of his followers out for a country walk, a take-off on Luke’s road to Emmaus story. The part I like best is where the risen Jesus shows up while his disciples are having pizza and raises heck at them for their having been such weenies. He says if they’ll just have a little faith going forward, they’ll be able to pick up snakes, drink deadly poison and heal the sick. Of course you’d need to be able to heal the sick if you start playing with snakes and drinking poison.

Scholars who argue for the authenticity of these verses go on to suggest that there’s likely more where these came from. Who knows? Maybe there’s a missing verse where Jesus says he was only kidding, you don’t really have to love your enemies. Or another one where he says you can keep all your possessions for yourself, worshipping God and money together works just fine after all. (But we already knew that, didn’t we?)

Why does Mark end so abruptly? And why end with fear? Why is no word the last word? There are a number of places in the gospels where Jesus does instruct his followers to keep quiet. The thought is that since they didn’t really get what it meant for Jesus to be the Messiah yet, they’d best wait until after the resurrection before spreading the news. That’s what Jesus told them to do. Jesus had grown immensely popular by the time Holy Week rolled around, huge crowds mobbed him everywhere. They were ready to crown him King. They wanted some more miracles. But unlike comic book Mega Messiahs, Jesus wasn’t going to swoop in and save the planet with super cosmic powers. He’d do it by getting hammered to a cross. His coronation was a crucifixion. His victory looked just like defeat. Hailed by John the Baptist as “the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world,” Jesus went out looking more like a black sheep, his sacrifice now suspect.

Maybe Mark should have just left Jesus dead and buried and spared everybody the disappointment. That way the women could have come by, brought their spices and paid their respects. His failure as a King could have been chalked up to overzealousness, and he could have still been memorialized as a wise sage for some of the things that he said: sayings like “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Everybody likes that one. Leave Jesus dead and buried, and those ridiculous lines about loving your enemies or selling possessions could be ignored as anomalies; eccentric utterances of a man out of touch with the times. “Do not worry,” Jesus said. But that’s just silly. And seriously, who’s ever heard of losing your life to find it or plucking out your eye if it causes you to sin? Ignore-ignore. The same with praying for your persecutors and forgiving without limit. Leave Jesus buried in the ground and you could leave all that crazy talk buried with him.

Except this is the thing about Easter. Jesus doesn’t stay buried. Those women showed up at the graveside and BOOM! The stone was gone and the angel announced that Jesus was gone too. He. Was. Raised. From The Dead.

What are the odds of that? Better than the odds of winning Mega Millions? I do know that with lottery odds at 176M to 1, you not only have a better chance of getting struck by lightening, but based on U.S. averages, you’re about 8,000 times more likely to be murdered, and about 20,000 times more likely to die in a car crash. How’s that for adding some fear to your Easter? Toss in cancer and heart disease and every other reason people perish, and it’s a safe bet to say you’re 176M times more likely to die than you are to hit the lucky numbers. Death carries even odds.

Except this is the thing about Easter. Because of Jesus, rising from the dead also comes in at even odds. Because of Jesus, when your number is up, so are you. Up. “I am the resurrection and the life,” he said. “Believe in me and even though you die, you will rise up to new life.”

Just like Jesus himself. The resurrection is Christ’s validation, his vindication, the proof that all his talk was true. Throughout Mark’s gospel, Jesus got hammered by the religious establishment for talking blasphemy. He got hammered by the crowds for talking austerity. He got hammered by his fans for talking humility. He got hammered by his family for talking crazy. He got hammered by his own disciples for talking about becoming a casualty. And he got literally hammered by the Romans to beam of wood. What kind of Messiah does that? What kind of Messiah ends up dead? The kind of Messiah who knows he’s going to rise up from the dead. As the Easter Scriptures sing it: “Where O death is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?”

It is possible that there’s more to Mark’s gospel than what we have; but maybe Mark meant to stop here. Rather than tying up all the loose ends, Mark leaves room for you and me to come to the graveyard. To the rolled back stone. Face to face with the power of Easter. What do you do when you see an angel? When lightening strikes? When the lid blows off? When your number’s up? Because of Jesus, you don’t have to be afraid anymore. He has been raised and so will we. Take the fear of death off the table, and every other fear comes off with it. You can love your enemies now because you’re not afraid of them anymore. What can they do to you? You might as well forgive them, just like Jesus said. And why not let go of some of your possessions and give the money away? With resurrection in the bank, what more do you need? And what’s there to worry about either? You might as well stop that too. OK, so plucking out your eye remains a dicey proposition, but with the resurrection, sin loses a lot of its allure. And as for losing your life to find it? With the resurrection, that makes total sense.

Mark tells us the women “said nothing to anyone because they were afraid.” He tells us they that “terror and amazement seized them” too. For “amazement” Mark uses the Greek word “ecstatic.” Just like winning the lottery. Except that with Easter, life always changes for the better. Like winning the lottery, the women were too afraid to talk. But they eventually did. They eventually went and told everybody. That’s why we’re here. The Lord is risen indeed.

Alleluia!  Christ is risen!
The Lord is risen indeed.  Alleluia!
Christ is risen!
Alleluia!
Christ has been raised from the dead.
Thanks be to God who gives  us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Alleluia!
Alleluia! Amen.

These words have been repeated by countless Christians on their way to death.  Anglicans pray, at the Liturgy for Burial, “Into thy hands, O merciful Savior, we comment thy servant.”  Christians repeat these words in imitation of Jesus and because we assume these are words of comfort as we face the unknown that death names.  These words can and should comfort, but that these words comfort us should not hide from us that these last words of Jesus before his death name his willingness to embrace the ice-cold silence of hell.  Accordingly these words, “Father, into thy hands I comment my spirit,” are every bit as frightening as Jesus’s prior cry of abandonment.  Jesus is not comforting himself; he is gesturing to the Father that he is ready to face the final work that only Jesus can do.                                                                                                                           -Stanley Hauerwas

Action:  Sit in silence and contemplate Christ’s death on the cross.

Prayer:  We wait, O God, for you to move and bring hope into the darkness.  Amen.

“It is finished” is not a death gurgle.  ”It is finished” is not “I am done for.”  ”It is finished” will not be, as we know from the tradition of ordering these words from the cross, the last words of Jesus.  ”It is finished” is a cry of victory.  ”It is finished” is the triumphant cry that what I came to do has been done.  All is accomplished, completed, fulfilled work.  The work that is finished, moreover is the cross.  He will be and is resurrected, but the resurrected One remains the One crucified.
God has finished what only God could finish.  Christ’s sacrifice is a gift that exceeds every debt.  Our sins have been consumed, making possible lives that glow with the beauty of God’s Spirit.  What wonderful news: “It is finished.”  But it is not over.  We are made witnesses sot he world- a world with no time for a crucified God- may know what we have all the time of God’s kingdom to live in peace with one another.                                                                                    -Stanley Hauerwas

Action:  Sit in silence and ponder Christ’s death on the cross.

Prayer:  God, thank you for the new life you have given me through your sons death on the cross.  Amen.

In the gospel of John, Jesus tells the Samaritan woman that he is the living water.  How could the one who calls himself “living water” in John 4, tell us that he thirsts by Chapter 19?  The fact that Jesus is thirsty on the cross reminds us of Psalm 22 which is fulfilled through this statement but more than that, it reminds us that Jesus was real.  He was human, the incarnated God, and indeed he felt thirst.  We can relate to that.  The cross can feel hard to relate with until we see a snapshot like this, of the real and living God, thirsty on the cross.
In John 7 Jesus says, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink.  As the scripture has said, ‘Our of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water’” (John 7:37-38).  May Jesus’ thirst of the cross remind us once again that he is real and that we can find our own thirst quenched when we come to Him.

Action:  Make a list of the ways God can quench your thirst for Him.

Prayer:  Gracious God, may I find all my needs met in you and according to your will.  Quench my thirst I pray, Amen.

This made me think about sports in youth ministry, but more specifically games, and why we play games.

Below are 4 reasons that Nicole and I hold in common:

1. Games are an ideal entry-level activity for new students because fun and playing is universal. To have a sense of fun and playfulness in youth ministry is critical if you want to engage and welcome new students.

2. Games build community, acceptance and belonging. Shared experiences become shared memories. At CRASH we only play games that are inclusive. This means that anyone can do the tasks and participate.  You don’t need any special skills or be a world class athlete.

Unfortunately, a lot of the joy of games has disappeared with competitive sports being more and more prevalent, squeezing out intramural or club league sports.  The extremely talented play those, while the rest of us watch. Games need to be played by all,
not just observed!  This is a value of our youth ministry at Colonial.

3. Students need a connection point because many of today’s activities are solitary experiences: computer, TV, video games, etc. But that can limit character development that comes through face-to-face social interactions. Games can promote interdependence, learning how to work together as a team toward one goal.

4. Games are used to break down social barriers that students put up out of their pure awkwardness or social inexperience. This can prohibits new relationships to blossom or deeper relationships to grow. To laugh and play together helps break down these barriers in a way that words only can’t!

5. God is the one who created laughter, so when we experience joy and laughter together in community, I believe we are reflecting the nature of our Creator.

I couldn’t stop at 4, so at the risk of making the title be even more nonsensical and obscure I pressed forward with #5. Enjoy!

At youth group we’ve played a “life sized” version of Connect Four where 70 jr. high students competed boys versus girls. At Collision (high school youth group) a favorite is has always been Four on a Couch that can get rowdy because it involves memorizing names. We’ve also modified Four Square – the old playground favorite– into 9 Square so we can include more students.

Games are an important part of youth ministry for the four five reasons listed above, plus many, many more. Besides, they’re fun.

Jesus makes the above promise to one of the thieves that is hanging on the cross next to him who requests, “Please, dear Jesus, remember us.”  We all want to be known something, to be remembered.  We hope in the course of our life time to insure that our lives will have significance.  Theologian Stanley Hauerwas writes, “Here, in the crucified Messiah, we see the love that moves the sun and the stars.  To be “with Jesus” means we are not forgotten, but rather we can confidently live in the recognition, with faith, that God is not other than the one found in Jesus of Nazareth.  How could we ever think we need to know more than this thief?  Like the thief we can live with the hope and confidence that the only remembering that matters is to be remembered by Jesus.”

Action:  Thank God for remembering you.

Prayer:  Heavenly Father, even at the time of Jesus’ death he has us on his mind.  We give you thanks.  Amen.

by Daniel Harrell

The last thing anyone needs in church on a Sunday devoted to happy hosanna singing is a grumpy Jesus. What’s the matter anyway? It’s starts off well—he makes his grand entrance into Jerusalem, riding in all Messiah-like—although a stallion would probably have been preferable to a sequestered colt. He waves to the adoring crowds who throw off their coats and wave their palm-palms. It’s all good until for no good reason Jesus lets a helpless fig tree have it, followed by a withering tantrum in the Temple where he impetuously overturns tables and the chairs of those who work there. And don’t get me started about his promises about prayer. “Whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours,” he says. “Tell this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ and if you do not doubt in your heart, but believe that what you say will come to pass, it will be done for you.” Are you kidding me? Whatever you ask just believe and you’ll get it? We call this the “name it and claim it” way to pray. I don’t think Dawn covered it in her prayer class. It doesn’t work out so well in real life.

As we saw last Sunday, Jesus had grown immensely popular by this point in Mark’s gospel—so much so that the religious authorities wanted him dead. They wanted him dead for acting like God Almighty and for threatening their domination of the religion market. But they had to find a stealthy way to get rid him so as not to incite a mass riot. For the most part, Jesus resisted his fans’ clamor for him to let them treat him like a king. But it seems he finally gave in. Of course these same fans who waved palms start throwing stones once their king goes kong in the Temple courts. Wrecking the Temple was like spray-painting graffiti on the Sistine Chapel. Why would a good guy like Jesus do that? Unless he’s not really a good guy. By Friday all those Hosannas will give way to a call for blood.

Normally we interpret Jesus’ Temple tirade as an indictment against the commercialization of faith and the love of money as the root of all evil. But if you’ll remember from a couple of weeks back, buying and selling were actually necessary parts of proper Temple business. The Jerusalem Temple was where animal sacrifices happened, over and over, hundreds of times a day for all kinds of purposes, from atoning for sin to expressing deep gratitude. The Temple system was how you managed a right relationship with the holy God. And it had to be done right. In accordance with Torah, a right relationship with God cost you the best of your herds, flocks and crops—flawless livestock with no spot or blemish. However getting a bull or goat all the way to Jerusalem without dinging it up was a hard thing to do in those days. Therefore as a service to the faithful, the religious authorities arranged it so you could buy a blemish-free bull or goat at the door. You’d bring your cash, change it into Temple currency, buy your sacrificial lamb and present it to the priest. It was all very kosher. So what was Jesus’ problem with it?

To understand, Mark employs a literary device we saw him use last Sunday: the Mark Sandwich. Throughout his gospel, Mark sandwiches one story of Jesus inside another so to amplify the meaning of each. In this chapter, Jesus’ Temple clearing is sandwiched by two slices of fig tree cursing. Top Slice: a hungry Jesus looking for some breakfast. Finding a fig tree in leaf, he also found that it had no fruit—sort of like getting to Dunn Brothers only to find that they’ve run out of coffee. Understandably, Jesus got irritated. Humans do that when they’re hungry. Except that Jesus was no mere mortal. He could pray a mountain into the sea, so why not pray a few Newtons to pop out on a fig branch? He comes off as petty and petulant, picking off a helpless plant just because it had nothing to pick. To make matters worse, Mark notes that it wasn’t even fig season. Jesus was clearly barking at the wrong tree—like yelling at your refrigerator when you forgot to buy the milk. Except that what Jesus did was not about the tree but about what the tree represented. That’s right, the fig tree is fig-urative. Jesus provides a parable here, only this time he acts it out for the disciples to see (since they never could understand the parables he simply told).

Throughout the Bible, God’s people are compared to fruit trees, expected to flower and bloom and produce a crop that accords with their godly nature. Yet God’s people resisted their nature, treating grace as permission to do as they pleased. The prophet Jeremiah had stood in the same Temple courts centuries prior to convey the Lord’s displeasure. “You have no shame,” he howled, “you do not even know how to blush. When I would gather you, declares the LORD, there would be no grapes on your vine, nor figs on your fig tree; even your leaves are withered…” Their sin ran deep. They cheated and stole, they murdered and committed adultery, they lied and chased after shiny idols on weekends instead of worshipping God. But the topper was the way they used the Temple system to cover their backside; they’d sin and sacrifice and sin and sacrifice, only to go out and sin some more. Jeremiah yelled, “Will you steal and murder and cheat and lie and go after other gods that you have not known, and then come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, ‘We are saved!’—only to go on doing all these abominations? Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your eyes?”

Jesus yells out this last line in his own Temple tirade, intentionally reenacting Jeremiah. If you read “den of robbers” as “hideout for evil,” then you get how it was that people treated the Temple as a safe-house for their sin. No wonder Jesus got so furious. By turning the tables he jammed the Temple trafficking and effectively brought a halt to the whole sacrificial charade. By blocking their access to God he threw a wrench into the whole relationship. Also citing Isaiah, Jesus cried out how the Temple was supposed to be a “house of prayer for all the nations.” The idea from day it opened its doors was that outsiders would always be welcome inside. The Lord is the Lord of all nations. God chose Israel, but as an example of his grace, not as sole beneficiaries. It all went to their heads, so that by the time we get to Jeremiah, the Temple had become some exclusive country club. Rather than putting out the welcome mat for their unbelieving neighbors, God’s people treated the Temple as a sanctuary from their unbelieving neighbors. Refusing to let his house to be so mistreated, God let it be leveled by the very pagan neighbors his people tried to keep out. And though the Temple was eventually rebuilt, the behavior never changed. Which was why Jesus pulled a Jeremiah.

Inasmuch as Israel’s story is our story too, we should presume the same sort of divine disdain whenever we treat church as a safe-haven to protect us from the secular world. We should presume the same sort of divine disdain whenever we take our relationship with God for granted, whenever we treat grace as insurance against our own bad behavior and bad choices. Grace is a free gift and there’s nothing you can do to earn it, but you still must do something to show you’ve received it. “We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ,” Paul wrote to Christians in Corinth. “You can tell a tree by its fruit…” Jesus said, “and every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”

Bottom Slice: Jesus and his disciples came upon that fig-less tree again, and Peter said, “Rabbi, look! The fig tree that you cursed is toast.” It tasted a lot like Jeremiah too. “While you were doing your sinful deeds,” declared the Lord through the prophet, “I spoke to you again and again, but you did not listen. I called you, but you did not answer. Therefore I will now do to the house that bears my Name, to this temple you trust in, to this place I gave to you and your ancestors, I will [destroy it and] thrust you from my presence.” The fig-less tree was cut down before. It would be cut down again. This is the moral of the parable—except that Jesus’ response to Peter seems oddly off track. “Have faith in God,” he replies, “and you can say to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea’ and it will be done for him.” In other words, shriveling a fig tree is nothing. Believe without doubting and you can transform the entire horizon.

OK, so maybe moving mountains is a bit of hyperbole. But I bet none of you can even muster enough faith to wither a houseplant unless you stop watering it too. This is the problem with prayer. It doesn’t really work the way Jesus says it does. Who ever gets whatever they ask for every time? Mountains remain where they’ve always been, diseases go uncured, marriages unrepaired, kids unruly and jobs unavailable. Nobody has enough faith. But even if we did have the faith to move mountains, that’s no guarantee that they’d go anywhere. The strong link between prayer and faith is not the link we think. Jesus is not talking about the amount of faith here, but the direction in which it’s pointed. Have faith in God, Jesus said, and you’ll get whatever you ask in prayer because of the way you will pray. Prayers pointed at God sound like the prayer prayed by Jesus: “Not my will, but Thy will be done,” as impossible as that can be sometimes to pray. Prayer is not about getting God to do what you want as much as it is getting you to do what God wants.

But why this digression on prayer anyway? Because Jesus was standing in what was supposed to be a house of prayer for all nations. But now that it had been reduced to a robbers’ den, God would leave it to suffer the apocalyptic ruin Jesus portended in chapter 13: not one stone would be left upon another. Note that Jesus did not say faith in God can move any mountain, but specifically this mountain, which for the disciples hearing Jesus say it in the shadow of the withered fig tree would have been the Temple mountain. Jesus was still on his jeremiad. “If you tell this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ and if you do not doubt in your heart, but believe that what you say will come to pass, it will be done for you.” Because it’s going to happen anyway. About 40 years after Jesus said it, Rome would level the Temple as flat as the Babylonians leveled it some 600 years prior. We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ.

Taking for granted that the disciples were able to put tree and Temple together (which I know may be a reach given Mark’s portrayal of the disciples), I doubt their takeaway was that they too could wilt plants and move mountains, but I bet they did think they could turn the tables on their own enemies. It’s no secret that the religious authorities were gunning for Jesus’ followers too. Why take out a tree when you can take down a Pharisee, obliterate your obnoxious neighbor, your conniving ex-wife or the boss who just laid you off? Knowing how human hurt craves such vengeance, and concerned perhaps that his own volatile actions would be perceived as condoning vigilante violence, Jesus quickly added a caveat: “Whenever you pray, forgive, if you have anything against anyone; so that your Father in heaven may also forgive you your trespasses.”

For a guy in such a bad mood, this was a remarkable concession. He angrily kills a tree to forebode the end of relationship between God and sinners, then prays to throw the whole mountain of mess into the sea, only to turn around and extend grace? It sounds so strange until you remember that whenever Jesus spoke of the Temple he also spoke of himself. Both were the dwelling places for God. And both would be destroyed. The curse Jesus hung on the tree and the Temple was finally the curse he hung upon himself. The end Jesus forebodes he fulfills. As Isaiah foretold, “he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed.” God wants grace for us so much that it kills him. Jesus became for us the perfect sacrifice for all time and for all people—the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

Hear these words, “My God, My God, Why have you forsaken me?” and know that the Son of God has taken our place, become for us the abandonment our sin produces, so that we may live confident that the world has been redeemed by this cross.  So redeemed, any account of the cross that suggests God must somehow satisfy an abstract theory of justice by sacrificing his Son on our behalf is clearly wrong.  Indeed such accounts are dangerously wrong.  The Father’s sacrifice of the Son and the Son’s willing sacrifice is God’s justice.  Just as there is no God who is not the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, so there is no god who must be satisfied that we might be spared.  We are the spared because God refuses to have us lost.  The horror of the cross is not and cannot ever be the last word about our existence.  It cannot be the last word because the Son’s obedience even to death means:

Therefore God also highly exalted him
and gave him the name
that is above every name,
so that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bend,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue should confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.  (Phil. 2:9-11)

-Stanley Hauwerwas, Cross-Shattered Christ 

Action:  Find a way to confess today that Jesus Christ is Lord.

Prayer:  Heavenly Father, we know of your great love for us because of your willingness to die for us.  We are humbled and we pray that we can glorify you in all we do as a way of saying thanks.  Amen.

To comprehend these words we rightly fear would threaten all we hold dear, that is, the everyday.  Everyday death always threatens the everyday, but we depend on our death-denying routines to return life to normality.  But this death, and these death-determinded words, are not ordinary.  This is the death of the Son of God, a death that encompasses death, challenging our assumption that we have or can “come to terms with death” on our own terms.  To comprehend this death, to be faced with these words, means life can never return to normal.
-Stanley Hauerwas

Question:  How does Christ’s death impact the way you live?

Prayer:  Heavenly Father, I acknowledge that I participated putting Christ to death on the cross through my sin.  Forgive me God, I don’t know what I am doing.  Amen.

Sundays during Lent, we will read the scripture passage that we are focusing on in worship and rest.

Action:  Do something restful.

Prayer:  You, O God, are the One and Only.  In you, I place my trust.  Amen.

Have you seen Jesus lately?  Don’t just answer, think for a minute.  Where have you seen Jesus?  In the children in your life?  In your work place?  In your own home?  This passage reminds us that following Jesus (wait for it) is not about us.  Ouch.  Our call is not to build the very best life we can without God and then hope God will fit in somewhere.  Our call is to “lose our life” so that we might gain true life for all of eternity.  When it comes to knowing how to lose our life we can become overwhelmed.  ”Does this mean I have to give up all my stuff, move to Africa, and serve the poor?”  Maybe.  But more likely God is calling you to serve those you are around most often.  Verse 26 tells us that those who serve God will be in the presence of Jesus.  Therefore, if you haven’t seen Jesus lately, check to make sure you are serving in the right places.

Action:  Ask God to show you how to follow Him.

Prayer:  Heavenly Father, help me to lose my life that I would instead find true life in you.  Amen.

My Internship
What I have really enjoyed about my internship is the opportunity to be exposed to working in a church environment and its culture, organizational aspects, community, and, of course, the youth ministry. It’s been a great holistic experience that I’ve greatly appreciated since my previous experience working with youth has mainly comprised of a camp setting.

At this point, I come into Colonial three times a week. I spend most of my time with Brian as we do the planning and preparation for Wednesday night’s youth group and this consists of outlining teaching lessons, coming up with fun games that help with teambuilding and connecting the kids to one another, small group questions, and just general logistics as it deals with program flow and supplies. Overall, one of the things I have to constantly be mindful of is how our activities are connecting with the kids and if our programs and agendas are faithful to our objectives and values as a youth ministry.

There are also times when Brian gives me more ownership and responsibility and I’ve taught about 5 times now. I once planned an entire evening’s programming as we did a special Water Project Night, where the students were able to learn facts about the water problem in poorer countries and experience some of it themselves through simulation stations like walking a certain distance with full buckets of water or an economy exercise to see how much things are worth relatively for us and for other countries.

I help out with field trips (we went to Impact Lives one night), retreats (we went to Covenant Pines as a confirmation group and junior high group), and other events (junior high guys night out, leaders bowling trip, etc.). My experience has also consisted of much more than just “work” stuff. I come in every other week or so and play volleyball and basketball with some of the other leaders and some of the kids. I get to develop relationships with a lot of the guys and talk about music, sports, dating, and other life stuff, which I’ve appreciated.

Being able to see how the youth ministry interacts and engages with the other ministries is helpful as well. We share some supplies and some spaces (closets/gym, etc.) with them and it’s important to be mindful of other groups when we’re trying to accomplish our goals and purposes.

Connecting with the Students
The greatest thing about ministry is the ability and opportunity to connect with people. While planning, organizing, facilitating, and teaching are important and essential responsibilities for any youth ministry leader, the commitment to relationships is key both with other leaders and with the students.

For me, as the Colonial Church Youth intern, it starts with Brian Jones and Nicole Lindsay. I’ve been able to watch and work with them as they’ve created meaningful environments that communicate Jesus and God’s love week in and week out. It’s also been great seeing Nicole interact with her dad here at church and Brian with Danielle, Campbell, and Charlotte. Church is family and is made up of families.

Next comes the pleasure of developing relationships with the other youth group volunteer leaders. It’s always encouraging to see people take the time to invest in these students and commit to being a part of their lives. I get to see them engage with the kids weekly and also have the opportunity to lead worship with a few of them during the high school youth group. I also lead a small group of 10^th grade high school boys with one of the leaders, Christian, and that has been one of my highlights as an intern.

My role and experience in that group really epitomizes for me the importance and life-giving nature of youth ministry. On any given Wednesday night, our small group attendance can range from 3-9 guys and they mainly come from Edina High School, so they see each other multiple times a week. However, because they attend Colonial Church together, they are able to have a deeper connection and relationship that goes beyond just being classmates. Most of them went through confirmation at the same time and through youth group, have been able to serve, learn, and grow together.

It’s exciting for me to see these guys in a stage of their lives where they are continuing to understand and embrace who they are all while living in fellowship and learning about God’s character. I love how each guy is so unique and brings his interests and personality to our small group. As an intern, an aspiring youth pastor, and a friend, I am able to care for these guys and walk alongside them as they journey through life seeking for purpose, relationships, answers, hope and love.

Andrew

by Daniel Harrell

Last Sunday’s foray into end times predictions always comes off sounding a little bizarre. Jesus foretells how “the sun will be darkened, the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, the powers in the heavens will be shaken.” The imagery comes out of Isaiah, apocalyptic pictures the Bible rolls out whenever it’s trying especially to get your attention. As such, you can imagine how terrifying solar eclipses must have been to the ancients. And how immensely grateful they had to have felt afterwards once God showed his mercy by letting the sun shine again. While Isaiah could have never known the physics, the fact is that the sun will go dark one day. Though nobody will be alive to witness it. Anybody in the vicinity will have already gone dark themselves. Here’s a view of a dying star going dark in our own galaxy, 3,800 light years away, taken from the Hubble space telescope. It’s called the Butterfly Nebula, a star that was originally about 5 times the mass of our sun. This is what eventually happens to every star. What looks like dainty butterfly wings are actually roiling cauldrons of gas heated to more than 36,000 degrees, tearing across space at more than 600,000 miles an hour. That’s fast enough to travel from Earth to the Moon in 24 minutes. Talk about shaking the heavens, when this happens to our own sun one day, it will effectively wipe out the whole solar system.

I spent this past week in New York at one of my faith and science gatherings, attended as usual by some of the most brilliant theologians and scientists in the solar system, including astronomer Dr. Jennifer Wiseman, the Senior Researcher for NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope program. (She will be with us this coming fall for a weekend sponsored by Colonial’s Guelich Lecture Series—watch for details on that.) This past week’s conference premised how God displays his nature through both nature and scripture. As the Psalmist sings, “The heavens declare the glory of God and the earth shows forth his handiwork.” To have faith is to understand this. You look up into the night sky and marvel at the majesty of the Lord. Without faith, however, a heavenward gaze only leads to despair. As Richard Dawkins famously put it, “The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.” The late astronomer Carl Sagan added, “We live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people.”

Astronomers conclude that the universe has been around for some 13.7 billion years; an amount of time that is truly incomprehensible. If you were to somehow condense it down to a single year with the Big Bang kicking off January 1, the earth doesn’t even show up until September 1. It takes eleven billion years to get from “in the beginning” in Genesis 1:1 to “earth.” Single cell life on earth shows up around September 15, followed by multi-cellular organisms bumping around for the next month or so. You’ve got a burst of organisms on the scene after that, with the dinosaurs coming and going around Christmas. Mammals start to expand shortly thereafter (once there aren’t any dinosaurs to eat them), with humans popping up so late on New Year’s Eve that there’s barely enough time to pucker up for a kiss. In evolutionary terms, your own life on earth isn’t even the neural impulse that leads to the blink of an eye. Christians believe people to be made in the image of the Creator himself, but science makes us out to be more of an afterthought if we’re even a thought at all.

The Psalmist rightly asks of God “what are human beings that you are mindful of us, mere mortals that you would care for us?” And yet, Jesus insists that “God so loved the world that he sent his only Son to save it,” an absurd notion unless you recognize that this is precisely the way God has always worked. Not only did God create the heavens and pick an obscure blip of a planet to populate with people, he went on to pick the most obscure bunch of people with whom to have a relationship, a people for whom he eventually showed in person, as an indiscriminate carpenter in a backwater village in a backward time in history, who ends up rejected, unjustly convicted and executed on a cross. The Bible calls this “good news,” the demonstration of God’s love for the world, from the Lord of the Cosmos whom the apostle Paul describes as “pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.”

The magnitude of such things is truly incomprehensible, even if we do believe it. In this morning’s passage from Mark’s gospel, a woman crashes a party and pours an entire bottle of expensive perfume on Jesus’ head. Jesus recognizes it to be an expression of love that mirrors God’s own. He says, “Truly I tell you, wherever the good news is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in remembrance of her.”

The occasion was dinner at the home of Simon the Leper—which has to mean former Leper since no one except Jesus would have risked entering a leper’s house to eat. Jesus made time for sinners and outcasts of every stripe, basically breaking with every religious convention of his day. He may have had a mouthful of food when this woman entered to empty her jar. Back then, like now, perfume was used for enjoyment and beauty as well as for expressions of love. Unlike now, dinner hosts back then would customarily perfume the heads of their guests as they walked in the door as a sign of welcome and honor—much like we take our guests’ coats and offer them something to drink when they enter. But our offer would be for a glass of wine, perhaps, not for the entire bottle. Likewise, first century hosts would dab just a bit of perfume, nor pour out a whole jar, and definitely not a whole jar of the best stuff. One whiff and everyone knew what the woman brought was not a brand she’d bought by the quart. Mark describes it as being made of pure nard, an exotic root native to India. And it was expensive—think Vol de Nuit by Guerlain, which in New York will run you about $327 an ounce. Hers was an extravagant expression of love.

But as with all things extravagant—a word which means to lack restraint or unnecessarily exceed—the reaction to it was instinctively critical. Bring your wife back a small sampler of Parisian chocolate from New York that cost close to a hundred dollars, and her reflex response will be, “you should not have done that,” even though she’s glad you did. Of course you may be wondering if you’re paying your minister too much if he can afford a hundred dollar box of chocolates. Mark tells us how the guests at Simon’s table “said to one another in anger, ‘Why was this perfume wasted like that? It could have been sold for a fortune and the money given to starving children!” They scolded the woman, but Jesus understood their scorn to be aimed at him. He told them to leave her alone, because “she has done a good service, a beautiful thing for me.” And as to their rationale, he added, “The poor you always have with you, and you can show kindness to them whenever you wish.”

Ironically, this saying is often offered as rationale for not helping the poor. We take it to mean that Jesus labels poverty a lost cause: “Hey, the Bible says ‘you’ll always have the poor with you;’ what can you do?” Actually Jesus alludes to Deuteronomy 15 here, where God commands his people to always take care of the needy anyway. His is not a remark of resignation, but rather a bit of rebuke: “You will always have the poor with you. You can help them whenever you want.” In other words, if you really wanted to help the poor, you’d be doing it already.

But this wasn’t about helping the poor. It was about saving face. Mark doesn’t say, but if Simon the Leper was a leper Jesus healed, why didn’t Simon pour perfume on Jesus? Why didn’t he show some love? It’s the least a good dinner host would have done for an honored guest even if he hadn’t cured him of a skin condition that banned him from polite society. In Luke’s gospel, Simon is a Pharisee and the woman was one who had “lived a sinful life.” Simon the Pharisee wonders to himself why Jesus can’t smell a sinner when he sees one. If Mark and Luke are describing the same scene, you may be wondering how a leper could ever become a Pharisee. But then again, the church is chock full of sinners saved by grace who grow to act like they don’t need grace anymore. And of course once you stop needing grace, it’s not long before you stop giving it too.

In Luke, Jesus went on to tell a parable about a certain creditor who had two debtors; one owed the creditor five hundred dollars, and the other fifty. When neither could pay, he canceled the debts of both. Jesus asked Simon the Pharisee which debtor would love the creditor more. And Simon rightly replied the one who had the bigger debt canceled. Jesus then proceeded to forgive the woman, much to the continued consternation of the Pharisees present. Nobody forgives sins but God alone. Who did Jesus think he was?

Unlike Luke, Mark makes no mention of this woman being a sinner in any special sense. She’s just a party crasher and a bottle breaker. A fragrance counter sales rep gone wild. The costly and posh perfume runs down Jesus’ hair, over his shoulders, and drips off of his sleeves. A whole year’s salary worth in a puddle on the floor. Who does that? Why spend all that money on something that’s just going to get washed off once Jesus takes a shower? Why give your wife ridiculously expensive chocolate that she’ll savor for a second and then digest the same way she would a handful of M&Ms?

There was a book out a few years back entitled Scroogenomics, by Wharton Business School economist Joel Waldfogel. In it he argued what so many of us instinctively feel: expensive gifts are wasteful. He rolled out the stats to prove it. Even in a down economy, Americans give somewhere between 60-90 billion dollars in gifts during Christmas alone, despite that according to surveys, most people value gifts at about 50 cents on the dollar. That’s a lot of waste. Half of those surveyed even admitted to re-gifting the fancier presents they received. But simply running the numbers on gift-giving discounts other intrinsic values. Not only is gift-giving a way of expressing how you feel for somebody, receiving a gift can be a reliable way of determining who the people are in your life who truly understand you. Had I brought my wife a hundred dollar box of cigars, for example, she would have wondered what I thought of her since she doesn’t smoke cigars that often. Moreover, a hundred dollar box of cigars isn’t what you’d ever call extravagant. I learned that to my own embarrassment after Violet was born.

If receiving a gift is a reliable way of determining who truly understands you, then the woman here in Mark understood Jesus even better than she realized. “She has performed a good service for me. She has done what she could”—by which Jesus meant she did everything she could. And note he doesn’t say, “you shouldn’t have.” He accepts her extravagant gift as a proper display of extravagant worship. He knows who he is. But he also knows where he’s headed. “The poor you will always have with you… but you will not always have me.” “She has anointed my body for my burial.” OK, so that’s kinda morbid. “Thank you for the chocolates honey, I’ll enjoy them as I die?”

Jesus’ mention of his burial is sandwiched like stories often are in Mark, one inside another in order to amplify the meaning of each. Here the top slice of the sandwich is verses 1 and 2. The chief priests and scribes are gunning for Jesus—something they’ve been doing since chapter 3. They wanted him dead for acting like God Almighty and because his popularity threatened their dominance of the religious market. They looked for a stealthy way to arrest Jesus because he was too popular to pick up in public without inciting a riot. Their desire for secrecy finds opportunity with the bottom slice of the sandwich. In verse 10, one of Jesus’ friends and disciples, Judas Iscariot, steps up with his offer of betrayal. He’d lead the religious authorities backstage away from the crush of Jesus’ fans. The priests and Pharisees couldn’t believe their luck. They probably even thanked God for it. They definitely thanked Judas by offering him a finder’s fee, albeit one that amounted to the going rate you’d pay somebody to walk your dog.

The bounteous meat between these two pieces of envy and penny-pitching deceit is the woman’s lavish devotion. Jesus receives her extravagant gift as good and beautiful, but also as timely. Perfume was used to express love and honor to the living, but also to express respect for the deceased. Jesus would be put to death as an outlaw, and therefore be denied the grace of a fitting burial. But Mark makes sure we see that Jesus did not sustain the disgrace his opponents later assumed he had. Though executed as a criminal; the woman provides his proper funeral. This is why “wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world,” her act would be remembered for what it was: an expression of extravagant waste, vindicating Jesus as Lord and Savior, the one who extravagantly wasted himself on us, for us, because he loved us.

The word to waste comes from a Latin root meaning to empty out. The same Latin root also gives us the word vast, meaning enormous or great. Thus to make empty is to make vast, which does sound a lot like the last going first and the least being the greatest in the Kingdom of God. However the Greek word translated as waste in Mark is the word meaning ruin or ravage, which is harder to hear as anything sounding like the Kingdom of God.

Critics of Christianity look to science to show how the emergence of human life on earth demanded enormous ruin and ravage, billions of years of apparent waste and futility, species extermination and organism road kill. Not only was the massive dying off rampant, it’s mandatory too. The emergence of life depends on the death of prior life, millions of generations of mutational and reproductive failure. Moreover, the familiar struggle for survival reveals a process in which cruelty and suffering are standard fare. There has been so much dysfunction, so much excess and error, so much ruin and ravage in the evolutionary epic that to attribute it to any superior, intelligent and benevolent Being is practically an insult.

Jesus knew all about insults. They were heaped on him as he hung on the cross. And yet by faith we view this ancient instrument of ruin and ravage as the supreme expression extravagant, sacrificial love. In this light, we can see the entire creation as an expression of God’s sacrificial nature; a cross-shaped character permeating the whole universe. Billions of years and billions of galaxies and stars and moons, all extravagantly wasted on us, for us. From all that vastness materialized one miniscule scrap of planet inhabitable for human life: life that took millions of years to unfold through untold waste and sacrifice so that we mere mortals could emerge as image-bearers of God, redeemed into the likeness of Christ by his own wasteful death, and so extravagantly filled to overflowing with his Spirit, that finally reflecting our Creator, we might extravagantly waste ourselves to his glory for the cause of love.

In the book of Matthew, the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus means that the kingdom of God has come.  The idea of a kingdom coming as a result of the death of God’s own son has always been a bit too much for humans to get their minds around.  And so, Jesus gave us metaphors to view the kingdom of God as something that was worth risking everything for and he exhorted us to look for it everywhere we go.  It is hard to find.  Barbara Brown Taylor writes,
“Unless, of course God has resorted to the oldest trick in the book and hidden it in plain view.  There is always that possibility, you know- that God decided to hide the kingdom of God in any of the extraordinary places that treasure hunters would be sure to check but in the last place that any of us would think to look, namely, in the ordinary circumstances of our everyday lives: like a silver spoon in the drawer with the stainless, like a diamond necklace on the bureau with the rhinestones; the extraordinary hidden in the ordinary, the kingdom of heaven all mixed in with the humdrum and ho-hum of our days, as easy to find as an amaryllis bulb in the dark basement that suddenly sends forth a shoot, or a child’s smile when she awakes from sleep, or the first thunderstorm after a long drought- all of them signs of the kingdom of God, clues to all the holiness hidden in the dullest of our days.”

Action:  Look for signs of the kingdom of God in your ordinary life.

Prayer:  Heavenly Father, these last days of Lent can feel dull and lifeless as we wait for the resurrection to come.  May we see signs of your kingdom all around us and may we be aware of the holiness that is hidden in the dullest of our days.  Amen.

In Kansas, farmers grow the wheat so close together that it becomes difficult for weeds to take root.  But some always manage to slip in.  So it is with people.  Surround yourself with true friends, who neither gossip nor toy with you, and you will find that the weeks in your spiritual life grow fewer.  At harvest time there will be less for God to separate.  Once you begin to discipline yourself to live life free of soap-opera drama, once you learn to tell the truth and speak well of others, once you learn to love genuinely and not play games, wheat tends to grow up around you.  You will find yourself tiring of those who play games and create drama.  You will find that you are inclined to grow wheat all around you, so that there is no longer room for the weeds.  And your spiritual wheat will grow stronger with time and practice.                                                                                             -Kate Moorehead

Action:  Look for ways to surround yourself with wheat.

Prayer:  Oh God, help me to seek deep relationships with people who know you.  Surround me with wheat and give me courage to pull the weeds.  Amen.

*It was brought to my attention that yesterday’s devotion was a bit unclear.  I have edited it to better reflect what I was intending to say.

The activity of the wind is a great metaphor for the movement of God.  We cannot understand or predict the actions of God.  We cannot see God, nor can we be sure that God is present at all.  But we can feel God.  God can move us to tears.  God is as real and as elusive as the wind.  And God can change our direction in an instant.  As the early spring winds blow, may they remind us that God is at work and moving and may we join him in his work through the power of the Holy Spirit.

Action:  Ask God to fill you with his Holy Spirit and to move you.

Prayer:  Gracious God, may the winds of your Holy Spirit blow through our lives bringing hope and change.  Amen.

Recently, in my own journey of faith, I have been uncovering the truth that my picture of Jesus is not always correct.  I often think of Jesus as a bit too much like God and not enough like a human being.  Jesus, was uniquely human and uniquely sinless.  He bears the image of God, just like you and me.  As we move into these last days of Lent may we begin to see Jesus the way He was and the way He is today- fully human and fully God.  Remembering that these truths remind us that we have a God who knows us and a God who understands.

Action:  Choose three gospel stories and write down the characteristics of Jesus that are revealed in each.

Prayer:  God, thank you for sending your Son to die for us, but even more than that, thank you that Jesus showed us how to live.  May we see Jesus in the world and circumstances around us today.  Amen.