Some people love marathons, others don’t.  Holy Week in the Episcopal Tradition (and some others) is a spiritual marathon; a week that stretches through time and space enabling us to go the distance alongside Jesus. The services of Holy Week begin with Jesus’ triumphal entrance into Jerusalem, take us to his final night (Maundy Thursday), his arrest, betrayal, trial, torture, and death (Good Friday), and into the miraculous power of his resurrection (Easter). 
You are invited to run this spiritual marathon.  The challenge will exhaust you, inspire you and deepen your solidarity with the one who ran the race for you.  Here, you’ll see the services offered through St. Paul’s. Start to finish, there are four. However, if you want to challenge yourself further, attend a Seven Last Words service on Good Friday.  Other Episcopal Churches offer a Holy Saturday Easter Vigil.  

Here are some reasons why running the Holy Week Marathon will strengthen you:

• Deepen your Spirituality.  As I talked about on Sunday (LINK), Jesus modeled how to prepare for a crisis. Holy Week shows us how he behaved during his worst crisis. We can learn from him, and even if we don’t,we will certainly love and admire him more by engaging his journey to the cross.
• Enrich your Easter. Celebrating resurrection without probing the depths of death and suffering is just rabbits and chocolate eggs. The Resurrection holds a power and depth effectively understood only through the lens of loss, suffering, and despair. In a culture that embraces violence without feeling the cost, Holy Week pulls us into the full reality and fleshes out the power and promise of what Resurrection means.
• Find your mentors.  People who do the holy week marathon tend to be further along on their spiritual and psychological journey. Look around when you attend, who else is there? Make a connection and ask questions. It might lead to a new and meaningful friendship that enriches you both.
• Taste the Sacraments and Sense the Saints.  Maundy Thursday honors Jesus’ inauguration of the practice of communion, placing it within the dining room. Good Friday honors the universality of death, drawing us into a deeper awareness of the tradition and presence of the saints.
• Gather in Prayer and Powerful Solidarity. On Palm Sunday, we pray to “enter with joy upon the contemplation of these mighty acts, whereby you have given us life..”  Prayer and presence enables us to witness once again Jesus’ final hours, and join in oneness with them, in hopes that we too might live as vessels of salvation in the world.
• Enrich your cultural and artistic experience. A Holy Week marathon with St. Paul’s will expose you to a variety of worship. Maundy Thursday will be contemporary with a meal and conversational reflections. Good Friday will be rooted in centuries of Anglican tradition. Celtic Easter incorporates creation spirituality, and Easter brings us back to the tradition.  If you want the full pomp and circumstance of Easter Worship, you’ll want to go to the Cathedral or elsewhere, and that’s okay.

You win the Holy Week marathon by showing up and participating, wherever you go. I pray that you will accept the challenge. The baton placed in your hand will be bread, a handshake, a liturgy, and a profound invitation to walk with Jesus through sorrow, into joy. Will you accept?
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                                                                            -- Pastor Rebecca

When Jesus was brought to the temple as an infant, a devout old man named Simeon took him in his arms and essentially pronounced, My eyes have seen the Messiah! (Luke 2:25-32). But what if Simeon said that about every baby brought to the temple? There’s no reason to think he didn’t, except that we know the whole story. We think of Jesus as Messiah in a distinctive way, and that’s appropriate. But Jesus wants us to be like him. That's messianic. 

In his book, The Diary of Jesus Christ, Bill Cain, SJ, has Simeon pray the same Messianic prayer over every child presented in the temple. When Jesus is twelve, Cain imagines Jesus returning to the temple to find Simeon. Jesus asks Simeon many questions, including this: “In the scripture God speaks of Israel as if it were one single person. If that’s true, is it possible—is it possible when the scripture speaks of the Messiah as one person – that he might be many people? Is it possible? Is it possible? (p. 210)

Thinking about this question was a lightbulb moment for me.  We are called to be like Jesus and if Jesus is our deliverer, our means of being whole, healed, saved (all one word in the New Testament), then we are to do the same for each other.  To embody God’s power and love as much as possible so that others can see God through us! (Matthew 5:48).  It sounds impossible, but in fact, it’s not.  It’s essential.  It’s as simple as leaning in on who we truly are, not who we’ve become in our selfishness. 

Here are a few simple steps to practice your partnership in Messiah:

1. Let Go of Control.  Jesus practiced obedience to God a lot. What’s the hardest thing for you to let go of? Take that and give it to God. It will take practice. Relinquish it over and over – even if it’s the most precious person in your life.
2. Choose Love.  Jesus loved even when it sucked. He loved in spite of how he was treated, how tired he was, how annoying his friends were. As the B-52s say, Love baby, that’s where it's at. To choose love requires choosing to nurture your life with God. Otherwise, you run out.
3. Nurture your life with God. It can look like whatever is true for you. Yes, prayer, yes, finding things to pull your hand into God’s hand, your mind into God’s mind. 
4. Sacrifice. Give it up. This is a part of letting go of control, but it’s also about generosity, empathy, and presence. Be present to your world, the people in front of you. See them.  Leave the kingdom of your mind and walk into the wide world of others.

This is not a to-do list, it’s a brochure for the BEST LIFE EVER. Being like Jesus is exactly how we were created to be. Everyone belongs. Love heals. Eternity wins.

Don’t miss out on this fabulous opportunity to be Messiah. It’s possible. Every day, all of us together, walking in love, makes it possible.

-- Pastor Rebecca

If you’ve watched professional sports, it’s likely that you’ve seen a sign flash across the screen as the camera pans the cheering crowds. John 3:16. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.


This verse has been helpful and harmful – possibly since it was penned. The verses before and after (John 3:15 and 17), in fact, the whole context of when and why Jesus spoke this, is often ignored. And I am about to do the same thing! Yup. I want to drill down on just one word in the verse.


Kosmon: the Greek word means several things in Greek. It means universe (cosmos), wholeness, the ordered creation, the ordered society (cosmopolitan). And God loves it all. God loves ordered, harmonious humans, and God loves the wholeness of the whole. So much does God love these things, that God goes to every and any length to restore them. Even becoming broken, destroyed, poor, marginalized, and falling through the black hole of evil in order to tie the frayed knot, to fill the vast vacancy, to restore the lost sheep, coin, and human. God does it not by violating the order, but through the order, through becoming Emmanuel – God with us.
In flesh, in bread, in wine, incarnate, present.

God loving the cosmos does not mean humans are at the center of God’s concern, it means that love, wholeness, interconnection is the center.  Our brokenness is God’s concern only because wholeness requires our healing, not because we are distinctive or special within the order.
Out there across the vast expanse of interstellar space, it’s likely that there are other creatures who have also fallen into separation. Creatures who willfully chose to move away from wholeness. Perhaps it was pride, greed, lust, or competitiveness. God knows. And the longing at the heart of God has sent God’s love into that world just as much as ours.

Flipping John 3:16 open to imagine God’s immense, eternal, expansive love for the whole kosmon invites us to break open our narrow worlds and widen our love so that we too can be a part of the whole. Because, if God so loves the WHOLE, it suggests, if one of us isn’t healed, none of us are.

-- Pastor Rebecca