“Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!”
~Mark 11:9

We know something about anticipation as we watch the proportions of the vaccinated occupy an increasingly larger piece of the pie charts that measure the promise of a return to life in proximity with one another. The comparison is not wrong. We long for deep connections, for days of peace, intimacy, and well-being as did those who welcomed Jesus as he entered Jerusalem.

The trick is to set our hopes and expectations in alignment with all the law and the prophets, with the hope and faith that our scriptures, our traditions, and our best understandings point toward.

​Mark’s entry signals another entry for us in the church—into Holy Week, and its concentrated attention to what does and does not save us, what makes for life and well-being.

​Enter into worship.

If you have prayers you would like to share, please do so here. These will be shared by email to our St Andrew prayer list so that we pray for what you hold by name. This information is not shared online in a searchable form.

We continue to keep our financial commitments to our mission partners and staff. Thank you for remembering to send in your financial pledges and offerings. ​

Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.
~John 12:24

Spring is such a good time to encounter this text. The image of a seed planted, sprouting, blossoming evokes hope and possibility for us. Pass the word around, loaves abound!

This, of course, is the context, perhaps even the antidote to the agony Jesus acknowledges in the second part of this lesson that, on its face, may seem not to connect—especially given the voice of affirmation that comes from heaven. My soul is troubled, Jesus acknowledges, as he anticipates the loss of his life. He is tempted: “Save me from this hour.” Yet he moves from the uncertainty of that seed, buried, out of sight, dead, to the newness that always comes with God’s presence: “I will glorify it,” the voice affirms. Such has been the way. It always will be.

Here is a good word for those of us who fear losing our way of being, whether a life lived in comfort by virtue of our relative privilege as white, as male, as heterosexual, as educated, and especially if you tick all the boxes! Accustomed to controlling the narrative, we too may wish to be saved from this hour, or do everything we can to preserve it ourselves.

Unless a seed die…

​The mysterious truth of this gospel is that new life, abundant life, kingdom life is found in the dying. Our future is found in our giving ourselves to it, our giving up of ourselves for it, our giving ourselves to those voices long silenced in affirmation and attention and subservience. Prepare the way. God is doing a new thing. If we wish to be a part of it, this is the path.

​Enter into worship.

If you have prayers you would like to share, please do so here. These will be shared by email to our St Andrew prayer list so that we pray for what you hold by name. This information is not shared online in a searchable form.

We continue to keep our financial commitments to our mission partners and staff. Thank you for remembering to send in your financial pledges and offerings. ​

​And the Lord said to Moses, “Make a poisonous serpent, and set it on a pole; and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live.”
~Numbers 21:8
 
This obscure and even troubling story of the wandering Israelites finds new life amidst our preoccupation with vaccinations and their promise to release us once again to life together. It is no accident that both the American Medical Association and World Health Organizations have adopted the Rod of Asclepius—a snake on a pole—as the symbol for medical healing. One of the great wonders of modern medicine is that scientists have learned how to replicate viral forces, render them nonlethal, and return them back to the body as vaccines. The only sure cure for infection is exposure (and inoculation), which allows the memory to be activated to destroy what would otherwise kill us. The disease is used to cure the disease.
 
The image carries well to our human condition more broadly. There is something essential at looking closely and squarely and lovingly at our stories. Like the snake on a pole, like the Christ on a cross, we must not look away, but steel ourselves for the story of who we truly are and what saves us. Attending to our choices and their results is an essential act that enables us to correct, redirect, and ultimately find our way to the new life Christ proclaims.
 
Enter into worship.

If you have prayers you would like to share, please do so here. These will be shared by email to our St Andrew prayer list so that we pray for what you hold by name. This information is not shared online in a searchable form.

We continue to keep our financial commitments to our mission partners and staff. Thank you for remembering to send in your financial pledges and offerings. ​

“Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”
~John 2:19

The 1967 Dutch hymn (Glory to God 404) comes to mind as Jesus clears out the temple:
What is this place, where we are meeting?
Only a house, the earth its floor.
Walls and a roof, sheltering people,
windows for light, an open door.
Yet it becomes a body that lives
when we are gathered here,
and know our God is near.

Perhaps we hear this wistfully, exactly one year in from meeting in the house we know for our common worship. The hymn speaks truth: it has become a body that lives, a place of shelter, memory, voice, sharing, and wonder for a beloved community. We have a new appreciation for that place. Surely absence, exile makes the heart grow fonder as Israel knew in its wanderings, finding clarity in the covenant and commandments that grew from those experiences.

And yet, we continue to be a church, a body, Christ’s body in the world. Nothing changes that, not an empty building, not a temple 46 years in the making, razed. This was Jesus’ very point in the Gospel lesson today. God is not ever confined to a building. What is to be learned here? What do we know now about a church that we didn’t know a year ago?

Enter into worship.

If you have prayers you would like to share, please do so here. These will be shared by email to our St Andrew prayer list so that we pray for what you hold by name. This information is not shared online in a searchable form.

We continue to keep our financial commitments to our mission partners and staff. Thank you for remembering to send in your financial pledges and offerings. ​