Dear St Matthew’s,
Our Lenten season is drawing to a close…just one more week until we come once again to Jesus’ journey into Jerusalem. A journey marked with joyous Palm branches and cloaks spread on the ground as they shouted “Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven!” And a journey marked with betrayal, desertion and death as hopes faded into the worst of our humanity and humanness when they cried, “Let him be crucified.”
Every year Lent provides needed space for our burdens and hurts. It’s a space between Christmas and Spring to handle and hold our grief and sorrow, our sadness and lament. And I’m glad for it. Not because I want any of us to feel sad or burdened; instead, because I know that we all do at different points in our lives, it’s a human reality. We need time and space to feel and work through the heaviness, sadness, and grief that is part of each and all of our lives. We do not need to dwell in it or take residence there, but we do need to recognize our sadness, heaviness, and grief as real so that we can move beyond it, and dare I say, resurrect from it.
This Sunday, Jesus, the one who calls himself the resurrection and the life, is going to call out to Lazarus and tell him to “Come out!” Jesus is calling him to come out of the tomb. He is calling to resurrect him to a new and renewed life. Jesus calls to Lazarus just as he calls to us, come out of what is holding you back, come out of the dead spaces in your lives, come to the source of life and love and resurrection, Jesus. There was a time of sadness and reflection, even isolation and grief, but that time is not the destination, it is what leads us to resurrected life.
Come join us for our last days of Lent and Holy Week that lead us all to the resurrected Lord that we meet on Easter and every day we live!
Grace and Peace,
Pastor Kirsten
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