There are a lot of names for today (Thursday, April 13) in our Christian tradition. Some people call it Great or Holy Thursday or Covenant. Most of the time, we here at EPUMC call it Maundy Thursday. On Thursday of the last week of his life as we know it, Jesus offers what he calls a new commandment, “That we should love one another.” In Latin, which was one of the first translations of the Bible from Greek and Hebrew, this translates as, “Novum Mandatum.” So Maundy…Mandate… Commandment… If you ask me, it would make a lot more sense to call it “Loving Thursday,” but nobody has really asked me.
Tomorrow in our Christian tradition is called, “Good Friday.” It is the day in which Jesus is crucified… I have to admit I don’t understand calling the day anyone dies, much less the day Jesus is executed, “Good.” Forgive me if it sounds too cute, but Good Friday is “good” for us and “bad” for Jesus. We should really be calling it “sacrifice” or “commitment” or “martyrdom of Jesus Friday,” but that just doesn’t have the same ring to it. This year I’ve been reflecting about the good in the bad of Good Friday and that it has a lot more to do with how it is God is willing to stand beside us. This year we will have a service to recognize that at 7 p.m.
Saturday, in our faith tradition is an in-between day… unless you are Roman Catholic or follow a strict faith-based calendar. We sort of get a head start on Easter day here at Eden Prairie UMC by having an Easter Festival… Our Easter Festival is loads of fun with lots of things for kids to do.
Sunday is Easter Day; we’ll have three different services at 6:30, 8:30 and 10:00 a.m. Easter Day is both wonderful and challenging. It’s wonderful because there is something in the air we breathe in together that day. The anticipation of people being together, the thrill of a special day, the beauty of the music and the flowers. Easter day is challenging, because at some point each one of us is wondering, what is that something else that seems so real, so palatable, so tactile, that we cannot see or touch or smell or quite grasp in order to name.
This Easter we will use the image of the breath of God…the wind of God, the Holy Spirit of God and the relationship with Jesus Christ that comes with it to try to talk about what that something else is. Like all relationships, this relationship can be complicated, filled with questions and disagreements and most of all, mysteries. On Easter day whatever our relationship with Jesus has become, we celebrate the mystery of it all… And like all real mysteries the challenging or exhilarating thing about a relationship with Jesus is not so much explaining it or clarifying it but that we get to live into it. This living into the mystery of a relationship with Jesus is, if you ask me, what makes Easter so very real…and so very wonderful.
Keep the Faith,
Pastor Dan
Tomorrow in our Christian tradition is called, “Good Friday.” It is the day in which Jesus is crucified… I have to admit I don’t understand calling the day anyone dies, much less the day Jesus is executed, “Good.” Forgive me if it sounds too cute, but Good Friday is “good” for us and “bad” for Jesus. We should really be calling it “sacrifice” or “commitment” or “martyrdom of Jesus Friday,” but that just doesn’t have the same ring to it. This year I’ve been reflecting about the good in the bad of Good Friday and that it has a lot more to do with how it is God is willing to stand beside us. This year we will have a service to recognize that at 7 p.m.
Saturday, in our faith tradition is an in-between day… unless you are Roman Catholic or follow a strict faith-based calendar. We sort of get a head start on Easter day here at Eden Prairie UMC by having an Easter Festival… Our Easter Festival is loads of fun with lots of things for kids to do.
Sunday is Easter Day; we’ll have three different services at 6:30, 8:30 and 10:00 a.m. Easter Day is both wonderful and challenging. It’s wonderful because there is something in the air we breathe in together that day. The anticipation of people being together, the thrill of a special day, the beauty of the music and the flowers. Easter day is challenging, because at some point each one of us is wondering, what is that something else that seems so real, so palatable, so tactile, that we cannot see or touch or smell or quite grasp in order to name.
This Easter we will use the image of the breath of God…the wind of God, the Holy Spirit of God and the relationship with Jesus Christ that comes with it to try to talk about what that something else is. Like all relationships, this relationship can be complicated, filled with questions and disagreements and most of all, mysteries. On Easter day whatever our relationship with Jesus has become, we celebrate the mystery of it all… And like all real mysteries the challenging or exhilarating thing about a relationship with Jesus is not so much explaining it or clarifying it but that we get to live into it. This living into the mystery of a relationship with Jesus is, if you ask me, what makes Easter so very real…and so very wonderful.
Keep the Faith,
Pastor Dan
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