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SERMONS:
Pastor Peg posts her two most recent sermons on this page. If you are interested in reading more of her sermons you can go to pastorpeg.wordpress.com. Our Lenten and Easter sermon series is: For This I Rejoice, centering around the Letter of the Philippians. Enjoy.
Joyful New Life
April 20, 2025 Easter Sunday
Acts 10:34-43 John 20:1-18
Easter is the central High Holy day of Christianity. In the early church it was the first big celebration because this day was the culmination of everything that Jesus had done in his life, the seal of the promise of salvation, and God’s triumph of Life over the tyranny of Death.
Holy week was an eight day-celebration for a long time in Christianity. We’re used to Psalm Sunday, when Jesus entered Jerusalem; Holy Thursday, when Jesus had his last supper; Good Friday, when he died; and then Easter when he was resurrected. But the other four days were also celebrated.
Jesus did a lot during that week. He turned over the money lenders tables; he preached in the Temple; He foretold the destruction of the Temple; and he had a couple of confrontations with the Pharisees – the most famous one is the question about taxes. During Holy Week people would go to church every day and immerse themselves in what the disciples had experienced. The Good Friday service would end with the stripping of all decorations off the altar; taking down the cross or covering it with a black cloth; and dousing all the lights except for one candle for remembrance and mourning. People would then take turns praying in the church from Friday through Saturday. The phrase, “It’s Friday, but Sunday is coming!” was a traditional greeting for Christians for many centuries on Good Friday, because we cannot fully appreciate Easter if we do not acknowledge the pain and death of Good Friday.
On Easter morning at sunrise, people would arrive at church bringing flowers. The first part of the service would be people putting flowers and the decorations back on the altar, and uncovering or rehanging the cross, and lighting candles. The church would be transformed from something dark and tomb-like into a place of celebration.
Then the rest of the service would begin. And traditionally, in the early church, it was the day when all the people who wanted to become Christian would be baptized into their new faith. Which is why it is such a blessing that we are having a baptism today, in Bloomville. Communion was also part of the service and of course hymn singing. And sometimes there would even be a community feast. It was a joyful celebration of the Blessed Assurance of new life and continuous hope.
On Easter we celebrate that God incarnated Himself into Jesus and lived a full life with us. Jesus didn’t magically come to us as a fully formed man. He came to us as a baby and went through all the stages of life that we go through: Infant, toddler, child, pre-teen, teen, young adult, adult, and middle age to elderly. (Remember the average life span was around 30, so Jesus was heading into elder status when he started his preaching.) He went through all the emotional ups and downs, all the hormonal changes, and was probably subject to a couple of sniffly colds as well. He had his personal triumphs and his failures. He went through family and social dramas. He learned to read and write, and he needed to study and learn the scriptures the same as everyone else. And during that time, he taught us how to connect with our Divine Parent, and showed us how we can live in continual connection with God through being in continual connection with each other.
And then this divine and human being, living inside human flesh, was unjustly arrested, tried by a kangaroo court, and executed with the most painful and inhuman method of the time. When I think about what Jesus went through with his death, I realize that no matter what I go through that God gets it, because He experienced the worst pain and suffering that a person could have. We can now accept hardship with joy because we know that Christ has already confronted the worst, and God did not abandon him. And God will not abandon us in our hardships. This is why the cross is a symbol of both great sorrow and great joy.
And if this had been any other story, Jesus being laid in the tomb would have been the end of the story. The Temple authorities thought: Well, that’s taken care of. We’ve disposed of the leader of a crazy new movement. Now all of those pesky disciples of his will go back home and things will get back to normal. But this isn’t any other story, and on the third day, after the Passover was finished, the women went to the tomb to complete the burial preparations and rituals, which could not be finished on Friday because of the restrictions of the holiday.
But the tomb door was open, and they didn’t find a body. Instead they found angels with a message that Jesus was risen. They met Jesus himself, transformed into his glorious divinity. They went from sorrow to immense joy, because they now had proof-positive that everything that Jesus had told them was true. That there was a place after this one; that there was the certainty of eternal life. That it is offered to everyone, if only we believe and live our lives within that belief. That because of Jesus’ resurrection we do have a connection to God’s eternal love and life.
But Christianity is not some hocus-pocus; you are now baptized and are a member of the faith so nothing bad is ever going to happen to you again. The joys of Holy Week, which lead to the sorrows of Jesus’ passion, acknowledges that, like the disciples, we also have joys and sorrows. That we also live in a world where everything can turn upside down. That we also live with injustice and great loss and grief. That each of us at times have to carry great burdens, and that sometimes we have to give up significant parts of our lives to become something else. Yes, there is a resurrection after that, but Christ’s resurrection is not the end of all suffering but the power at work within us to endure suffering, and that something great can come out of it.
Our spiritual disciplines of prayer, worship, and service to each other are expressions of this resurrection power at work within us. They give us the strength to say that we rejoice, no matter our circumstances, because God gets what we are going through and he is with us, even in the worst situations.
So today let us remember and rejoice that our baptism has opened us up to receive the Holy Spirit. Let us remember and rejoice that God loves us and forgives us our sins. Let us remember and rejoice that no matter how hard our lives might get that God will always love us and give us strength. Let us remember and rejoice that we have been given the Blessed Assurance of eternal life, and that death has been swallowed up in the victory of the cross and the resurrection. Let us remember and rejoice that we can go forth today and love each other and ourselves, and that when we give all that love to others that we are loving God. And by our prayers and our actions of love, we are building God’s kingdom on this earth.
Today He is Risen. He is Risen Indeed.
The Joyful Entry
April 13, 2025 Palm Sunday
Philippians 2:5-11 Luke 19:28-40
Years ago, I read an interesting article, written by a teacher, on how she felt when she first started her teaching career. She was in her second year of teaching and feeling very discouraged. Being a teacher wasn't clicking for her, and she was really doubting her choice of career. Then one day she ran into a friend who had been in her college training-program, and she confessed to her that it just wasn't working out for her. The friend was surprised because in college she had been very positive and enthusiastic, and she believed that she would make a good teacher. After listening to her for a while, the friend said to her: You know, you're only going to get as much out of your job as you put into it.
Well, the young teacher went home and thought about that. She had already resolved to quit at the end of her second year, and she thought: Well, what have I got to lose? I might as well go out with a bang. So, she started to really think how she could make her lessons interesting and fun, and to teach it in the way that she would enjoy teaching. She started to create class projects, she brought in guest speakers that had to do with the subjects they were learning, and she pulled together some field trips that everybody enjoyed. And at the end of the year, when it was time to turn in her resignation, she realized that she was just enjoying herself too darn much to want to quit. She was working hard, but she was having a lot of fun doing it.
That's the thing about life – you’ve got to participate in it to get anything out of it.
In today’s passage, Paul says that Jesus, before he even came to live with us, was a being who had the power of God. Think for a minute about what God is. God is all knowing; God is all powerful; God can do anything. Jesus was all that before he incarnated. And yet Paul says that he gave all that up to be born into a human body, with all the aches and pains and limitations of what we can and cannot do. He lived, the helplessness that comes when we find ourselves weak and unable to go up against things in life that are just so overwhelming. Jesus was willing to go through being human to the point of dying. He didn't shirk from it; he accepted the whole package. All the good stuff and the bad stuff, he lived it. Even to the point of death on the cross, which was in the 1st century the absolute most painful and most shameful death that you could have.
I want you to think of the bookends of Christ's life. He wasn't even born in a house; he was born in the lowest meanest place imaginable: A stable. And he dies the worst possible death that you can imagine. If Jesus, as Paul points out, had all these wonderful powers before he gave them up to live as a human, and we know that he had amazing powers when he lived – What did he do that for? What was the point of all that radical participation in life?
Well, Jesus didn't do that for Jesus. He did it for us. To show us that God gets us. And because God really gets us, because Jesus lived it, God knows how we feel. God knows that we try our best, often with limited knowledge, to do the right thing and that we sometimes fail. And God forgives us for our failures: That's the point that Jesus hammered home when he was alive. Finally, he showed us that no matter how bad things get, no matter how awful the death and destruction, that there is a resurrection beyond that moment. Sometimes you can't see it; sometimes we don't believe it's there; but incredibly it is there and will happen.
He really gave up everything to give that to us. But there are two-part parts to giving. The other side is receiving.
The dominant image of Jesus in the gospels is that of a teacher giving wisdom or a healer giving health and vitality, so we tend to think of Jesus as a giver not a receiver. And yet, there are some really tender moments in the gospels where Jesus acts as the receiver. There are the moments when he accepts the gift of the woman who bathes his feet with her tears and oil, and when he accepts the oil for his head from Mary. A few times he even accepts rebukes and compliments from people. He always accepts thanks when people thank him for their healing. And one of the biggest thankyou’s that Jesus accepts in the Bible is when he rides into Jerusalem, and everyone is cheering and putting palms down on the road in front of him. He is accepting the love of people who believe in him.
I am sure that the disciples thought that this was a huge culmination of their hard work over the last three years. See what we did! We were out in the wilderness going from town to town, preaching and healing, and now all those people that we reached are here in Jerusalem for the Passover, and they're cheering Jesus. And they're also cheering us. We are no longer a ragtag band of holy men. We have legitimacy. We have arrived.
Life is like that. We do have moments of greatness that are great! You're doing well and everything has fallen into place, and we do need to celebrate them with joy. But life also changes and suddenly something happens and things fall apart. It could be a natural disaster, it could be an economic downturn, it could be an illness. Something in the world shifts or you didn't reckon with a force that you didn't think was important. None of us can see everything all the time and we get caught out when our lives change. That's what happened to the disciples during Holy Week. They went from the super-high entry into Jerusalem to the super-low of the arrest, trial, and crucifixion.
And they wondered for themselves: What the heck did I do for the last three years? I gave up everything to follow this guy and this is where it led?
The teacher in my article expected great things when she was learning how to teach. Then she got into the real world, and she had to reconcile the fact that it wasn't just going to all come to her and fall into place immediately. It wasn't all going to happen in a flash. Satisfaction had to be worked on. The joy had to be found in the participation of the work. She gave joy and then she received joy.
The disciples also had to sacrifice all those expectations that they might have had of Jesus becoming a new Messiah king that they thought Jesus was going to be. But then, once the resurrection happened, they received the joy of knowing that they were building God's Kingdom. But it had to be worked on. They found their joy in the participation of building God's Kingdom. And it is amazing how joyous the disciples became after the resurrection, when they knew with certainty that they were working for the eternal and glorious God. They were all in, and like Paul, they received immense joy as they did their work in the spirit of love that Jesus had given them.
Sometimes it’s discouraging because you feel like you're just plodding through life. Sometimes you don't want to put in the effort because you don't seem to get getting anything out of it. I put in all that effort and nobody cares, and I’m not going anywhere with this; nobody's paying attention and there's no motivation for me to go on. That happens to all of us. The rote routine of the everyday drag can really get us down. That's what happened to that young teacher. She did the job, she followed the curriculum, but there was nothing of her in the work that she was dutifully doing. But then she dug into herself. She said: How can I make this great and how can I find joy in the process? And she found it. Sometimes we have to say to the routine: How can we rethink this to make it fun and enjoyable and bring joy to others in the process?
And all effort takes some sacrifice, because you do have to give up something else to get it done and to find joy. Maybe we have to give up an I can’t do it attitude. Maybe we have to give up watching a TV show to help our neighbor. I knew someone who gave up his afternoon vending machine snack and then set aside the money and donated it to mission projects that his church did. But if Jesus gave up everything to live like we do, I guess I can give up a little of my time and effort to make the world a better place.
And it's not always going to be perfect, and sometimes you do have to walk away from a really bad situation. But to give of your best to create something good it's never truly wasted in this world. And part of our faith is that even if we might not see what the result of our efforts lead to, we know that it is in God's hands, and there will be a resurrection of something glorious.
So as we celebrate Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, lets thank him for everything he gave up for us, so that we could learn a better way of living. And let’s go forth today with a joyous intention to be His people in the wo