The Weekly View

Sunday, April 11, 2021

Dear St. Luke Family,

Happy Easter!  While we celebrated the Resurrection on Sunday, we now enter the season of Easter, when we spend time figuring out what the Resurrection means for us.  For the next few weeks, the lectionary Scripture passages show Jesus struggling to convince the disciples – and all the generations of disciples who follow them – what happened.  This week we meet the disciple Thomas, who, very unfairly in my opinion, ended up with the nickname “Doubting Thomas.”  But rather than lecture you on why doubt is not only normal but perhaps a necessary element of faith, I’m going to tell you a story. 

For centuries, in Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant countries, Easter Monday and “Bright Sunday” (the Sunday after Easter) were observed by the faithful as “days of joy and laughter.”  These celebrations were rooted in the musings of early church theologians that Easter was “God’s supreme joke played on death.”  Risus paschalis – “the Easter laugh,” the early theologians called it. 

There is, in fact, something intrinsically funny about theology.  As one writer puts it, “How can we hope to grasp the significance of God’s self-revelation in Scripture when we can’t even discern the meaning of ‘Dancing with the Stars’”?  It reminds me of an old “Peanuts” cartoon.  Snoopy is on top of his doghouse tapping away on his typewriter.  Charlie Brown looks up and says, “I hear you’re writing a book on theology.  I hope you have a good title.”  Snoopy takes his hands off the keyboard for a second, thinking, “I have the perfect title…” and then he imagines the title: “Has It Ever Occurred to You That You Might Be Wrong?”

So this Sunday, I’ll tell a light-hearted story, very loosely modeled on “The News from Lake Wobegon” from “A Prairie Home Companion.”  Very.  Loosely.  Join us Sunday for “The News from Bayview Drive.”

Grace and peace,
Joanne Whitt
Interim Pastor

Sunday, March 28, 2021

Dear St. Luke family,

This Sunday we begin Holy Week.  When I was a child, we went straight from the “Hosannas” of Palm Sunday to the jubilation of resurrection on Easter.  As someone asked me a few years ago, “Why would we want to revisit the events of Holy Week when we know how it ends?” 

It’s a worthy question.  I suspect there are many good answers, but I’ll give you mine:

The stories we hear during Holy Week show us that Jesus’ life, teachings, choices, and most especially his fidelity to God increasingly challenge the powers of this world.  He moves from being a nuisance to being a threat.  I do not believe God required Jesus to die or wanted Jesus to die.  I believe Jesus was willing to stay true to the truest truth he knew: the love of God for all people.  His death was the natural and human consequence of that fidelity.  As he makes his holy way toward a very human death, God’s love for the human family is revealed to us in its fullest.  The message is not that suffering is good, or that God wants Jesus or anyone else to suffer.  In fact, we learn that suffering is tragic, the opposite of God’s will.  It is my belief, based on what we see of Jesus in Scripture, that God weeps when God’s beloved children suffer.  And so, we learn that there is no place we can go, no depth to which we can plunge, no farthest shore to which we can flee, that God is not with us.  Nothing can separate us from the love of God, not even death.  What could possibly be more meaningful than to gather for worship again and again in the span of a week to remember, give thanks and stand in awe of God’s wondrous love? 

There is also the issue of contrast.  To journey with Jesus to the depths of betrayal, denial and crucifixion also has a way of raising our spirits to new heights on Easter morning.  When we call out, “Christ is risen; he is risen indeed!” it rings with a more exuberant joy and resonant truth because we have experienced the darkness.  

At St. Luke, we will gather on Maundy Thursday at 7:00 p.m. on Zoom.  “Maundy” comes from the Latin word that means “mandate,” and it refers to the new commandment Jesus gave to his disciples in the Upper Room – that we love one another as Jesus loved us (John 13.31-35).  We will observe Maundy Thursday with communion, contemplative Taizé chants, and prayers.  And we will gather on Good Friday at noon on Zoom with music and art that retells the story of Christ’s crucifixion, and centers on the seven last words of Jesus.

But first, we will worship together this Sunday, Palm Sunday, a day of irony on which Jesus is celebrated as a king, but we know what’s coming.  The crowd shouts “Hosanna!” which means “Save us!” or “Rescue us!” in Hebrew.  Scott Black Johnston asks, “When we wave our palms and boldly cry out, ‘Hosanna,’ do we dare imagine what we really want God to save us from?”  Maybe Holy Week is a chance to explore that question.

See you Sunday,

Grace and peace,
Joanne Whitt
Interim Pastor

Sunday, March 21, 2021

Dear St. Luke family,

We’re just a bit over a week away from Holy Week, the week before Easter.  Churches around the world observe Holy Week with many different traditions and forms of worship.  The week includes five days of special significance:

• Palm Sunday, celebrating Jesus’ arrival in Jerusalem, a story told in all four Gospels;
• Maundy Thursday, remembering the night Jesus shared a Passover meal with his disciples on the night he was betrayed, and that set our pattern for the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper;
• Good Friday, the day Jesus was tried, convicted, and crucified;
• Holy Saturday, sometimes observed with an Easter Vigil;
• Easter Sunday, or Resurrection of the Lord Sunday, the day we celebrate Christ’s resurrection and victory over death.

The passage we’ll be exploring this Sunday points us toward Holy Week.  Unlike the other three Gospels, in John’s Gospel, Jesus always knows the future and walks willingly into it.  When two strangers tell one of his disciples they’d like to see Jesus, Jesus responds by telling them, essentially (but using John’s typically obscure and poetic language), “If you want to see me, this is what you will see: You will see that If you want to live, really live, you have to learn to give your life away; you have to learn how to die, like me.” 

Learn to die?  Yikes!  But remember, this is the same Jesus that says, in this very Gospel, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” (John 10:10).  Too often the Church has assumed Jesus means life after death but that was not Jesus’ concern.  So, what does it mean, for us, as followers of Jesus, to die in order to live – and not just survive, but live abundantly?  Will strangers who wish to see Jesus see him in us? 

And what can Holy Week teach us about all this?  We’ll observe Holy Week at St. Luke with Palm Sunday Zoom worship, a contemplative Maundy Thursday Zoom service of prayer and communion including music from the Taizé tradition, a Good Friday Zoom service of the Seven Last Words of Jesus, an in-person outdoor sunrise service at 6:30 a.m. on Easter morning (masks and social distance required), and festive Easter Sunday Zoom worship with communion at 10:00 a.m.

See you Sunday ~

Grace and peace,
Joanne Whitt
Interim Pastor