The following is a conversation that my wife had with our five year old daughter, which she subsequently posted on Facebook.
Yesterday I was talking to the kids about Good Friday and Isabel said it should be called Sad Friday. She thought about it a minute and said that it is Happy Friday because Jesus died for our sins.
Out of the mouths of babes.
Yesterday I was telling some of my co-workers about our church’s upcoming Maundy Thursday service. Typically, our church celebrates the Passion Week with a Maundy Thursday fellowship dinner and communion service; a Good Friday service of confession; and then regular Easter Sunday services (of which most are familiar). As one of the few Presbyterians around the office, all of my Baptist & Pentecostal friends had no clue about Maundy Thursday — in fact, one person even commented that it sounded rather cultish. Hopefully, this ensuing explanation removed all doubt about the Christian relevance of the celebration.
“Maundy Thursday” refers to the Thursday follwing Jesus’ regal entry into Jerusalem on which he gathered with his twelve disciples to celebrate the Passover with them. The Passover was traditionally a time for those gathered to recount to one another and celebrate the great stories of God’s mighty acts of Salvation.
The term Maundy comes from the Latin word mandatum (from which we get the English word mandate), from a verb that meants ‘to give,’ or ‘to order.’ The term is usually translated ‘commandment,’ from John’s account of this Thursday night Passover meal during which, according to John, Jesus rose and washed the disciples’ feet to illustrate the unique, upside-down sort of leadership by servanthood that was to characterize citizens in the Kingdom of God. As they walked to Gethsemane after the meal and this surprising illustration, Jesus said:
A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; even as I have loved you, you also ought to love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. — John 13:34-35
Just as we did in our fellowship around the Maundy Thursday dinner table, I encourage you to recount to one another the great stories of God’s mighty acts of salvation: Who IS this Jesus? When all is said and done, what DID he do — really? And WHY was it necessary for us? We say he is still physically living and working today — tell stories of his continuing work today!
We have a rotation among our church’s Session to fill the pulpit whenever there is a fifth Sunday in a month (though it gets moved around sometimes for the sake of convenience). Until recently, it worked out to about once a year for each of us (now that we have added two more elders the gap will be longer). Before yesterday, the last time I was up was on December, 31 2006. I was next scheduled to preach back in January of this year, but circumstances delayed the event until yesterday … with the only difference being 1) it was not a fifth Sunday, and 2) the passage was assigned.
Unfortunately, we are currently experiencing technical difficulties (a hardware driver issue in XP). Hopefully I will have an audio version for you next time.
Sermon Date: 04/20/2008
Sermon Passage: Matthew 6:16-24
Sermon Title: Life Coram Deo
I have been waiting for some time for folks within the Dispensational Premillenialism camp to accuse Barack Obama of being the Anti-Christ. Finally, when we are well into the 2008 presidential campaign cycle, the warning message has filtered its way into the mainstream media. On its heels comes the shocking revelation that Barack Obama may actually be the Messiah. As a casual observer, the latter seems to be the more widely held public opinion (no doubt fueling the eschatological concerns).
It is fascinating. I mean, really, fascinating. It is a window into what the multitudes must have been blogging about when Jesus walked through the countryside. In fact, it was exactly what they were blogging about. They were wild and frenzied with uncontrolled hope for exactly the same reasons … they had no real spiritual awareness, per se; Jesus was going to be the guy who finally got the country in order.
Talking Jesus Dolls Vanish: It makes the Lifeway catalog look positively evangelistic! At least the abominations of the medieval church were not made in China.