Devotional Messages

DEVOTIONAL MESSAGE

Psalm 118:20, 22-23, 25-26a – This is the gate of the Lord; the righteous shall enter through it. … The stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone.  This is the Lord’s doing; it is marvelous in our eyes. … Save us, we beseech you, O Lord!  O Lord, we beseech you, give us success!  Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord. (NRSV)

We are about to begin the most important week of our faith.  And fasten your seat belts, because it’s a pretty wild ride!  Psalm 118 is often read on both Palm Sunday and Easter, with different verses used on each occasion.  It covers a lot of ground.  There is our utter neediness, our incapacity to understand how God works in our world, and our deep, if flawed, desire to be righteous.  But mostly, there’s an incredible wonder at what God is doing.

Holy Week is such an intense experience because it touches on the most dramatic acts of God, but also on the full gamut of human experience.  It’s tempting to skip straight from the jubilant crowd on Palm Sunday to the joyful celebration of Easter, but to do that is to miss the point.  To skip Maundy Thursday and Good Friday and Holy Saturday would turn our faith into a trivial get-together, with no power to speak to our own suffering and trouble.

So I hope you will join us in worship this Sunday, next Thursday and next Sunday, to revive your faith by remembering and re-enacting this most important story together.  We gather as the Body of Christ, to remember how Christ’s body was treated and what it became.  The intersection of humanity and divinity elevates our experience of our human lives, inviting us into life beyond life.

Blessed is the One who comes in the name of the Lord!  Let us make our hearts ready to welcome Christ into our midst once again!