Nothing...

Romans 8:38-39 (CEB)
I’m convinced that nothing can separate us from God’s love in Christ Jesus our Lord: not death or life, not angels or rulers, not present things or future things, not powers or height or depth, or any other thing that is created.

This is Holy Week. Beginning with Palm Sunday, with shouts of praise, we witness to what God is doing in Jesus. We move with the crowd, noticing that there are fewer around us on Maundy Thursday. Maundy Thursday is the day we recognize God’s mandate to love as Jesus has showed us to love. And still the crowd dwindles for the toughest day: Good Friday. It is there that Jesus is betrayed, arrested, denied, beaten, and nailed on a cross and died.

This week is a tough one by any stretch of the imagination. What we are invited to see is how we might be part of what God has done in Jesus. Jesus was not sent to die so that God could somehow love us. Instead Jesus’ death shows us how much God loves us by entering into our world, living among us, and knowing the pain of betrayal and death.

We are resurrection people. Christians are invited into a love story that says that nothing can separate any of us from the love of God we know in Jesus Christ. Jesus died because he made people uncomfortable in knowing that to be fully alive is to fully give yourself to others. It is one teaching that we struggle with and one that we are invited to live into, God helping us all.

May God, who sustained our Lord Jesus in the hour of his trial, under-gird you with faith and hope and love during this Holy week.

Grace and peace,
Rev. Brian