This Changes Everything

The resurrection of Jesus changes everything. It has reoriented history, the world, the entire created order, and it should change us too. That’s why we take 50 days to celebrate resurrection. That’s why we keep shouting "Alleluia!" That’s why we meet every Sunday, because resurrection has changed everything.

The reality of resurrection must seep into the broadest spheres of our life, the most ‘unrelated’ because, as Chris mentioned Sunday night, resurrection touches everything, even our relationships and possessions. 

Resurrection gives us a picture of being fully human. It is humanity at its fullest potential. Not just resuscitated, not just un-dead, when the resurrected Lord Jesus appeared to his disciples he was glorified, somewhat unrecognizable, could appear out of nowhere, and could eat real food. 

And as we’ll see in this Sunday’s gospel (Luke 24:36-48), when Jesus appears to his disciples he teaches, he opens to them the narrative of the Scriptures - all that was written about him in the "Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms” (see Luke 24:44). Part of being fully human is seeing the Scriptures - Old and New Testaments - in light of who Jesus is and in light of the full humanity he’s calling us into.

Don’t let your Easter joy wane! Don’t let your “Alleluias!” diminish! Enter into Sunday worship with awe and expectation. Hear his holy word with reverence and humility. Feast at his holy table assured of your participation in his holy mysteries, and your place in his body, the church.  Let us take these Great 50 Days to learn from our Master and Teacher, Jesus, as he opens to us the Scriptures.


- Jay+

Christ is Risen! Now what?

Easter Sunday can be so exhilarating, but the days afterward can, especially for clergy, feel like a let down. We may experience that initial rush of joy, that thrill of hope as we shout our "Alleluias!" We may feel a sense of victory as we sing that our Lord has trampled over death by death, but what happens next? How do we go on living in light of the resurrection? This is the question for us in the great 50 days of the Easter season, and really a question at the heart of our faith. What does it mean to follow Jesus in the time between his resurrection and the time when all will be resurrected unto him? As we seek to answer these questions over the course of the Easter season, we will be hearing readings from the book of Acts. 

Acts is primarily a work of history that traces the movement of the gospel from Jerusalem, all over the Mediterranean, and onto Rome. But at the heart of the book is the preaching and teaching of the Apostles. At the center of Apostolic preaching is the proclamation of Christ crucified and Christ risen from the dead. From Peter's Pentecost sermon onward, the book of Acts documents the Apostolic witness to the death, burial, resurrection of Jesus Christ. And as people hear this message they believe, and as they believe, they are changed. The impact of Apostolic preaching has always been like this. Christ is proclaimed. People believe. People's lives are transformed. 

The reading from Acts 4 this Sunday gives us an especially vivid picture of this dynamic. In these verses Luke tells us that those who believed the Apostles' preaching were of "one heart and soul" and that they shared what they had to meet all the needs in the community (Acts 4:32). What an amazing testimony to the power of resurrection life that it can create a community like that! As we continue the process of becoming St. Bartholomew's, this vision of life together in Christ is so important for us to contemplate and to prayer towards. As we celebrate the whole season of Easter together, I encourage you to do just that, to pray into and live out of the resurrected life of Christ. 

- Chris+

Becoming St. Bartholomew’s

In October Bishop Philip Jones, rector of All Saints Dallas, our sending church, encouraged us to change our church’s name saying it made sense for All Saints East Dallas to have its own identity as we become our own entity. 

After a few months of prayer, discernment, and conversation, Jay recommended the name Saint Bartholomew’s. Presently, we are working through the several moving parts of becoming our own church including clarifying vision and values, incorporating with the State of Texas and federal government, and building out other pieces of organizational infrastructure with a July 1 internal launch, and a September 9 public launch. 

Stay tuned for more developments.

Deeply Devoted

Holy Week is the most important week of the Christian year, and we are in the thick of it. During Holy Week we remember and enter into Jesus’ final days and hours as he walked resolutely toward the cross. If ever you’ve wanted to enter into devotional acts to our Lord and savior, this is the week to do it. If Lent wasn’t working out the way you thought, this is the week to renew your disciplines and self-examination. If ever you wanted to be immersed in something bigger than yourself for the sake of the worship of almighty God, this is the week. 

Below are some things we’ll be doing together as a community as well as a description of the upcoming days.
 

Maundy Thursday, 7 pm

Maundy Thursday has a peculiar name, but the origins are very clear and specific. On this day we remember Jesus’ final evening with the disciples before he is betrayed, arrested, and eventually crucified. In John’s Gospel narrative (John 13), Jesus washes his disciples’ feet and gives them a “new commandment” in a beautiful act of self-giving (see 13:31ff). The Latin phrase for “new commandment” is mandatum novum and is the derivative for the word maundy.

Also on this evening, Jesus celebrates his final meal with his friends, which is the institution of the Lord’s Supper. During this meal he washes his disciples’ feet. Accordingly, on our Maundy Thursday service we will celebrate the last Holy Communion until Easter Day, and will include a time where we can wash each other’s feet. Afterwards the altar will be stripped of its accouterments and a somber foreshadowing of Christ’s suffering and death will be dramatized before us.
 

Good Friday, 12 pm

It is hard to imagine what is “good” about someone being crucified unjustly. But because we know the whole story, we know Good Friday is indeed good because it is God’s Friday. It is the watershed of all history. It is the moment in which he became sin, who knew no sin, that we might become the righteousness of God. To enter into contemplation of Jesus’ supreme and atoning sacrifice, we will meditate on the Stations of the Cross. We will remember 14 scenes of Christ’s walk down the path to Golgotha (called Via Dolorosa, or Way of Suffering) where finally he will be lifted up to draw all men to himself.
 

Holy Saturday (no services at ASED)

This is a day for quiet prayer, reflection, and meditating on God’s word. It’s a final moment of waiting for the victory we know is coming. It’s the day that Jesus laid in the tomb, a day when, for his friends and followers, all hope was lost. Perhaps it was a day he rested from his labors or even a day when the Enemy of God and his people thought he had finally conquered. But we know better. We know the rest of the story.
 

Easter Day, 5 pm

Where can we begin to describe the jubilation and utter celebration that will take place on this the day of resurrection?  Easter Day is the first day of the new creation, the day of our hope and longing and the feast that ends our Lenten and Holy Week fast. Not only this, but Easter Day begins the Great Fifty Days of Easter leading up to Pentecost. In these Fifty Days we remember Jesus’ appearances to his friends after his resurrection, and look forward to the coming of the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost.  

I hope you’re able to enter into the mysteries of God’s salvation in Christ this week. Join us for these services. Pray, read and meditate on God’s holy word, and let us watch with him these next few days. 

Blessings,

- Jay+

A New Exodus

Saying Morning Prayer Monday the lectionary took me to Exodus 3. There Moses is in the wilderness of Midian minding his business when a bush becomes engulfed in flames yet isn’t consumed. Moses discovers its God. He’s heard the cries of his people, the Hebrews, as they toil under the heavy burden of Pharaoh, and he wants to deliver them. Moses is his chosen man to carry out the job.

Sunday was a pivot moment for us. We turned to look squarely at Jesus’ death and resurrection in a new way in the season of Lent. The certainty of his trampling down death by death became all the more real as Jesus proclaimed, “the hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” Moses encountered a similar certainty. The hour had come for God to deliver his people from crushing slavery. Jesus knew he was about to deliver all people from everlasting slavery once and for all. 

The Exodus of the Hebrews beautifully prefigures the deliverance Jesus accomplishes in his own sacrifice, a new exodus. As we approach Palm Sunday, we draw nearer to the Passover of God when the blood of the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world will be shed for us. But not before we embody the duplicitous nature of humanity. One moment, in the opening of the service, praising Jesus with palms and processions, the next demanding “Crucify him! Crucify him!”

Come to church Sunday night, Palm Sunday, ready to worship God, encounter him, experience the joy of Jesus’ procession into Jerusalem and the depth of despair as he’s handed over to death. Holy Week will bring these events into sharp focus, and Palm Sunday begins it all with reverence and awe.


- Jay+

No Spring Break for Lent

Click here:
“You did it! Congratulations! World’s best cup of coffee!” A big claim for what ended up being a lackluster product as Buddy the Elf would later discover. 

You may not know it but you have also recently passed a milestone. We are roughly halfway between Ash Wednesday and Easter Day. “You did it! Congratulations! You made it halfway through Lent!” You may be tempted to stare back at me like the diner workers did at Buddy, but we ought to take a minute to see where we are. 

Next Sunday, the 5th in Lent, the lessons move more explicitly to Jesus’ coming crucifixion and sacrifice for the sins of the world. Palm Sunday (March 25) then follows and begins Holy Week in earnest as tensions rise and the drama of Christ’s passion grows. 

You will want to participate in as much of Holy Week as possible especially Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Day. 

We’re walking together and we’re getting closer to the great feast of victory. Don’t lose heart because our Lord Jesus Christ walks with us through the wilderness to Jerusalem. 


- Jay+

Grace Isn’t Convenient

In a recent op-ed piece called “The Tyranny of Convenience”, Tim Wu reflects on the potential negative dimensions of convenience. What happens to us when we have nearly everything at our fingertips? What expectations does that breed in us? How do we deal with difficulty when what we primarily experience is ease? Convenience, he says, for all its benefits, can also makes us selfish, can make us impatient, can make us lazy. What makes convenience tyrannical, Wu says, is that once you know convenience, it’s hard to break out of it; it’s hard to embrace difficulty once something has been made easy. But we must resist convenience,Wu concludes, and he ends his article with this admonition, “So let’s reflect on the tyranny of convenience, try more often to resist its stupefying power, and see what happens. We must never forget the joy of doing something slow and something difficult, the satisfaction of not doing what is easiest. The constellation of inconvenient choices may be all that stands between us and a life of total, efficient conformity.”

I read that and thought, “This is positively Lenten!” What I mean is that purposely embracing things in our lives that are slow and difficult could not be more countercultural, and yet also could not be more in line with Jesus’ own admonition to us that we must pick up our crosses and follow him daily. And yet we will never be able to embrace such inconvenience in our own power. We need help. We need God. We need his grace. 

Wu’s reflections on the “stupefying” power of convenience reminded me of a phrase from this Sunday’s Epistle reading, Ephesians 2:1-10. Paul says that in a state of deadness, in a state of sin, we follow “the course of this world.” We take the easy path, the way laid out for us by the world, the road of convenience. The only thing that can break us out, Paul says, is the richness of God’s mercy, being made alive in Christ by the grace he gives us in his son.

But Paul doesn’t stop there. After drawing our eyes upward to the “immeasurable riches of his grace in his kindness toward us”, he has his own admonishment that we should walk in good works. If we have a certain view of grace, it’s easy to see it as its own kind of convenience. If there’s grace, then that’s it, I’m done. But for Paul grace itself is the motivation for us to embrace “good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should talk in them”.

For me, this is what Lent is all about, remembering grace, leaning on grace, in order to be spurred on to good works. On the basis of grace, I can purposely embrace inconvenience for the sake of my soul. On the basis of grace, I can step off the course of the world so that I can pulled upward by grace and onward to good works. If that’s true, then my own admonition is, let’s embrace inconvenience together as we walk the Lenten path!


- Chris+

Lent is Doing Its Work

As we near the completion of two weeks in Lent, I’m noticing a few things about myself. Maybe they’re true for you too.

First, Lent is doing its work. If you’ll recall, on Ash Wednesday I called us all to the observance of a holy Lent by prayer, fasting, giving, repentance, self-denial, self-examination, and reading and meditating on God’s holy word (see Book of Common Prayer, p. 265). And if you’ve mindfully engaged in just one or two of these practices Lent is doing its work. Granted, it’s the Holy Spirit who is working on you, but by entering into Lent, you’re creating space for the Spirit to do so. 

I’ve noticed how dear the word of God is. St. Paul urges the Colossians to let the word of Christ dwell in them richly (Col 3:16). I’ve been surprised again by the power of the word; and having turned down the noise in much of my life, I now have space to hear more clearly that word and let it wash over me. Thanks be to God!

Secondly, Lent’s work is reminding me sinful I am. As God’s word washes over me, as I grow still in meditating upon his word and just waiting in his presence, my patterns of sin become more evident. Today at Morning Prayer (every Wednesday at 8:15 am in Lent) we read the parable of the sower and were reminded that so often the “cares of the world, the deceitfulness of riches, and the desire for things” can choke out the word of God. Yes, I’m raising my hand. That’s me.

And lastly, as a result of these things, I’m reminded how deep, how wide, how wide and  how long is the love of God in Christ Jesus. When I’m reminded of my sinfulness, I’m tempted to wallow in shame and self-pity. But Jesus, who went into the wilderness before us and goes with us even now, didn’t die so I could manage my sin with shame. He died to set me free, to lavish the love of God Almighty on me and every other person in this world. So acknowledging my sin, repenting from it, I then stop and breath and listen and allow the love of God, our Father, Abba, to wash over me. He does not treat us as our sins deserve but remembers we are dust (see Psalm 103). 

I hope Lent is doing its work in you. I hope that the Father who sees in secret has begun rewarding you. That the Holy Spirit, the very life of God in us, around us, has filled you afresh and anew, that even as you experience lack in earthly things, the riches of heaven abound in your heart and mind. And that the Son, who was courageous and considered equality with God something not to be exploited but humbled himself and made himself obedient to death on a cross, will bless you with shouts of joy and blessing this wilderness season.

Gratefully yours on the journey,
 

- Jay+