The Pastor’s Pen
As you and I journey through life we find ourselves living in particular places or locations. I’m thinking not only of physical or geographic locations, like a hometown or a college dormitory. I’m thinking also of emotional locations, like grief or contentment or restlessness – and of stage-of-life locations, like adolescence or parenthood or retirement. In the course of a lifetime we live in a variety of “locations.” Where are you living right now? What place or location do you find yourself in?
During our mid-week Lenten services this year we will be visiting some of the locations where Jesus lived. Using the Gospel of Mark as our guide, we will travel with Jesus from the Jordan River where he was baptized, all the way to the tomb outsideJerusalemwhere he was raised from the dead.
On our Lenten journey we’ll stop off in Capernaum where some people brought their lame friend to Jesus so that he could be healed. We’ll find ourselves caught in a storm with Jesus and the disciples out on the sea. We will visit a cemetery where Jesus encountered a man who was being tormented by demons. We’ll travel to King Herod’s palace for the gruesome beheading of John the Baptist. And we’ll enter the temple in Jerusalem where Jesus overturned the tables of the money changers. During Holy Week we will join Jesus and the disciples in a large upstairs room as they share the Passover meal, and we will stand at the foot of the cross atGolgothaas Jesus is cruelly put to death.
Part of what I think we’ll discover on our Lenten journey is that the places where Jesus spent time in his life are not all that different from the places where we spend time in our lives. Jesus’ locations and our locations often intersect – places of challenge, places of opportunity, places of surprise. There is no place you and I can go, in fact – there is no location in which we might find ourselves – in which Jesus is not already there. Part of the good news of Lent is that Jesus meets us in all the different locations of our lives.
Our journey begins with a 7:00 p.m. service on Ash Wednesday, February 22, and it continues up until Easter Sunday. Will you plan on joining us on our journey? I hope that you will, because even though it might not be an easy journey (traveling with Jesus is seldom easy!), it’s a journey in which I know each of us will be blessed.
See you in worship,
Pastor Selbo
