On this weekend after Easter our gospel lesson transports us back to Easter night. We will hear how the risen Christ comes to stand among the disciples who are still locked up in a room terrified of what might happen next. Jesus had been crucified and buried. That morning when Mary Magdalene had gone to the tomb she found Jesus’ body was missing. After encountering the risen Christ in the garden, Mary had told his disciples, “I have seen the Lord,” but they do not yet believe her. They still doubt. They continue to be overwhelmed by fear. Then Jesus himself shows up with a greeting of peace. He shows them the wounds on his hands and side. Suddenly, there is great rejoicing. Christ is risen!

All the disciples are there in the room with Jesus except for one. For reasons we will never know, Thomas is missing. When he hears the news that the disciples have now seen the Lord, too, Thomas doesn’t believe them. He doubts. He needs to see with his own eyes and touch Jesus’ wounds with his own hands.

In the midst of his doubting, Thomas is surrounded by a community of people who keep proclaiming to him the good news. They keep telling him their story. The other disciples aren’t scared of Thomas’ doubt. They do not push him away. Just one week later, this time when Thomas is there with the other disciples, too, Jesus shows up once again. Thomas gets to see him. He gets to touch Jesus’ wounds. His doubting is then turned to joy, too.

This Easter story offers us a wonderful image of what the church might be today. The church can be a place where we tell our stories of having seen the risen Lord over and over again. We keep sharing our faith because we need to bear witness to our stories and because those stories might help carry someone through their life’s challenge. At the same time, the church can be a community where doubt is welcomed and acknowledged because we trust in a God who shows up even when we don’t believe it is possible. We can both believe and doubt together.

This weekend is our annual Youth Sunday weekend. We will hear the reflections of some of our graduating high school seniors who will share about their faith journey. As I was working with one of these wise young people on their reflection they said to me, “I want to believe in God, but sometimes it is hard.” I told them there was no truer statement of faith than that.

I encourage you to come be inspired by our young people of all ages who will stand up this weekend to lead us in worship in faith and in doubt, trusting that God will show up in our midst. Draw strength from their stories. Share in their joy. Affirm the importance of their witness among us not just on Youth Sunday, but throughout the year. See the church at work in and through them.

Thank you - all of you - for being the amazing community of faith that you are. I am grateful for you, especially all of the ways you came together as a community to make Holy Week and Easter the experience that it was. It took a lot of hands - pouring communion, to waving people into parking spaces, to greeting people as they walked in the door, to vacuuming the sanctuary, to setting out flowers, to stuffing bulletins, to picking up signs on the side of the road, to so much more. Thank you!

Tonight we enter into the Great Three Days as we take our final steps with Jesus to the cross and the grave. We know that Easter is coming, but first we enter into this most holy time of preparation. These are the holiest days of the year for those of us who follow Jesus.

I’m looking forward to journeying with you through these Great Three Days again this year. There are lots of opportunities for worship, so please take advantage of them! There are three services on Good Friday - 12:00 noon, 6:45 p.m. (Children’s Service) and 7:45 p.m. On Easter Sunday we will again worship at three services - 8:30, 10:00 and 11:15 a.m. (note that none of them are at our regular service times!). If you are able, please take advantage of the overflow parking at the Burke School and shuttle bus on Easter Sunday. If you cannot do the overflow parking, don’t worry. Come anyway! We’ll have spot waiting for you in the church parking lot.

When we say, “All are Welcome” at Abiding Presence, we really do mean all. So, bring your friends, your neighbors, the people you love and the people who may drive you a little crazy, too. Come! It’s going to be a great celebration on Easter Sunday as we proclaim with joy, “Christ is Risen!” Christ’s resurrection is good news for everyone!

But first…first come these next three days. Wherever you are and whatever you are doing in these coming days, I encourage you to pause. Sit. Breath. Pray. Read the story of Christ’s Passion (John 18:1-19:42). Be still and experience the holiness in the midst of all the ordinary around us. I promise, the joy of Easter will be much greater if you first take time to first journey to the cross and to the grave.

For a reason I have long since forgotten, I mentioned the word “Alleluia” at one of our recent family meals. “Mom,” my daughter immediately scolded me, “You cannot say that. That’s a sin.” I tried to make the theological point of why it probably wasn’t nearly as much of a sin as she thought, but I quickly realized this was not a battle I was going to win. She had been taught that Lent meant giving up the word “Alleluia” everywhere, all the time, from Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday without exception. My violation equated to a sin, without exception.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve missed “alleluia.” I’ve missed the joy it brings. By this point in the season of Lent, I’m ready to be done. Especially with Easter falling so late in April this month, I’m just ready to move on. Can’t we hurry this Lenten journey up already? Yet, the church year will keep us in Lent for two more weeks. Two more weeks of trudging along to get to the cross. We’re close, but we’re not there yet.

For many of us, this is probably a good thing for there is still Lenten work around the disciplines of Lent to be done. How have you been engaging the disciplines of repentance, fasting, prayer and works of love? What have you done fully? What do you still need time to be able to do? What aspects of the disciplines do you need to engage in order to be ready for the joy of alleluia on Easter morning? Think about it. Pray about it. Act on it. There’s still time! You don’t have to be ready for Easter yet.

Here in the church, we’re far from ready! We still need many of you to sign up to help make Easter morning possible. So, if you will be here Easter Sunday, please plan to lend a hand to enable the celebration.

As Abiding Presence continues our Lenten journey, we’re also in full planning mode for Easter Sunday…and…we need your help! In order to make Easter Sunday the festive, joyful and smooth-running morning of worship we want it to be, we need lots and lots and lots of members of our faith volunteer to get involved. Here are a few of the options of what you can do:

·       Sing with the adult choir. Even if you don’t usually sing with the choir, you can join them for Holy Week and Easter. More information, including the practice schedule, is available here or by talking with David Chavez, Music and Worship Minister.

·       Be a worship assistant. We need greeters, ushers, readers, assisting ministers, communion assistants, acolytes and crucifers for all three services. In fact, we need 63 worship assistants across our three services! Children are welcomed and encouraged to serve with a parent. Email Alissa Salamone, Volunteer Worship Coordinator, if you can help and what service you plan to attend.

·       Host the petting zoo. There are two shifts 9:30-10:30 and 10:30-11:30 for which we need hosts out on the lawn to welcome people to the petting zoo and hand out hand sanitizer. Sign up here.

·       Serve on the parking team. We need people in the parking lot at Abiding Presence to create a safe environment as they direct traffic, maximize parking and welcome people to the church. Sign up here.

·       Host the offsite parking. We have secured offsite parking at the Burke School, but we need people there throughout the morning to welcome people and direct them to the church. Sign up here.

·       Host the crosswalk. An off duty police officer will be at the intersection of Lee Chapel Rd and Britford Drive to facilitate safe crossing of the street and turning. We need volunteers to take shifts helping to host the crosswalk to support the work of the officer by asking people to wait to cross until the designated time. Sign up here.

Connecting People to Christ through Community is the mission we share at Abiding Presence. It is our way of life as the people of God in this place. This mission is how we follow Jesus’ Great Commission to make disciples. (You can read Jesus’ Great Commission in Matthew 28:16-20.) We live it out every day as we open our doors to enable connections to form among our neighbors with one another, the Abiding Presence community and Christ.

Last weekend the Church Council and I invited you to help us think about our core values as a congregation. As part of our year of “Making Firm the Foundation,” we want to intentionally think about what the core values are that will shape our discernment around ministry, staffing and facility planning. We distributed in worship as survey of 16 possible core values and asked the congregation to mark what they see as the top three core values for Abiding Presence. Three core values rose clearly to the top:

·       All Are Welcome

·       Family Centered (both “We are a Family” and “Bring Your Family”)

·       We are God’s Hands and Feet in the World

Coming out far above any others, All Are Welcome was lifted up by nearly 70% of those who responded as one of their top core values. When we say “all are welcome” at Abiding Presence, we really do mean all. No matter who you are, what your background or what your current situation might be, you are welcome in this community of faith. We invite you to get connected with the church, build relationships with other followers of Jesus and grow in your faith. We want you to invite others, knowing that they will be welcomed, too.  

Family Centered is who we are at Abiding Presence, both in the way we operate as a faith family and in the way we create a community where families of all different shapes and sizes are welcome. We are an intergenerational church where people of all ages are valued, engaged in ministry and seen as integral to the life of our community. Ministry with children, youth and families are one of our congregation’s strengths. Our worship seeks to provide an environment where families experience grace as they teach their children how to worship. (As a side note, I think “Family Centered” needs a bit of wordsmithing to wrap everything it means into a catchy phrase, so I would love to hear your ideas of better phrases to capture what this core value means.)

Our faith community understands our calling to be that We are God’s Hands and Feet in the World. This is a common phrase we use around Abiding Presence as we seek to serve God and God’s people. As the body of Christ in the world today, we are often the only hands God has to minister to a person or situation. Our feet might be the ones God is nudging to go to provide care. This year we are focusing on “every member serves” as a way to live out this core value across our congregation.

While these three core values hit the top of our quick survey in worship last weekend, I think there is another core value out there in our community that the survey didn’t quite capture. One of the things I will be working on in the coming weeks is how to best articulate it. So, stay tuned!

For those of you who participated in the survey last weekend, thank you! For those of you who didn’t have the chance, don’t worry! There will be more opportunities in the coming weeks to be part of the discernment as we together look to the future and go about the work of “Making Firm the Foundation” of Abiding Presence. I’m excited to see how the Holy Spirit will stir within us as the people of  God in this place.

We all know crucifixion is painful. It’s hard to even think about it without cringing in pain. Yet it wasn’t until I got to reading Adam Hamilton’s Last Words that I realized the implications of crucifixion on speaking. Hamilton explains that in order to speak from the cross, Jesus would have had “to pull himself up by the nails in order to expand the diaphragm to speak.” The pain he must have gone through to speak gives his final words great impact. They are words for us to take to heart as we think about what it means to be followers of Christ today.

If you haven’t already signed up, I invite you to join one of our small groups this Lent that will look at Jesus’ final words together. The small groups will run for five weeks beginning this coming week. If you’ve never participated in a small group or a Bible Study before, don’t worry! You’ll be in good company of people who are giving it a try for the first time. There’s no required preparation. You can read along chapter-by-chapter in the book if you would like. If not, you’ll still easily be able to jump into the discussion. If you’ve been looking for that “next step” in getting to know people at Abiding Presence and/or growing in your relationship with Jesus, the midweek Lenten small group experience would be perfect.

On Ash Wednesday we heard the invitation to the Disciplines of Lent - repentance, prayer, fasting and works of love. I encourage you to be intentional in your response to the invitation to add these disciplines into your life for the next six weeks in intentional ways. Joining a small group - even if it takes you a little outside of your comfort area - might be a great place to start!

Every Sunday Pastor Heidi or I stand behind the altar at the time of Holy Communion and offer the invitation, “This is the Lord’s Table and all are welcome here.” Most Sundays when I am behind the altar, you hear me say it twice so that I am book-ending the instructions on how to receive Holy Communion. Why? Because I want to make sure you don’t miss the message. I want to give it a minute to sink in so you realize that “all” means you. It also means those who you might not realize are welcome alongside you at the Lord’s Table.

Here at Abiding Presence, “all” really does mean all...everyone...no exception. Why? Because the communion table isn’t our table. When you get down to it, Abiding Presence isn’t really our church either. It’s Jesus’. It’s Jesus’ communion table and Abiding Presence is Jesus’ church. When we look at Jesus’ witness - his life, death and ministry - we see that the kingdom of God has come near for the sake of the world that God’s so loves. God’s desire is for everyone to believe in Jesus - everyone, without exception. In Jesus, God’s kingdom came near for you and for me, the faith and the not so faithful, the people we agree with and the people we don’t, the people we love and the people we strongly dislike (note: I didn’t use the word “hate”…remember last week’s sermon?). We are not the gatekeepers of the kingdom of God. That’s a position far over our heads best left to God alone! Instead, we are inviters to and proclaimers of the good news of Jesus, which is good news that God wants all people to hear. Our Lutheran proclamation that “all are welcome” is good news that needs to be shared.

I hope this week that you will take a few moments to prayerfully consider who in your life needs to hear the good news of Jesus. Who do you know that needs to hear that God’s love is for them? How might God be calling you to be an inviter to and proclaimer of that good news that Jesus came for them, too? Think about it. Prayer about it. Act on it. There’s a world out there that God loves and God wants to hear the good news of Jesus and we are the hands, feet and voice God has to proclaim it.