Monthly Message | April

Grace and peace to you!

In a popular and powerful scene from the series, The Chosen, which some have been watching and discussing — and you are invited to join in those discussions! — Jesus says to the tax collector Matthew, “Follow me,” and Simon Peter, already one of Jesus’s disciples, is surprised by this and isn’t happy about it since he doesn’t like Matthew the tax collector. He says to Jesus, “This is different.” And Jesus says to Simon, “Get used to different.”

“Different” is what Jesus is all about and why He came and continues to come into our lives, and “different” is a good way to describe our faith in Jesus. The beginning of April is Holy Week, which is full of how Jesus shows us DIFFERENT! He enters Jerusalem on a humble donkey, He washes His disciples’ feet (What!? He washes the feet of people whom He knows will betray and deny Him!?), He dies one of the most agonizing deaths (this is whom we worship — a man nailed to a cross. That’s different!). Then comes resurrection on Easter, which made and continues to make everything different in people’s lives! Sin and death are forever defeated. We are saved and have life with Jesus. We become new — different — each day because of Jesus. Our sins washed away, freeing us. Freeing us to think differently, to discern — as individuals and as a church congregation — what we can do that’s different, or new, in our lives, in the life of St. Mark, in our serving Jesus.

A few months ago, we began something different and new at St. Mark — we started a food pantry. It has been a great success in that people in our communities are using it. We would love it if food banks and food pantries weren’t needed. But they are, and St. Mark’s food pantry is helping individuals and families in need. Maybe you feel called to help this ministry by bringing in food for the pantry, donating money, or helping to stock it.

Maybe you feel called toward something else that may be different or new to St. Mark in serving God and our communities. I invite you to share your ideas — and they don’t have to be these big, grand ideas, just little things (yes, I know I have written similar words before, but it is a good practice to do in our lives — thinking about things we’d like to do, or if there is a hobby or something you enjoy doing in your life where “church” and ministry also can happen). I also will continue planning to do new and different things. One I am looking to do soon is invite

people (anyone from St. Mark and anyone from our communities) to join me at a local place, maybe for a cup of coffee, and just talk about whatever is on people’s minds. I’ll announce the time and place a day or two before and see who comes. Maybe no one will come, maybe several will come. When something is new and different, you never know!

Easter and the Easter season are perfect times to think about new and different. It is who Jesus is and what He gives us — resurrection, new life, seeing things differently thanks to God’s Holy Spirit that dwells in us! Think of how new and different it had to be when those first followers of Jesus, on that first Easter, saw an empty tomb and proclaimed, in so many words, “Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!”

Pastor David