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From Your Pastor

Mar 7

To the First Presbyterian Church family,

March 9 is the first Sunday in Lent, and we are picking back up in the liturgical seasons, started back in November. We’ve talked about this in past correspondences (click here for more on the church seasons and here for the Lectionary and its suggested scriptures) but once again, the overall point is following the journey of God’s people and their redeemer, Jesus Christ. Lenten paradigms are instructive for us now, and I’d like to highlight a few here, just for consideration over the next six weeks. Obviously, there’s not enough space here to unpack all of them, but Lent is the time for pondering and reflection, not necessarily for full-stop answers.

First, Jesus spoke proudly of his transience in his ministry life. Along with this, He made frequent mention of His citizenship, the citizenship of His whole movement, and how different it was from other citizenships. His ascension into Heaven ultimately showed where He belonged, and the fact that He’ll return for us, but that of course runs ahead of Lent. In the here and now, as many in our own community are housing insecure, in various stages of American citizenship documentation, and other states of transience, I hope we can have Lenten compassion. Again, we are not called to have all the answers for these problems (at least I certainly don’t) but rather just walk with others, as Jesus did. Given their presence right here in Norristown, we have numerous opportunities to do so.

Next, Jesus came into an immensely divided and complicated time. I already preached about this as well in our Advent series, but it is overly simplistic to look at our current situation as “simple.” We have to embrace the shades of gray and see how complicated things are now, as opposed to the simple “X is good” and “Y is bad” and that dictates our support, money, vote, etc. Conversely, the answer of “it’s complicated” can be an easy out to not work on the problem. Jesus came into a similar environment, yet He never oversimplified things nor took the easy way out. He cut through all of it with calls for servant discipleship and ultimately laying down His life . . . with the various factions of Israel conspiring against Him. Ironically, the factions of Israel and the Roman Empire were just helping their own defeat, because this proved to all be a part of the perfect Will of the Heavenly Father. When we celebrate Good Friday, we know this was Jesus’ victory over them.

Finally, Jesus’ victory is often at complete odds with the notions of victory we see all around us. If we take Lent seriously, then we have to grapple with the idea of serving, Jesus’ path of humility, and even martyrdom for our faith will be our victory. Jesus promised this victory will one day encompass the whole world. He taught this to a group under the thumb of the mighty Roman Empire and their legions. They crucified Him, and again, that was part of His victory. Furthermore, we just wrapped our long running series in the Old Testament (see the prior pastor’s article on that, specifically Esther) and by the end the people of God ultimately found no avail in powerful governments or military might. Their deliverance was in God and in His way. The New Testament, which we will mostly follow this Lent and Easter, shows that this way was completed in God’s Son, Jesus.

I went with general themes here because sometimes that’s the best approach. Lent calls us to slow down and reflect, instead of the quick reactivity that has too often characterized our discourse now (and if we look at how Jesus’ opponents interacted with him, we don’t see too much difference). Starting with the Lord’s Supper on March 9, let’s reflect together as God’s servant and victorious people.

Matthew 5:5

~Pastor Peter Martin

First Presbyterian Church at Norristown

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