In a culture that’s become increasingly driven by divergent ideologies, we’ve become more and more attuned and susceptible to “Either/Or” thinking. “Both/And is something you’re hearing less and less.

The church, because it’s full of humans, isn’t immune from an either/or way of seeing things…even in its orientation to worship. It’s often expressed as Word or Sacrament, one of them being by far dominant.

But Jesus, on the afternoon of the Resurrection sets a pattern for both/and that’s served his Church since.

In fact, it’s how he’s known.

When Redeemer was founded eleven years ago, its leadership laid out seven key characteristics we were hoping for in our stakeholders. Number seven was, “Is drawn more to patterns than particulars.”

That one’s especially important as we pursue our shared vision of the mission of God in the world. Because in order to really understand this, we’ve got to look at some of the bigger stories that reveal important patterns in the Scriptures.

When we get lost in particulars, we lose patterns. And so, we often can’t see the forest for the trees.

But it wasn’t always like this.

When Jesus Christ rose from the dead on Easter morning, he rose as the beginning of the new world God had always intended…and will result in the restoration of everything that is now corrupted, which is everything (Colossians 1:20).

That’s the first—and perhaps most important—thing to know about the meaning of Easter.

And it’s meaning that matters.

I believe that the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ from death is a fact. But facts can often be rendered meaningless without a frame to give them meaning.

This is especially relevant in a day in which an unrelenting shower of unframed facts inundates us every day.

God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit have purposed to save us from our sins and all evil.

When we celebrate Holy Communion, often the prayer of consecration concludes with the acclamation “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us”, with the people responding “Therefore let us keep the feast”. Why does Jesus identify himself with the Passover? What does this tell us about his death?

As we enter Holy Week on Palm Sunday, a jarring pivot is about to take place in Jesus’ ministry. The acclamation “Hosanna” today will become an angry, bloodthirsty shout by Friday; “God, save us!” (the meaning of the word Hosanna), will become, “God, damn him!”; and within a week, palm branches will become the rough wood of a Roman cross.

The poignant and dramatic juxtaposition of triumphal entry and crucifixion in the lectionary readings seeks to prepare us to live out the Holy Week ahead—and hopefully the entirety of our lives—in the shadow of the cross of Christ.

In this week’s reading from the Gospel of John, Jesus get’s a visit from some Greeks in Jerusalem for Passover. It’s significant; a real turning point in John’s story.

We’re not told exactly what it was that they were seeking, but what they got was definitely not conventional wisdom.

In 559BC Cyrus becomes King of Babylon where the people of God had been carried off as exiles. In a single day he ends their captivity.

How does this king who is called “God’s anointed” foreshadow the King of Kings who was to come into the world?

The church where I grew up regularly hosted traveling music groups. They’d always have their LPs (yes, LPs) and other stuff—their “merch”—to sell, but at my church they weren’t allowed to do this. At least not in the target-rich environment of the foyer where everyone entered and exited.

The rationale came from this week’s Gospel reading. Jesus clearly didn’t like it when folks hawked their wares around the Temple, and therefore we shouldn’t sell stuff around the sanctuary.

To be sure, the place of worship in first-century Israel and the auditorium of a small independent church in Southern California don’t correspond exactly, but true to Jesus’s words, my church didn’t want the place of worship co-opted as a place of commerce. Which is good.

But is merch in church really the heart of the issue…or is it something more invisible and insidious?