The Gathering

There is a line in the Easter story that I had never noticed or paid attention to. But this year, it stuck out to me. It happens right after the women hear that Jesus is risen, but before they actually see him. It says:

So they left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy… (Matthew 28.8)

Faith is living with fear and great joy. While faith starts in the dark, it doesn’t stay there.

It was women in grief and fear that were the first ones to begin living with great joy. But it was a choice they made that day, to believe that good news. To believe Jesus was alive and ahead of them and making a way for them. To keep walking.

The cross is seen as the supreme example of God's love for us, but many struggle to understand why Jesus had to die or if He had to die at all. There's no one right answer, but the Bible offers us glimpses or clues as to what Jesus's death really means for our lives. Traditionally, these “answers” are called atonement theories.

While this answer – exposing sin of the community – may sound different to you, many people who are in marginalized, oppressed, or outsider communities find this theory deeply compelling. They find solidarity with Jesus as a person who, like them is blamed, and punished by the people of his time. But while often people are scapegoated and forgotten, that is not what happens to Jesus.

Instead, by dying and being resurrected, God vindicates Jesus as innocent and exposes the sin of the people and force them to see the sin in their own life. The crucifixion then is meant to function like a mirror that is both hard and hopeful.

The cross is seen as the supreme example of God's love for us, but many struggle to understand why Jesus had to die or if He had to die at all. There's no one right answer, but the Bible offers us glimpses or clues as to what Jesus's death really means for our lives. Traditionally, these “answers” are called atonement theories.

The answer to the question this week is, "to forgive us." We, as humans, miss the mark. For thousands of years, some theologians explain Jesus' death on the cross as "Penal Substitution". What Jesus did was something that we cannot do. And because of God's love for us, while being just, we are (really) forgiven.

The cross is seen as the supreme example of God's love for us, but many struggle to understand why Jesus had to die or if He had to die at all. There's no one right answer, but the Bible offers us glimpses or clues as to what Jesus's death really means for our lives. Traditionally, these “answers” are called atonement theories.

The answer to the question this week is, "to inspire us to love." We call it "Jesus as Moral Example." At its core, it is the belief that Jesus' death was not paying off a debt, buying someone back from the devil, or using blood to make an angry judge feel better. Instead, it was an extreme, overwhelming demonstration of divine love meant to soften our hardened hearts, lead us to turn around, and guide us toward moral and spiritual change. It's the belief that Jesus died to show us the full extent of God's love, inspiring us to love exactly the same way.

The cross is seen as the supreme example of God's love for us, but many struggle to understand why Jesus had to die or if He had to die at all. There's no one right answer, but the Bible offers us glimpses or clues as to what Jesus's death really means for our lives. Traditionally, these “answers” are called atonement theories.

The answer to the question this week is, "to redeem us." If God can redeem death then God can redeem anything. Jesus died to redeem us, to ransom us from death to life. To demonstrate God’s deep love for us by exchanging God’s life for ours. And in doing so, God shows us that God can redeem anything we experience this side of death. That is what the cross symbolizes. And that is why the cross is something we celebrate.

Atonement means "to put back together something that is broken." Each theory or answer shows us how Jesus helps to put us back together or make us whole. What you will see is that each theory has a different understanding of the problem we face, and therefore a different way in which Jesus offers us an answer on the cross. And today we are going to start with probably the earliest theory or answer to the question: to set us free.

Join us as we prepare for Easter by wrestling with Jesus' crucifixion and how it can bring us hope today.

Our world tempts us every day to make life about us. We're tempted to think about what we have to do, what we have going on, what we need, but Jesus turns this way of life on its head and says that life is really found not when we focus on ourselves, but when we serve others. Serving can look a lot of different ways.

Followers of Christ are meant to be people of service. That is why it is one of our practices here at The Gathering. And over the past two weeks we have talked about the power of serving, and what it can mean to serve both inside and outside of the church. But today I want to talk about something broader. Because when Jesus talks about serving, he doesn’t only mean acts of service, volunteering in the community, being on a team at church – as important as those are. But Jesus also wants us to develop a heart of service.

Our world tempts us every day to make life about us. We're tempted to think about what we have to do, what we have going on, what we need, but Jesus turns this way of life on its head and says that life is really found not when we focus on ourselves, but when we serve others. Serving can look a lot of different ways.

This week we’re talking about what it looks like to serve the world. After, all, our guy Jesus is pretty into serving and has a lot to say about how we, as his followers, should move in this world. We know we’re called to serve one another in humility and grace to bless others since we too have been blessed, that we need to be mindful of our posture of serving, and that we are to love one another. Together, we can show the world who we are by our love.

Our world tempts us every day to make life about us. We're tempted to think about what we have to do, what we have going on, what we need, but Jesus turns this way of life on its head and says that life is really found not when we focus on ourselves, but when we serve others. Serving can look a lot of different ways. In this series, we'll talk about what it means to have a life of service and how to practice it in your everyday life.

We’re starting today with serving within the church. Now before you slump in your chair or groan. This isn’t some ploy to get more people to serve the church (though you will be invited to do so).  Because as we’ll see, serving is about being more like Jesus.

Today we are wrapping up our series Shift Happens: When Life Doesn’t Go as Planned. We are talking about how to move through seasons when our life takes a left turn, goes off track, or isn’t working out as we expected. Each week we are looking at a different reason why by reading the stories of people in scripture who had their own plans fail for different reasons. As we read their stories we are learning strategies for how God can lead us through those same circumstances in our own life.

Today I want to end by talking about yet another reason that life doesn’t go as planned – because sometimes the world is an unfair place. This is true is large scale nation, political and historical ways. Injustice is part of our fallen world, as we've seen on the news this past week in Minneapolis. On a personal level, unfair things happen all the time; processes don’t always work as they should, people betray us, systems disadvantage us. To try to understand how we navigate these periods, I want to read the OT story of Joseph.