Easter Greetings

As I have been thinking and praying about what to write in this Easter letter, I found that my experience this past fall kept invading my thoughts. As many of you know, I encountered a heart attack on Oct. 11 of last year. On Oct. 12 it was revealed that I had two blocked arteries. One artery was blocked at 95% and a stent was placed in that artery immediately. I remember feeling a great sensation of when the blood began to go through my body. Life began racing through my body and it was an amazing feeling. I had no idea that my arteries were blocked and impacting my health. On Nov. 21, I received a second stent and now I have no blockages in my heart and I am on my journey to health and wholeness.

In many ways, I believe I had an Easter experience last October. I hadn’t realized that my life and health were in jeopardy. In some ways, the blockage in my heart was like the stone placed upon Christ’s tomb. I experienced the miraculous power of God’s healing through a trained and caring medical team. I also experienced the sustaining grace and love of God through my faith community, you, the people of Lafayette Park UMC. These two experiences transformed my life. I now find that things that used to cause me to lose sleep at night no longer have power over me because in truth they are not life and death issues. They are things that no one will think about or even remember in a month or two.

I realize now that even though I have always considered myself an Easter person I haven’t really lived an Easter life. An Easter life is one that approaches each day knowing that we have already died and are living a resurrected life. Galatians 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in Christ who loved me and gave himself for me.” Each day I try to learn more about how to walk around in a healthy body empowered by God. It will be a long journey because I am a Methodist and, as Wesley invites us to do, I am going on to Christian Perfection.

In coming weeks I would like to request a few things for you to consider. First please join us this Sunday, March 25, after worship for a special gratitude fellowship from the Wilders. It is our humble way of trying to say thank you for all of the prayers, meals, rides, gifts, and amazing ways you have supported our family.

Secondly as we approach Easter, reflect on ways that you might be living as I was living, blocked and worrying about things that no one will remember in a month. What are the ways that you too can live in the power of a resurrected life? What habits or thought patterns need to shift to transform your life?

Our Easter offering this year will go to the restoration of the large east stained glass window. At the writing of this letter, we have over $39,000 towards our goal of $60,000 to restore the window. This restoration will give new life to our window and increase the quality of life in our sanctuary. It will care for the window for the next 100 years.

I pray that whatever you do in the next few weeks you may also experience the transforming miraculous power of Easter in your life.
Blessings,

Pastor Kathleen

From the Wilder View - April 2009

I have been looking at an empty page for several days now. It says, ‘From the Wilder view…’, and then…nothing…just a blank page. Many times I have started to write something only to erase it and start over. Some would call it writers block, but for me I find that words are quite limiting when I try to speak about the power of Easter.

For most of my life, Easter was focused on Good Friday. I can’t tell you how many sermons and lessons I have heard about the suffering and death of Jesus Christ. I can’t begin to count how many times that I have heard about my sin being the cause of his suffering and death. Nor can I describe the guilt that I have lived with most of my life. The guilt of my sins, the guilt of being inadequate, the guilt of not being thin enough, or smart enough, or good enough. The living in the death of, ‘if you really knew who I am, you wouldn’t like me.’ Good Friday isn’t much fun for any of us. It seems though that our Christian faith tends to be completely centered on Good Friday and we seem to just flit by Easter Sunday so we can get back to the comfort of our own pain and suffering.

At some point in my first year at Lafayette Park UMC, God whispered something very transformative in my ear one day. It was something simple. “It’s not about my death, it is about my life.” I think I said, “What?” The phrase came back to me again. “It’s not about my death, it is about my life.” I still didn’t get it, and then the verse, “I have come that they might have life and have it abundantly” came to my mind.” It seemed that verse after verse began to come to my mind about life. All of a sudden it was if someone flipped a switch in my brain and a light went off. It isn’t about Christ’s death! It is about Christ’s life!

Easter is about Christ’s life. It’s about the life that he modeled when he walked this earth in human flesh. Christ’s life as he knelt and washed the feet of his disciples. Christ’s life as he broke the bread and lifted the cup. Christ’s life as he welcomed the children and the people on society’s margins. Christ’s life as he said, “Father forgive them, for they know not what they have done.” Christ’s life as he folded up the grave clothes. Christ’s life as he told Mary not to weep. Christ’s life as he greeted his disciples and invited Thomas to touch the wounds in his hands and side. Christ’s life as he lives within us today.

Easter is about the power of Christ’s redeeming life and His love touching our lives so that our sin, our guilt, our fear can be dead once and for all and we can live strong, vibrant, abundant lives. Easter is about living in the power of God that conquers everything…even death.

My hope for each of us this Holy Week and Easter is that we can openly embrace the LIFE of Christ in our lives and began to truly experience the joy of God’s abundant life.

Alleluia! Christ is Risen!
Pastor Kathleen

Sharing Time with Sharon: You can’t get there from here!

April 2009

Every year, worship planners must figure out what the itinerary for Holy Week, those days between Palm Sunday and Easter, will look like in the church. The task is to bring folks from the excitement of Palm Sunday’s “Hallelujah!” when Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey, through the throes of his pain and passion of his last week on earth, to the glorious wonder of Christ’s resurrection on Easter morning.

Anticipating that people’s lives are too busy to come back to church mid-week for another service, many churches try to divide the pre-Easter Sunday between the palm welcome and the agonizing crucifixion, all in 60 minutes. What you end up with is emotional whiplash.

Too much really important stuff happened during that week, and the theological and emotional significance takes time to soak in to really become part of our spiritual journey. Other churches have been known to skip the midweek destinations all together, believing that they’re too depressing. Better, in our already anxious times, to keep the worship celebrations cheerful and positive. So they leapfrog from happy Sunday to happy Sunday, with just a footnote about the intensity of emotion and raw passion that Jesus experienced in those days in between.

Well, friends, here’s the deal. There just isn’t any way to get to the joyous destination of Easter, if you don’t stop and experience Good Friday, dwelling in the how and why of Jesus’ arrest, trial, and death. You have to travel with the disciples and his mother to the foot of the cross and hear the agony of his whispered prayers. You have to sit with the sin that kept Jesus on that cross in order to feel the giddy rush of freedom offered by the empty tomb.

Oh sure, if you travel directly to Easter morning, you can still enjoy the flowers, sing the old traditional hymns, and wear your new bonnet. But the goose-bumpity glory and power of the empty Easter tomb in rooted in that wretched Friday cross. If you don’t hang out there first, it will be like watching somebody else’s travel slides instead of experiencing the texture and tastes of the journey for yourself.

I’ll see you at the cross,
Pastor Sharon

Time With Sharon…Now what do we do?

April 2008

But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, “Therefore let the entire house of Israel know with certainty that God has made him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified.” Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and to the other apostles, “Brothers, what should we do?”

Easter is over…and Pentecost, with its fury of fire and outpouring of the Spirit’s unbridled power is still weeks away. We are passing through a strange time, called Eastertide in the early church, and it is a peculiar place to be. We aren’t quite ready to launch into the regular flow of ministry, with our new found passion and fever just yet. It seems emotionally, and metaphorically, we are left standing with our mouths gaping wide open, wondering, “What just happened here?”Over the days of Holy Week, we experienced the poignant last teachings of Jesus, his bloody and cruel sacrifice, and the miraculous resurrection of Christ to new life. But now the festivities are over; the company gone home, the ham leftovers eaten up, and the plastic eggs stored back in the attic. We are like the early Christians, who sat in their Upper Room, some still dazed from the raw experiences of that week of passion, wondering what to do, with what we know, now that we know it.

And what do we know? That Jesus was dead. Good and dead. Not flickering an eyelash, cold and blue dead. And then Christ was alive. In full living color, walking around, traveling and talking to folk, blessing, spirit-instilling, and cooking-them-fish-on-the-beach-for-breakfast kind of alive. How can this be? Because God has the power to bring new life to dead things.

In fact, God delights in bringing renewed vigor to the places in our world and in our lives that seem dead. We witness this miracle every spring when we see the green shoots boring their way through a cover of brown leaves in the flower beds. Imagine that maybe this could be your life, right now. If some part of your life is sloppy brown and dirt dead, God’s power can make the living sap start running again, producing green vitality that leads to new blooms. God can do it. God has done it. God will do it again.So what do we do with what we know, now that we know it? Believe it. Own it. Live it. Share it.

Once, during this same in-between time, I sat with a dear friend who felt like there was nothing more for which to live. I wasn’t sure how to offer him hope. I could have reminded him of his children who still needed their dad. I thought of ragging on him that his presence with us at church had been sorely missed. But none of those things seemed to touch the power of the truth that we had just lived through during Holy Week. Finally I whispered, “God makes life new. I don’t know how, but I know it, and you know it too.” I whispered it, not because I didn’t want the people around us to hear our conversation, but because it seemed like such a sacred and holy message. I didn’t trust my voice to say it with all the meaning that I meant it to have. It was too big. Perhaps my whisper would convey the utter importance of these words of hope.

Soon the Spirit’s power will bust forth, emboldening our voices to stand and shout from the rooftops. But now, while we are still saturated in a sense of shock and awe, let us share, even in a whisper, with great rounded eyes of wonder, what we have experienced to those who need to hear it. God has the power to bring new life to dead things. We know it. Tell someone.

Grace and peace,
Sharon

The Wilder View - March 2008

I think it was my first Lent at Lafayette Park UMC that I realized the depth of Jesus’ words, “I have come that they might have abundant life.” You see for many years my focus during Lent was on the death and suffering of Christ. Suddenly I got it; my focus shouldn’t have been on the death but rather the life of Christ! The purpose of Lent was to look at the places of death in my life and to receive the power of Christ’s life in my own life. I suddenly realized that the real purpose for Lent was to prepare us for Easter. Not the Easter that is filled with bunnies, candy, and special clothes and hats, but the Easter of life! The Easter in which we truly grasp the power of God in our lives – the power that transcends death! For us to experience that power of God intimately, moving and living in our life. For us to know with confidence that there is nothing that can separate us from God’s love. It is through this experience of Easter that we are equipped to find meaning and purpose in our daily lives.

The challenge for us now, as a Church, is that we have experienced so many resurrections over the last few years that they might feel a bit common place. Remember the miracle of becoming cash positive, and the tower climb? Or the miracle of getting the west stained glass window restored. What about the miracle of paying our apportionments for the first time in many decades? Or getting the carpet installed. Or the VIM trips to Juarez, and New Orleans (the way God provided the roofer and the roofing materials was a miracle.) Or the fact that our worship attendance has grown from the low 80’s to 111 last year. Truly God is doing miracles at Lafayette Park. God is showing us how to powerfully live out our faith. Yet, I believe that God would have us experience more miracles. God is using our church to help other churches grow stronger. God is using our church to transform our community. God is using our church to make us stronger disciples for Christ. Truly we are focusing on the life of Christ and the joy that his life brings to us.

It is my hope that during this season of Lent you will take the time to prepare yourself to experience the power of resurrection in your life. That by spending time in reflection or by taking on spiritual disciplines of prayer, fasting, meditation, journaling, or even just sitting in God’s presence you may find the Easter that releases you to experience the power of God’s life and love in your life, for nothing can stop God’s love for you…not even death.

Happy Easter,

Pastor Kathleen