Natalie's Grace Notes

  If you were in the company of all your closest friends at the same time, and you knew it would never happen again, and you had just a minute to say something important, something you hoped they’d remember, what would you say? Now, it’s Maundy Thursday, and there’s an obvious place our minds will take this little thought exercise. Straight to Jesus, and his passion and death. We read these chapters every year, we sing “Were You There?”, we undress the sanctuary, and we go home, and those of us who have young children engage in conversation with a certain bunny.  I’m always going to invite us to slow down, and not go straight to the obvious. Because we need to see this moment the way Jesus’ disciples did. For just a moment, try not to think of Jesus as the guy you’ve seen depicted on Tiffany stained glass windows and portrayed in film by Jim Caviezel. Because it wasn’t that Jesus who invited himself over to someone else’s house, and then had dinner with his closest friends. It...

  MESSAGE “Invitation to Transforming Mystery”  Friends, this is the last week of this Lenten sermon series I’ve put together, utilizing the book “Invitations of Jesus” by pastor and author Trevor Hudson. In every chapter of this short, devotional work, Hudson explores a few verses from the Gospels where Jesus is “inviting” the reader to a spiritual experience. This week, the last week in the season of Lent, this Palm/ Passion Sunday, Hudson suggests we explore Jesus inviting us to holy mystery. This week brings us right to the edge of what we, as people, think we know and understand about life and death, and then pushes us over it. Jesus knew that, and knew that each decision he made this week had to be measured and intentional, because many people would see him in these vulnerable moments for the last time–at least for the last time as a man who has never faced death. He begins the week by achieving a traveling goal that was a year in the making–get from Nazareth to Jerusale...

  Friends, we’re now in the second to last week of this sermon series I put together for the season of Lent, based on “Invitations of Jesus” by pastor and author Trevor Hudson. This week’s “invitation” that Hudson asks us to consider is Jesus inviting us to share in mission.  Oof. Mission is one of those Church Words that makes me feel bad, because I always feel like no matter how I’m working at it, I’m doing it wrong. It’s also one of those Church Words that fills me, your pastor, with cold dread because I think “oh no, here come the charge conference forms.” But I’ll say more about that in a minute.  Most of this is because of my own perspective. We don’t join Jesus in his mission by working hard at it. We get there by thinking and feeling like Jesus. Then it comes naturally. When I started ruminating on this, I was thinking of the Casting Crowns song “Jesus, Friend of Sinners”: Jesus, friend of sinners, we have strayed so far away We cut down people in Your name But th...