April 2011 Blog

Dear Family of Faith,

I’m writing these words from the Holy Land where I am leading a pilgrimage of Christian devotion and understanding. The tour has been amazing. In the past two days we stopped on the Mount of Olives at a church that commemorates where Jesus stopped on Palm Sunday and wept at the lack of faith of the people of Jerusalem. We prayed where Jesus sweat drops of blood in prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane. I stood on the ancient steps over which Jesus was brought as a captive on the night of his arrest. We stood in the damp stone dungeon where Jesus was kept before his trial. We trod the Via Dolorosa, the Way of Sorrow, that commemorates the path that Jesus was forced to walk toward his death, carrying his cross until he couldn’t bear it any longer. I touched the top of the rocky knoll on which Jesus was crucified; and we stood before the shrine containing a stone slab, which is the only remaining part of the tomb from which the good news of Jesus’ resurrection went forth to change the world. All this in just two days!

One of the things that a trip like this does is to make the Gospel of Jesus real—grounded in real geographical places and historical times. No longer does one wonder whether the first disciples just made up a good story. When you see the same Sea of Galilee on which Jesus sailed, baptize in the same Jordan River where Jesus was baptized, and gaze upon the same barren wilderness where Jesus met the devil’s temptations; you can’t dismiss the story of Jesus as mere myth any more.

As we finish this season of Lent, climbing our way past the crucifixion to the resurrection of our Lord, I encourage you to make the story of Jesus real in your life. Because our Savior has been raised from death, you don’t have to travel to the Middle East to meet Jesus or experience the power of the Holy Spirit. You can meet Jesus in your own home and in our church. You can experience the Holy Spirit in God’s creation and through others in whom the Spirit lives. More than that, Lent is the time to follow in Jesus’ footsteps. My prayer for you in these last days of reflection is that you, by the gentleness and kindness, love and compassion you show to others, would walk where Jesus walked—not perhaps in the Holy Land this year, but in an even more powerful pilgrimage of faith right at home in Florida. Then, at long last, when you smell those lilies and sing those resurrection songs on Easter morning, you will understand the hope that makes not only the past real, but the future as well.
With affection, Pastor Carlan