What are your favorite hymns in the United Methodist Hymnal? Please reply with up to five favorites. Thanks for your participation!

Pastor Steven D. Bruns

This passage shows that it is our love for God and one another that keeps us connected to Christ. And it is when we are connected to God by this love, then we pray in Christ’s name and in his power.

This passage gives us great hope and a wonderful image.

Christ will abide with us forever if we are willing to abide with Him.  However, this hope comes with two warnings:

1. We must be pruned
2. If we are not pruned we may be cut off

Originally celebrated as one great feast, the Ascension and Pentecost are the culmination of the Resurrection. Forty days after the Resurrection, Christ ascended into heaven (this is why the day is always on a Thursday). During the forty days Christ was with the apostles and other disciples following his resurrection he was already preparing them for his physical absence. In the accounts we have of Christ with his followers after Easter, we see that he is not permanently with them as he was prior to the crucifixion. He appears and disappears. He comes to them and he leaves them. Then, after forty days, he leaves them permanently. This will be explored more fully on Sunday, May 20, when we celebrate the Ascension.

Christ’s departure did not leave the fledgling believers as spiritual orphans, though. Ten days after the Ascension, the descent of the Holy Spirit, Pentecost, occurred. This created the Church (which is why Pentecost is celebrated as the birthday of the Church) and it was the beginning of the Church’s mission to proclaim the universal message of salvation to the ends of the earth. This will be explored more fully on Sunday, May 27, when we celebrate Pentecost.

As we celebrate the Great Fifty Days of Easter, also look forward to the next two holy days: the Ascension and Pentecost.

Christ is Risen!

I want to thank all of you who participated in our Holy Week worship services. They were absolutely wonderful. The power of the presence of God was palpable, thanks be to God.

If you missed the services, this excerpt from the United Methodist Book of Worship introducing the Easter Vigil service we celebrated should help paint a picture of what took place:

During the Great Three Days, from sunset Holy Thursday to sunset Easter Day, we celebrate the saving events of Jesus Christ’s suffering, death, and resurrection. In the development of Christian worship, each event came to be remembered on a separate day. In the earliest centuries, however, these events were celebrated as a unity in an extraordinary single liturgy that began Saturday night and continued until the dawn of Easter Day. It was known as the great Paschal (Easter) Vigil. Preceded by a fast day, it was the most holy and joyful night of the entire Christian year, for it proclaimed and celebrated the whole of salvation history and Christ’s saving work. It is the most appropriate time for baptisms; persons baptized symbolically die and rise with Christ (Romans 6:3-11). It has also come to be seen as a most appropriate time for congregational reaffirmation of the Baptismal Covenant.

The Easter (Paschal) Vigil has both historic and symbolic roots in the Jewish Passover. That is why so many images are from the Old Testament and why so many analogies are experienced in Christ. In this service we experience the passage from slavery to freedom, from sin to salvation, from death to life.

The Easter Vigil is the First Service of Easter. The following service is an adaptation of the ancient Paschal Vigil service.

—The United Methodist Book of Worship pp. 368-370

What we celebrated was a shorter version of the service as found in the Book of Worship. I thought it best to ease into a new service like this. Perhaps next year we will have a few more of the Scripture readings and the symbolism the United Methodist Church suggested for the service.

I pray you have a great Fifty Days of Easter! Christ is Risen!

In this Gospel passage, Jesus takes the image of the Good Shepherd from Ezekiel 34 and applies it to himself.

To His listeners, this meant that Jesus was identifying himself not only as the Messiah and descendant of David, but as God himself!