An end to exile

Beloved of God,

    I hope you’ll make plans to join us for our Easter celebrations on Sunday. For early birds, there is an ecumenical sunrise service at Overlook Point. It starts at 6:30 and is a great way to spend time celebrating the resurrection with other Christians in our community. 
    In our regular service at 9:00 AM we’ll be observing the Lord’s Supper together. I’m always so grateful to come to the Lord’s table having been freshly reminded of His resurrection. It is especially important that we get to hold this ordinance together as a congregation called into existence only by and for the resurrected Christ. 
    
    Our Scripture reading for Sunday comes from Jeremiah 31:1-6. There’s nothing tricky about the passage on the first read. It is the kind of promise you read in so many of the prophets about the end of exile and the restoration of God’s people to their rightful place. That’s how we read it anyway. The hard thing for the people of Judah who came back to their promised land is that for them, it never really felt like exile ended. 
    The temple never quite got finished (there was still ongoing construction even in Jesus’ day). God never rushed upon that sanctuary in power as he had upon Solomon’s temple in 1 Kings 8:10-11. The returned exiles changed the power of one foreign ruler for another in succession from Persians, to Greeks, to Romans. Physical exile was over, but the feeling of exile lingered. 
    Part of what we celebrate at Easter is the end of exile. All that might have separated God from his people is dealt with in the cross of Christ. Sin, death, and absence; Jesus confronts all of these things fully and finally. Exile is over, for God With Us has come and offers all people rescue from sin and fellowship with God. 


Please join me this week in praying for:

• Christians around the world as we celebrate Easter. 
  
• Our brothers and sisters in Eastern Orthodox traditions as they celebrate Holy Week this week.
• Wisdom.
• Those among us suffering sickness and injury.
• God’s help that we might offer a faithful witness in this Easter season as the Spirit gives us opportunity.
• Those who respond to emergencies in our wildlands, on our roadways, in our communities, and even in our homes.
• Those in positions of public trust at the federal, state, and local levels.
• In praise for the change of seasons. 
• Each other (please email [email protected] if you’d like to be added to our prayer list). 

You are the salt of the earth; you are the light of the world,

Marshall 
    

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