Last Wednesday was one of those days when I was aware of the sun rising and setting. On most days, the sun rises and sets without my taking much note of it; it’s just the background light that helps me see. But last Wednesday, my family and I were up early, driving to Raleigh to catch a flight. Heading east on I-40, the sky gradually brightening, we rounded a curve and there was the sun, a giant, deep red, burning ball in the sky. It always surprises me, when I see a sunrise like that one, that it isn’t accompanied by a trumpet fanfare.

Many hours and many miles later, I stood on the shore of Lake Superior in northern Minnesota, where we had met up with several members of our extended family. Evenings are long this time of year, especially that far north, and the sun hangs suspended in the sky long past 9:30, giving the impression that the day goes on forever. I watched the sky slowly darken as the sun, which had started its trek across the sky so long ago and far away, finally dropped below the pine trees to the west.

Throughout the day, I’d hardly noticed the sun, other than to tip my sunglasses down from the top of my head every once in a while. But when I watched the light finally fade at the end of the day, I realized that the sun had been there all along – and not just hanging there in the sky, either, but empowering everything we do, fueling everything that happens on this earth. Even when it finally slipped below the horizon and the sky turned dark, I knew that the sun had not left but was simply making its long journey past the rest of the world, empowering people on the other side of the globe, leaving the glowing moon as a reminder that the sun’s light still shines.

This Sunday is Pentecost, the festival of the church when we celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit, the fulfillment of the promise that God will never leave us. Sometimes, I think, we notice God in big moments like those brilliant morning sunrises, but we forget – or don’t notice – that God is right there with us all day long, and all night long, too.  That’s the Holy Spirit, which sometimes comes in with a rush of a mighty wind, but often just whispers through us, empowering everything we do and reminding us that we are not alone.

Last Sunday, when you led worship – from the opening announcements to the message to the communion table to the benediction – I was glad to be part of this church.

I was glad to be part of a church that has nurtured most of you since you were very young, giving you opportunities – and not just on Youth Sunday – to stand up in front of the congregation, to talk about what you believe in, and to have your voices heard in worship.

I was glad to hear your voices come through in your prayers. It is no small task to gather the prayers of a whole congregation and put them into words to be lifted up to God.

I was glad to hear Riley, just a few weeks from high school graduation and heading off to college in the fall, talk about how important this church family has been to her – “a family not connected by chromosomes,” she called it.

There are some who say that the days of the church are over, that in another generation or two, the world won’t have much use for congregations like ours. I know they’re wrong. I know it because I watched you on Sunday as you stood at the communion table, held up the bread and cup, and spoke those ancient words of Jesus: This is my body, broken for you; this is my blood, shed for you. You said it in your own words, in words that mean something to you.

I know it because you find beauty in the words of literature and scripture, in the words of songs sung by the people of God. I know it because I’ve seen the way you look out for each other, the way you care about each other, the way you want to make the world a better place.

The world is a better place, because you are here. You give me hope that in another generation, there will still be people who find meaning in scripture, who lift up prayers and praise, who break the bread and share the cup, who pray for the peace of the world. You’ll find new ways to practice this ancient faith, to tell this old, old, story – but you’ll do it with grace and laughter and hope, and that makes me glad.

Thank you for being part of this church. Thank you for leading worship last week.

What a gift you are to us.

The palms from last Sunday lie in the corner of my office, already dying a little. They were so fresh and bright and green when we waved them through the streets of Jerusalem Sunday morning, and now they’re starting to brown around the edges, beginning their long journey to becoming next year’s ashes.

In so many ways, this is a week of contradictions.

Spring is fully here, the earth has blossomed out into green and every other imaginable color… but images of the destruction from  last weekend’s tornadoes remind us that nature can be deadly and not always beautiful.

We’re ready to sing alleluias, but there are other songs to sing first. We long to hear the story of the women at the empty tomb, but there are other stories to hear first… First, we need to sit in that upper room with Jesus and share the feast with him. We need to follow him out to the garden as he prays, and stand by as he is arrested. We need to join the crowd that calls for his crucifixion (because aren’t we, sometimes, in that crowd?) and we need to watch  as he is beaten, mocked, and hung up on the cross. The world can be deadly and not always beautiful.

There are Easter baskets and bunnies and brightly colored eggs… and there are crosses and crowns of thorns and unbearable grief.

There are shelves overflowing with candy and jelly beans… and there are people in our community who don’t have enough to eat.

There are holiday gatherings and family celebrations… and there are empty chairs and family tables that weren’t empty last Easter.

It’s a week of contradictions – but that’s the life of the gospel. Walk with us through this week, won’t you? Come Thursday night as the choir gives voice to the story; then come Friday at noon to remember Jesus’ last words. And come Sunday morning, as we welcome the sun and finally, finally, sing alleluia… for that is the last word of all.

Here’s the full schedule of services this week. Do join us.

A few weeks ago, I mentioned a new book by pastor and author Rob Bell called Love Wins: A Book about Heaven and Hell and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived. This book, just released last month, challenges a classical Christian understanding that anyone who does not confess a faith in Jesus Christ is doomed to eternal damnation in hell. Bell asks the question:  What kind of God would do that? Love Wins has been the center of a lot of controversy among church leaders and theologians: some say he’s going against the teaching of the Bible; others say he’s giving all of us a new way to think about God, one that is very good news indeed.

Bell’s main thesis is that heaven and hell are not places somewhere else – in some far off place and time – but that heaven and hell exist concurrently, here and now, as well as “in the age to come.” God’s love for us necessarily includes the freedom of choice, and we can choose to join in God’s new creation, or we can choose to reject God’s love and live in the hell we have created for ourselves. Always, though, God waits with open arms to welcome us back home.

This is not a particularly new way of thinking, as Bell acknowledges, though for some, it challenges everything they’ve ever been taught. Among the loudest criticisms thrown at Bell has been that of universalism, the belief that God saves everyone, no matter what we believe, choose, or do. Bell denies it, reiterating that some of us choose hell all the time. What we do does matter. As a pastor friend of mine put it in his own response to Bell’s book, “Just because one believes that God never quits loving us doesn’t make one a universalist. It just means we really believe in God’s love.”

Of course, the best way to decide what you think is to read Love Wins for yourself. I found it to be a fairly quick read, one that was very compelling and thought-provoking, so I’ll highly recommend it to you.  I’ll even loan you my copy. After you’ve read it, I’d love to know what you think.

(If you’re interested, I wrote a longer review of Love Wins for Fidelia’s Sisters, a publication for young clergy women which I help edit. You can read it here.)

A short walk through the neighborhood leaves no room for debate: spring is unequivocally here. Trees are blooming with abandon, plants are blossoming in every color of the rainbow, and flowers are popping up everywhere out of the once-barren ground. Sunlight lingers longer and longer in the evening. Jackets and boots have been shed in favor of short-sleeves and sandals. Windows are open and we are breathing fresh air again.

It’s fitting, I think, that the liturgical season of Lent mirrors the meteorological season of spring, because Lent is a season of coming back to life. We began the season acknowledging our own mortality, with the dead and dried up palms turned to ashes. We prayed for God to create in us clean hearts. And slowly, slowly, it’s happening. The world is coming back to life.

With Easter falling so late this year, the blossoming of spring is a little ahead of us here in the church. (Wouldn’t it be convenient if the flowers all bloomed in unison on Easter morning?) But that’s fitting, too, because the seasons of our lives don’t always mirror the seasons of the calendar. It might look like spring outside your window, but maybe you just lost a job or a loved one, and you are feeling the deep loss of late fall. Maybe you’re in a wintertime season – a season of waiting and trusting that deep below the fallow ground, something is germinating and waiting to grow. Or maybe it’s summer for you. Maybe you’ve settled into a rhythm of work and play and family; things are growing, but slowly and steadily.  Or maybe it is springtime for you; maybe you’re starting something new and the world feels full of the promise of life.

It can be disconcerting, I think, when the season of your life doesn’t match the calendar, when the natural world is exploding with new life but you are feeling grief and loss and pain. But the thing to remember is that in all those seasons, God is at work. In the deep green of summer, in the dying loss of fall, in the cold and frozen winter, in the new life of spring, God is at work there.

“Listen to your life,” Frederick Beuchner suggests. What season are you in?

There’s no wrong answer.