The Joy of Building a Church
April 23, 2024
From Gardens to Gardens
On Palm Sunday, we encountered Jesus’ humanity through his three prayers in the Garden of Gethsemane, ahead of his arrest and trial:
My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me;
yet not what I want but what you want.
My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, your will be done.
My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, your will be done.
These prayers echo the prayer Jesus shared earlier in Matthew 6:9-13, the Lord’s Prayer. In it, Jesus addresses God the Father, asks for deliverance from temptation, and asks for God’s will to be done, just as he does in Gethsemane. Using elements from the prayer he taught us all to pray, Jesus shows just how powerful prayer can be when these supplications appear during his lonely hour.
During The Great Three Days of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Sunday, as we travel from the Garden of Gethsemane to the Garden tomb, we will encounter Jesus’ prayers, including the Lord’s Prayer. I hope you will join us onsite or online for these services in which we are filled with sorrow and gratitude when we consider the cross, and joy and gratefulness when we consider Easter resurrection.
These are called the Great Three Days because they define our understanding of Easter resurrection and new life in Christ. Yet don’t forget, while these three days are indeed great, God is with us in the everyday, too. In the mundane days and the big days, God is with us. Between the height of Easter and the depth of Good Friday, there are sacred, ordinary days in which God also nourishes us with daily bread.
