This weekend's worship services at Covenant will be as rich as any, but not just because we'll have youth choirs, children's choirs, bells, soloists and other great musicians lead us. And, it won't be merely because we'll hear Hugh and Jane McColl articulate their support for a strong completion to our $10 million capital campaign. It won't even be just because the children and youth will participate in the services by taking up our offerings and bringing their own.
It will certainly be meaningful because of all of those things, but it will also be because the most important matters of life and faith will be on the table.
It's Palm Sunday, that day when Jesus left the safety of rural Galilee and paraded straight into the city with all its complexity. It's that day when the spiritual faith of an itinerant rabbi confronted worldly realities of commerce, nationalism and militarism. It's the day when Jesus intentionally "set his face" to encounter everything the world could throw at him and invited his disciples to follow.
I love the way Peter Gomes, former minister of Harvard's Memorial Church, captures it:
"Jesus [entered Jerusalem] so that we might live, fully and hopefully, not in some fantastic never-never-land, but in some ambiguous reality of the here and now."
It will be an historic day in our life as a congregation. Come, and bring a friend.
Peace,
