This is Holy Week. A week full of table turnings, parables that point towards a reckoning of some sort, and an unnerving and poignant last supper where Jesus washes the feet of his followers and redefines what power looks like. And of course, the passion of Christ. The one who had all power and might, who had all things at his disposal, who chose to give up all power and humble himself to die a death of thieves. A king who suffered the injustice of accusation, mockery, betrayal, torment, beatings and indignities until his ultimate humiliation and anguish on the cross.

All this for LOVE. Love that conquered evil. Love that conquered death. Love that has the power to redeem and reconcile everything and everyone.

Greater love has no one than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends. [John 15:13]

All this for US. The objects of God's love and affection. The friends of God. The recipients of this abundant new life and freedom. Awakened now to our true vocation to co-create healing and renewal in the world.

This is the redeeming work of God. This is the ministry of Jesus. This is what the Spirit is all about in the world. Calling us out of death into life. Calling us out of darkness into light. Redeeming the most twisted and painful stories of heartbreak into something so achingly beautiful that we are overcome. Compelled like Mary to fall down at the feet of Jesus and to break open the alabaster jar as the tears fall freely.

There is something so cosmic and yet so personal about his death. Redeemer of all creation who subversively conquers evil for all people and for all time.

And my friend. I imagine having dinner with Jesus in his final week. The richness of friendship as he ate at Lazarus' home. The shocking intimacy of Mary anointing Jesus' feet. And the even more scandalous act of Jesus' washing the feet of his disciples, of washing my feet.

And it is hard to wrap my head around Jesus' passion and humiliation on the cross.

As I consider the cross, it invites me to an extravagance of worship and to a deeper surrender of all I hold dear. Jesus gave His all for LOVE. And this love invites and compels me to do the same.

My prayer as we journey through Holy Week is that we will encounter the extraordinary love and grace of God and hear the invitation of the cross. To die so that we might live.

This extraordinary love and grace that means nothing until it becomes an embodied experience. Until it fills flesh and bones til they tremble. Until it is shared around dinner tables and community forums and across socioeconomic and racial divides. Until it humbles us, enlarges us, and transforms us to be more fully human. Until we grasp that this divine love is both profoundly cosmic, larger that we can comprehend, and yet deeply personal and more intimate than we want to believe. 

As I consider my neighborhood, this holy ground, this patch of the earth where God has placed me, the neighbors I know, the neighbors I don't know, the needs, the gifts, the inequities, the dreams and the struggles -- I want to be a part of the ache and the beauty here, to give up my small and piecemeal life to enter into the much larger story of redemption and renewal that includes all of us. To bear witness to the creative life of the Spirit that is making all things new, even me.

by Jessica Ketola

Join Us For Easter!
We will celebrate this new, abundant life, this creative, energizing spirit bursting into the world, and the power of love. Join us for a service, easter egg hunt and a brunch as we put on our dancing shoes, throw our heads back and proclaim that LOVE WINS!

The thing about fasting is hunger.
​
I'm hungry today. For food, yes. But even more, for the Spirit to birth God's purposes in us. Whatever this is. This big beautiful dream to share life together as followers of Jesus embodying love in our neighborhoods -- so that our neighbors can actually taste and see that God is good and begin to experience the grace and shalom of the kingdom. This is what I'm hungry for.

As we were praying this morning, I was overwhelmed by this. I could feel the tears of intercession and the fire in my belly. Oh, how I long for us to see the truth of who God is. Not the monster gods of our own shame-laden and fearful imaginations. Punitive, unyielding kill-joys bent on moral policing and who's in and who's out. This is not the God I know. Nor is it the God portrayed in Jesus.

If there is one reason that makes me just crazy enough to attempt pastoring a church, this is it. The glaring discrepancy between how most of my neighbors perceive God and the truth of who God is. I grieve over this. I grieve over the ways that I still don't get it. I grieve over the layers of bad news that the church has propagated that actually serve as barriers to the grace of God.

This beautiful, extravagant, abundant, scandalous grace.

If ever there was a time for good news in the world, this would be it. Jesus came at such a time too. And he proclaimed and demonstrated a new day of grace and the end of religion. This is something I can get behind -- something I don't mind getting on my soapbox for. God's kingdom of love is the best news in town.

But words mean nothing if we are not living out this way of love in an embodied way, sharing life together where the rubber hits the road. All these scriptures we know and yet struggle to live into in any substantiative way.

"By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” [John 13:35]

"No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. [I John 4:12]

"No one has ever seen God, not so much as a glimpse. This one-of-a-kind God-Expression, who exists at the very heart of the Father, has made him plain as day. [John 1:18]

And so today, this is my prayer. That Jesus would be revealed through us as his body fashioned together to be a home for the presence of God and to be his hands and feet in the world.
​
That we would know the breadth and length, the depth and height of God's extravagant love.

And that our neighbors would know it too. That they could see what God is like.

This is my deepest hunger and desire.

You see, the thing about fasting is hunger.

by Jessica Ketola

I talk about the neighborhood a lot. About reimagining what it means to be the church today. About finding both new and ancient paths to co-create and partner with the work of the Spirit in our everyday realities.

You may sigh a little. You may tire of the redundancy. But I am unapologetic. The modern form of church now prevalent for the past 70 years is on life support. We are in the midst of unprecedented tectonic shifts, which history tells us are presently due 500 years post the Reformation. And so we must become midwives to what the Spirit is birthing. We must rethink, innovate and co-create something new.

And yet all transformation requires a death, a loss of what has been, a letting go. This is not easy work. This is not comfortable work. This is neither for the faint of heart or the indifferent. Rather, it requires a daring tenacity and a robust faith. A willingness to risk and to fail and to iterate.

It is for the bold and the audacious who are just foolish enough to believe that there is a better way--

To live as a beloved community into the dare of the gospel.

And yet, this is anything but idyllic. Rather, it is mundane. It is gritty. It is sometimes so unspectacular that we wonder if anything worthwhile is happening at all. There are conflicts and offenses, differences and apathies, disappointments and betrayals. We grow weary, disheartened, sure that we are being taken advantage of, sure of the futility of our endeavors. We are human, both glorious and inane.

And yet death comes before life. The seed dies before the new tender shoot emerges from the earth. This is the way of Lent. This is the way of the cross. This is the way of birthing. This is the way of dying.

This is where the mystery of the tomb coalesces with the miracle of the womb.

And so as we consider our impending death, what is it that we need to surrender? What is it that needs to die? What is it that we need to let go of? And as we journey together with community fasting and prayer, what collectively is it that we need to give up?

Is it our comfort? Our need for success? The ways in which we want what we want when we want it? Our individualism and our independence?

Is it our reluctance to commit or to be inconvenienced? Our prejudices? Our resentments? Our fear? Our jealousies? Our insecurities? Our wounds? Our self-hate?

Or is it our need to please others? Our need to be validated? Our need to be important? Our security? Our need for control? Our power? Our privilege? Our possessions?

What is it that needs to die?

Everybody wants to go to heaven but nobody wants to die. So the saying goes. But Jesus promises us that as we lose the striving and scarcity of our own small lives, we will enter the expansiveness of His full and abundant life. [Matthew 16:25]

And as a faith community, I believe this is also true. Though we must not diminish the cost, the dream awaits us. For as we die to our independence and the comfort of our default ways of "going" to church, we will enter the extravagance of the beautifully diverse community living together to "be" the church, rooted in God's Dream for us and our neighborhoods.

And so my prayer this week is that we would sit with the question, What is it that needs to die? And that we would enter the paradox of the tomb, of death, surrender, and letting go, hopeful that in time from the womb of our deepest desires, new life will emerge.

By Jessica Ketola

I have been loving going through the parables for Lent and discovering the upside down, inside out, backwards paradoxes of Jesus' teachings.

We like BIG. Jesus is a fan of SMALL. Seeds. Children. Net worths.

We want to be IMPORTANT. Jesus calls us to be the LEAST. The servant. The last. The poor.

We like to WIN. Jesus calls us to LOSE. Our lives. Our self-absorption. Our egos.

We want MONEY, FAME, SECURITY. Jesus calls us to RISK. To sell our possessions and to give up our reputations.

We want to FIGHT evil. Jesus calls us to FORGIVE evil.

We like PEOPLE LIKE US who are in our circles. Jesus calls us to love PEOPLE UNLIKE US who OFFEND us or SCARE us, those outside our circle, even our ENEMIES. The leper, the tax collector, the addict and the sex worker. Our neighbors who live outside, identify as transgender, practice Islam, or speak a different language.

My prayer as we continue through Lent is that we continue to embrace the downward descent of the cross and begin to value the small and menial everyday things that turn out to be the most significant.

by Jessica Ketola