Easter comes to us each year with brightness and celebration— music, flowers, full rooms, and the familiar proclamation: Christ is risen! And yet, beneath the surface of all that joy, many of us arrive carrying a quieter, heavier reality. Some come with hope and anticipation. Others come with questions, fatigue, grief, or a sense that life feels more fragile than it should.

Into that mixed and very human space, Easter speaks a surprising and powerful word. The resurrection of Jesus is not simply the happy ending to a tragic story. It is God’s decisive declaration about the kind of world we live in, and the kind of King who reigns over it.

During Lent, we are exploring what it means that Jesus Christ is given for us. In these passages from Luke’s Gospel, we encounter Jesus, lamenting and weeping for Jerusalem. As you prepare for worship this week, ask God to help you draw close to Jesus, the “man of sorrows, acquainted with grief.”

During Lent we are exploring what it means that Jesus Christ is given for us. In this passage we encounter one of Jesus’ most striking descriptions of his mission: that he came “to give his life as a ransom for many.” What does that mean?

Even though this is only the second Sunday of Lent, we are moving ahead in the story this week — all the way to the table on the night before Jesus dies. Around that table, in the quiet intimacy of a borrowed upper room, Jesus says something astonishing: “This is my body, given for you… This cup is the new covenant in my blood.” Every time we celebrate the Lord’s Supper, we repeat those words. But have you ever paused to ask what they meant when Jesus first said them?

As we cross the threshold from Epiphany to Lent, we are also shifting our focus in this series from Jesus Revealed to Jesus Given.

This Sunday, we will mark the final week of the Epiphany season before Lent begins next week. During this season of Epiphany, we’ve been focusing on Gospel stories that reveal the identity of this man called Jesus, and in this week’s text, we find the culmination of Jesus’s revelation in the story of the Transfiguration. 

This Sunday we're continuing in our Epiphany series, looking at stories that reveal something important about the person of Jesus. We'll be reflecting this Sunday on Jesus as the liberator of human beings from the power of evil, as demonstrated through the remarkable story of a man named Legion.

As we continue in Epiphany this week, we’ll see Jesus reveal more of himself to his followers through the sign he performs at the wedding in Cana in John 2:1-11. Throughout the gospels we see that Jesus enjoyed a party and this wedding was no exception, and while there was the joy you’d expect at a wedding, Jesus brought even greater joy through revealing more of who he is.

This week we are starting a new preaching series that will carry us through winter and spring. We will follow the life of Jesus in two parts, shaped by the rhythm of the liturgical calendar. The series is titled “Revealed & Given,” reflecting the dual movements of Epiphany and Lent — seasons that together draw us more deeply into the mystery of Christ.  This Sunday we'll be in Matthew 3:13-17 where Jesus is Revealed as the Beloved Son. In place of preparation notes this week, I encourage you to spend time meditating on those verses ahead of Sunday's service.