Lent 2015 - Be Intentional

March 30, 2015

Dear Allen Temple Family and Friends,

Thank you so much for the kind words, prayers and support extended by so many of you this past week. It is greatly appreciated!

It's Holy Week, also known as Passion Week! It is marked by The Triumphant Entry of Palm Sunday. Jesus enters Jerusalem to celebratory cries of "Hosanna" and palm branches being laid in the road for the Passover Feast knowing that by the end of the week, he will be killed. Those cries of "Hosanna" will be replaced by demands to "Crucify Him".

I am on the flight returning from Palm Sunday services with the great people of Mount Pisgah Baptist Church in Brooklyn, New York where the Reverend Dr. Johnny Ray Youngblood is the Senior Pastor. This year, Palm Sunday happened to coincide with the close of their Women's Month. Every Palm Sunday, the Mount Pisgah Church family marches throughout their Brooklyn community handing out palms to the community and in their way serving as a visible witness to the coming of Christ. This year they commemorated the Black Lives Matter Movement by wearing BLM shirts and carrying banners that showed the last words of 7 murdered African Americans including Amadou Diallo, Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner and Renesha McBride. It was a moving and powerful display. It was also hauntingly ironic.

Jesus also found himself falsely accused, betrayed, subjected to a system of "justice," institutionally structured to preserve the status quo at all costs and killed for his identity. Let's be intentional this week as we take the daily journey to the cross with him this week.

• Monday: Matthew 21:12-22
• Tuesday: Luke 20:1-21:36
• Wednesday: The Gospels are silent. Let us make time for intentional silence as well.
• Thursday: Mark 14:12-72
• Friday: John 18:28-19:37
• Saturday: Matthew 27:62-66

In our own lives, many of us can identify with what it feels like to be falsely accused, betrayed, even victimization by unjust systems, but scripture admonishes us that...

Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others. In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death-even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:1-11, New International Version).

The Lenten Sermon Series will conclude with the final "I AM" saying of Jesus. Join us at one our three services at 6, 8 or 11:15am as we celebrate the RESURRECTION! I hope this week as you Stop and Be Still that you will be filled with joy in Knowing that this week ends with more than Easter bunnies, Baskets, Easter dresses, Easter Suits and Easter Eggs.

Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this? (John 11:25-26, New International Version).

Be still and know,