Yesterday the passing of Billy Graham was big news throughout the world. On the radio and TV and online and in print Graham’s life and enormous legacy as an evangelist were celebrated and discussed, often in areas where we wouldn’t normally hear about Christian figures and the Gospel. Our own Bishop, Todd Hunter, celebrated Graham's legacy of character and integrity, remarkable for someone so in the public eye. 

Graham famously often said, “Someday you will read or hear that Billy Graham is dead. Don’t you believe a word of it. I shall be more alive than I am now. I will just have changed my address. I will have gone into the presence of God.” That’s a remarkable statement from a remarkable man. It’s a statement informed by the Christian hope of the resurrection, but there is also tension with in it. How do we hold together the hope of resurrection and new life with the reality and experience of grief and death? What does it mean to mourn as those who have hope? How might a Christian vision of death and life after inform our approach to death and lives here and now? 

This coming Sunday, at our next “Lunch and Learn” session following worship, we’ll have the opportunity to discuss and wrestle with these questions and the tensions that are present in Scripture and in the Christian perspective on death. In addition to considering the theological vision of the Christian faith we’ll also hear from some individuals how they have personally wrestled with loss, grief, and mortality, and how the Christian faith has informed and equipped them in their journeys to and through the valley of the shadow of death. See below for details, and please RSVP by tomorrow at 2pm so we can plan for childcare and meals. 

In addition to this "Lunch and Learn" and the book, Humble Roots, you may also have noticed a piece of art up front in worship on Sunday as part of our corporate Lenten engagement. This is a piece that Meena Matocha, an artist and beloved member of our community, is working on. We’ve commissioned Meena to work on this piece, to be completed for Easter Sunday, and we’ll have it on display each Sunday in Lent. Each week we’ll have a sense of its progression and coming completion, matching our sense of expectation and anticipation of Easter through Lent. I hope that it is an aid to you in worship and in following Jesus on the way of the cross. We’ll hear more from Meena in the weeks to come, I simply wanted to highlight if for y’all. Check it out on Sunday! 

Grace and peace, 

Peter+