What a joy it has been to experience Lent, Holy Week and Easter Celebration. According to the church calendar Easter is not just one Sunday but a number of Sundays that would take us through 40 days of Easter, including Ascension Sunday, and culminating on Pentecost Sunday. When I look at the seasons of Advent, Lent and Easter Time I see where God has been determined to keep us growing using the biblical time reference of forty days. Advent is a time we prepare for Christ’s coming as an infant child. Advent times stress our preparation for a Savior. During the forty days of Lent we take a journey to learn more about Jesus. Following Pentecost for a number of months leading up to Advent, scripture takes us on an extensive journey studying about how Jesus instructs His disciples and continues to teach us through New Testament Scripture. It is my feeling that Jesus knew that not only His twelve disciples and others who followed him, including us today, need direction as to what it means to be a disciple and where discipleship will take us.
We see that Jesus recognized, following Easter and the Forty Days of the Easter Season when we look at scripture, that with Advent, Lent, Easter and the other parts of the church calendar year, we need even more time to completely understand Jesus’ coming to earth. His death on the cross and His resurrection affects the ways in which we live. Forty additional days were needed to understand the empty tomb and what His continued appearances to His disciples would bring them to understand.
Additional preparation was needed following His resurrection and Forty days, bringing them to accept His resurrection and prepare them for Pentecost. As we continue to prepare for Jesus’ ascension, followed by Pentecost, Jesus believed that we, along with his disciples, are ready to take the gospel to the ends of the earth as he commanded not just his disciples but you and me.
During these forty days, following Easter, the focus of the scriptures that we read and the messages I bring to you on Sunday mornings, will be centered around our preparation as Jesus laid out in scripture for us to continue our spiritual growth and our training as his disciples. So, be ready for the challenge that scripture offers us between now and May 19th when we celebrate Pentecost Sunday when the advocate comes, the spirit of truth that Jesus promises us, because we have been with him from the beginning. And may we remember John 16 :12-15 “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of Truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine. For this reason, I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.”
May the Season of Easter be a blessing as we journey along the path that Jesus takes us on because he loved us so much that he returned to us after his resurrection and stayed with us for forty days so that we would be prepared to receive the Holy Spirit.
Claybanks United Methodist Church 