Why is it that hate and violence have become ordinary occurrences in our world? Most recently it is the nine lives that were taken at the Emmanuel AME Church last week.

For some reason this church shooting has affected me to my very core. I feel sorrow and sadness for the victims that had so much more of life to share. Anger that someone would chose to violate a sacred space that is known for grace, hope and love. And awe for the forgiveness that has been shown to the 21-year-old, who has said he shot the black worshippers in hopes of sparking a race war.

What is so powerful is the way the church members responded. In the moments when their sacred space had been violated in the midst of prayer they responded with grace and truth—not anger or hate. They continued to turn to Jesus for answers. 

We could go on and on about how we respond to the hate crimes and racism that have hurt others. We could talk about Jesus’ response to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. We could stand up for justice and campaign for equality. Or we could stand for what has been lost—a life of true discipleship. 

I have realized in this past week, that this massacre is not just something to be sad about, but something that requires action by all Christians. The members of Emmanuel AME Church have responded with love, worship, prayer and yes, forgiveness.

I have been reading Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s book The Cost of Discipleship where he eloquently describes the dichotomy of cheap grace versus costly grace. Cheap grace is the grace we give ourselves. We put on blinders to ignore injustice, we proclaim forgiveness, but don’t live it and we become Sunday Christians instead of everyday followers of Christ. Costly grace on the other hand calls for complete change. To forgive and really mean it, to love even when we don’t want to, to work together in the midst of disunity and to trust in the grace of Jesus Christ to guide us each and every day.

We have a choice, as followers of Jesus, to see this event among others and simply be saddened… or we can respond as disciples in our very own community by loving, showing grace and providing hope in Christ. Our world needs costly grace. It needs Jesus. How will we respond?

A few weeks ago, PEW Research Center came out with new study on the decline of Christianity in America. According to their research, Christianity has declined by nearly 7% in the last seven years. Since the research came out, CNN, NBC among others have shared their perspective on the decline of the church.

Since this statistical bomb was dropped on American Christians, I have had many conversations about this research with friends, colleagues, and parishioners. And the conversations are always depressing. It includes questions like, “Is the church going to die?” “What will the church look like in ten years at this rate?” And most importantly, “What are we going to do about it?”

Truthfully it would be easy to jump on the bandwagon, and come up with a list of priorities, actions and changes to make the church grow. But is that God’s plan?

My fear is that we have forgotten about love of our Creator and Heavenly Father, Jesus who lived, died and was resurrected for us, and the presence of the Holy Spirit. Have we forgotten how God brought the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt, how the Israelites faith grew even though they were a minority in Babylon, or what happened on Pentecost when people heard and received the Holy Spirit and thousands were baptized?

One of my friends once said, “God loves remnants because whenever God’s people are a minority they learn to trust that God will guide them.”

This is a time when we must trust even more than before. We live not by statistics but as faithful disciples each day. We learn how to trust in Jesus because His research doesn’t show decline, it shows deeper relationships, building of community and a stronger faith. 

It is hard to open a newspaper, turn on the news, or scroll down your news feed on Facebook without catching another story of hate, anger, violence and hurt. The stories touch us right where we are like the story of Kayla Mueller, a local humanitarian aid worker who was taken captive and murdered in Syria. ISIS terrorist attacking and killing people.  Religious and racial persecution continues to grow.  The suicide rates are sky rocketing and shootings which seem like an everyday occurrence. It is easy to focus on the brokenness around us.  To let the shootings, violence, and hate really capture the essence of our world today. It is sad and deep down it hurts because God didn’t make us this way. This wasn’t God’s plan and here we are a week and a half away from Easter—and it is easier to think about brokenness than about the hope of resurrection.

Holy Week is filled with some of our darkest days ending with the hope in Jesus’ resurrection. We understand the darkest days part because we live in the muck and mess of death, hate and pain all the time, but it should be different. I wonder if it seems dark only because we are forgetting to notice the hope of resurrection. I wonder what would happen if we flipped it and it was mostly about resurrection moments and less about darkness.

So this morning I began thinking about the resurrection moments in the past week that I have had the opportunity to celebrate:

• Pinnacle just collected 2,545 items to donate to our local food banks, an amazing gift to the people in need all around us.   
• Last weekend 25 people went to St. Vincent de Paul and harvested 500 pounds of fresh produce to feed the hungry. We had an amazing time, laughing, gardening and enjoying being together.
• Last night at our deacon meeting we celebrated ten deacons who have served three year terms and two youth deacons who have served one year terms caring, loving and supporting our church community. These are amazing people and I am blessed to be around them. We also welcomed twelve new deacons and youth deacons to serve with energy, imagination, compassion and care—this is going to be a great year!
• On Sunday, we commissioned our Stephen Ministry program here at Pinnacle a team of church members who are willing to walk along side in a confidential relationship with another member at Pinnacle through a difficult season in their life.

And this is just at Pinnacle. I haven’t mentioned my dog who is getting better, the new book I am reading or the amazing conversations I have had this past week with friends.

It is more work to think about resurrection moments than the brokenness of the world since brokenness is plastered all around us, but this is part of our call as Christians—to live as resurrection people. To see the unity in times of disunity, the hope in the midst of despair, love in places of hate, Jesus’ resurrection right before our eyes.

What are the resurrection moments in your life? Where are the places that God has entered into your life, some that might seem broken—but there is hope. Thanks be to God!

I expected things to change, for life to be different, but there was nothing. There were the same number of things on my “to-do list” and e-mails to respond to, laundry to complete and weeds to pull. Nothing seemed to change last Wednesday like I thought it should.

Last Wednesday began our season of Lent. Lent is the forty days prior to Easter. These forty days are symbolic of Jesus’ forty days in the wilderness and the forty years of the Israelites in the desert where they were tested, challenged and learned how to depend upon God. The season has often been described to me as forty days of giving up and taking on. People give up chocolate, TV, Facebook and take on prayer, time with God and a better Christian lifestyle. For forty days we are to pray, confess and contemplate our walk with Jesus.

We begin these forty days on Ash Wednesday. At Pinnacle we join on Wednesday evening for worship, communion and the imposition of ashes. We place the ashes on our foreheads as a sign and symbol of the dust we came from described in Genesis and the dust that we will return to in death. The life and death that comes from God and lives with us during our busy, stressful and sometimes hectic lives.

But after the service was over and I had been anointed with the cross of ashes on my forehead nothing seemed different. You would think I would feel the holy presence of Jesus, ready to hunker down and spend these forty days together. But I could only think about the mountain of emails, a long list of to do items and the spirit I expected to change in me as we began Lent, wasn’t really there.

I expected to feel like I had entered a holy season, a time when moments for prayer would be more evident. The feeling of God’s presence was swirling around me, and the anticipation of Easter would be as exciting as Christmas morning, but I got up Thursday morning feeling exactly the same way.

That is when I realized that the emails, to-do lists and my attitude of life around me was never going to change unless I changed. Jesus asks us to change not by stopping what we are doing, but by seeing our days differently. Lent isn’t the season when God writes the 11^th commandment, thou shall find time for me today…Lent is the season of recognizing that we don’t always know where Jesus is in our day. We are asked to allow ourselves to be lost, so that instead of finding God where we want to see him (and in turn, ignoring God in other places of our lives) we let the Holy Spirit find us.

I realized that I was expecting Jesus to show up with a Where’s Jesus picture page (like Where’s Waldo, but better) so that I could spend these forty days searching for Jesus. Jesus would know what I needed to work on, but that would mean that our relationship was all about me. I needed to find Jesus, I needed to work harder, I needed to plan my prayer time more efficiently. It is just the opposite, which is why Lent is so difficult. Jesus doesn’t want us to find him, instead He wants us to stop and let Jesus find us. Lent is about letting our busy, full and sometimes stressful lives be set aside so that Jesus can enter those place too.

Our journey with Jesus doesn’t change in an instant; remember, it took forty years for the Israelites in the wilderness to figure it out. Use these forty days to allow Jesus to enter every corner of our life and be present.