Monthly Archives: April 2026

The Cause for Life is Advancing

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I sure hope you don’t start reading this morning’s note and think, “Oh no, here he goes again.” That said, and while I know we’re well into spring, I heard on the way into the office this morning that it could snow tonight.

Ugh. Snow belongs to winter. And anyone who knows me well knows that I despise winter. I know the comment is trite. But I mean it. And it feels like I can’t say it enough. Winter is the worst.

Why do I live in Michigan? I blame my wife, Jennifer. I met her here in 1994. It was then, and only then, that Michigan laid claim to me. Well, on second thought, it’s more accurate to say that I’m here because this is where the Lord sent me. With that, Michigan’s grip extends through the hands of God’s people here at Our Savior in Hartland.

So, again, why do I live in Michigan? I suppose, because it’s where I belong.

But none of what I just said changes the fact that I thoroughly dislike Michigan’s seemingly endless winters. And I don’t mean that in the casual way people complain about a gray day or a cold morning. I mean that I can barely get to December’s midpoint before winter has already dragged on long enough for me. I practically crawl through and into the new year carrying every ounce of its emotional weight. Everything appears dead. Everything living has, almost literally, withdrawn into itself—and I’m miles past my threshold. I’m dying for warmth. I want summer’s colors.

Did I mention that it could snow tonight?

For the record, if you happen to see me standing in tonight’s potential snow and talking to myself with a stick in my hand, I’m not actually talking to myself, but I’m poking at the earth and saying, “Wake up!”

Of course, spring will eventually arrive. Technically, it began this year on March 20. As you can see, it didn’t arrive all at once. Admittedly, however, it started with signs. The ground softened. We started getting more daylight. I went for a short walk on Wednesday evening in between rain showers with my grandson, Preston, and along the way, I showed him the small green things beginning to press up through the earth. I lifted him near a neighbor’s tree to show him the buds appearing on branches. Those branches looked dead a week ago.

I suppose in another sense, spring is also messy. Anything messy is rarely spectacular by the world’s standards. But for me, the signs matter more than the mess. For me, they testify to life. They tell me that summer is coming. In a grander sense, they’re a reminder that what appeared dead was not beyond renewal.

I should mention that while spring is hopeful, it also brings its own kind of trouble for me. The extreme barometric pressure swings that come with the season always bring migraines. In other words, even in the season that finally feels like relief, there’s an element of pain. But there, again, is a lesson for me as I wait for summer. In a sense, spring tells the truth about growth. Life’s return is a beautiful thing. But it’s also messy, and often enough, struggle is a part of its process (Romans 8:22).

I’m thinking in this way this morning for a reason.

I spoke at the Lenawee County Right To Life dinner in Adrian this past Thursday, and, essentially, some of my remarks focused on how easy it can be to become discouraged in the middle of any long moral struggle. Discouragement settles in slowly, and after a while, all the surrounding winter-like noise can easily become mistaken for seasonal permanence. Relative to the cause for life, if folks aren’t careful, especially in the ungodly state of Michigan, it can eventually feel like the cultural winds only blow in one direction, and that the best anyone can ever expect is to brace for things to get worse. Over time, that kind of discouragement can become its own form of surrender. People continue doing the work outwardly while inwardly assuming that nothing will ever change.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that the presence of struggle doesn’t mean that nothing is growing. And spring itself is the perfect reminder. It’s messy, but even in the mess, there are signs of growth showing that, no matter the noise or the seemingly slow pace, the work is bearing fruit (Galatians 6:9).

I saw a few of those signs in real time on Thursday evening in Adrian. The evening itself is not necessarily the point here. The point is what the evening suggested. At the start of the dinner, the Lenawee County affiliate president, Julie, mentioned that the event had grown from 20 to 25 tables. That means forty more seats were filled than the year before. That’s 25 percent growth. I know those are some relatively simple numbers. But it’s a relatively simple story to tell. In short, more people came. More people wanted to participate. Most importantly, in a time when people are shunned for taking stands against abortion’s ungodliness, more people were willing to attach themselves publicly to the cause of life.

That alone is a spring-like bud on the cause’s tree.

During the dinner, Jennifer and I sat beside Amber Roseboom, the president of Michigan Right to Life. I’ve known Amber for a while now. I mentioned a statistic I’d read recently in passing. It was from Gallup’s 2025 age-trend data on abortion. One number in particular stood out. Among Americans ages eighteen to twenty-nine, 37 percent identified as pro-life. At first glance, we might think that’s an abysmal number. And yet, in 2022, that number was 26 percent. That’s an eleven-point increase.

I ended up sharing that statistic during my talk, if only because nobody should pretend that an eleven-point shift in a younger age bracket is meaningless drift. It’s a sign of spring. It suggests an emerging openness. If anything, it suggests that younger Americans are not as uniform in their thinking as so many in our culture insist.

Interestingly, Amber mentioned both in private and during her moment at the microphone that the Michigan affiliates are growing. All of these details—the table count, the percentage increase, and the affiliate increase—together hint at a pattern. They suggest that the cause of life is not in retreat. It’s not even just barely holding the line. It’s advancing.

For far too long, the culture has spoken as though the rising generation belonged almost entirely among abortion’s defenders. They’ve treated that assumption as a settled fact, like it’s some sort of already rendered verdict, and that only the backwater idiots are the ones failing to recognize it. For my part, I try never to forget that human beings are far more complicated than the scripts the culture writes for them. Not to mention, God made us. His Law written into our hearts is still a thing. His natural law is still a thing, too. And so, the sight of vulnerable life still stirs something in people. The moral weight of what abortion actually is, when presented truthfully, still bears down on hearts and minds, even when every available euphemism is deployed to soften the reality. Younger people, like every other generation before them, are still capable of seeing through lies and changing their minds.

I appreciate Albert Camus’ famous saying, “In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.” Some consider it overused. I don’t see it that way. I think the words are a near-perfect description of hope. Relative to what I’ve written so far, in the seemingly perpetual dreadfulness of abortion’s winter, they speak of hope’s presence, and they anticipate hope’s emerging buds. A local dinner grows by 25 percent. State affiliates increase. Younger adults show a measurable increase in pro-life identification. Each sign by itself may seem small to someone determined to dismiss it. But like a grampa lifting his grandson to the tree to see for himself, God does the same with us on occasion. He lifts His children to these small signs and encourages us, “Keep going. Summer is coming.”

For Christians, I suppose this hope reaches even deeper still, especially so close to Easter. By faith, we know our hope is already fulfilled in Christ. He has already entered death and shattered it from the inside. He has already secured the victory over sin, death, and hell by His cross and resurrection. Which means every small sign of life, every bud of renewal, and every encouragement along the way arrives to us as more than wishful thinking. They come as reminders of a future already guaranteed by the risen Lord (1 Corinthians 15:20). Indeed, summer is coming because Christ is risen, and in Him the final spring has already begun.

With that knowledge tucked into our hearts, we can endure the lingering cold, keep watch for the buds, and go about the business of defending life, assured that the Lord who has promised the summer is already bringing it.

Thomas Was At Least Willing

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I suppose it wouldn’t be the Second Sunday of Easter if I didn’t stop to tell you how I feel the disciple Thomas gets a bad rap. I say that because, as anyone familiar with my thoughts on the matter already knows, while it’s not a good thing that he doubted, he was the only one of the remaining eleven disciples asking all the right questions.

He was the only one asking to see the proof of what the Lord had already promised He’d accomplish.

Now, rather than get into that for the fiftieth time, while preparing for this morning’s sermon, I noticed something else in the text worth talking about. I won’t share all of it here because it’s intended to be heard from the pulpit. Still, one thing that tapped on my mind’s shoulder this time through the text wasn’t so much Thomas’s honest skepticism, but more so the location and Christ’s timing.

If you think about it, Jesus could have appeared to Thomas when Thomas was alone. The text tells us he wasn’t with the disciples when Jesus visited the upper room the first time. But did he really need to be? Jesus is God. He could’ve appeared to him privately wherever he was.

I’ve preached before that, in his “Well, it is what it is” mindset, because that’s the kind of man Thomas seemed to be, it was very likely he went home after the crucifixion. Knowing the Pharisees were on the hunt, he was likely just waiting to assume whatever consequences he felt he deserved for following a failed Messiah. Whether or not that’s where he was, Jesus could’ve interrupted him in his private grief, settled the matter in a moment, and spared him a week of stubborn unbelief and whatever possible embarrassment came from saying out loud what the others who’d seen Jesus must have found at least a little offensive: “Unless I see… unless I touch… I will never believe.”

But Jesus didn’t do that.

Instead, our Lord waited. More importantly, He chose to reveal Himself in the company of the disciples—when they were all together in the same place. I think that matters, especially when I know there are Christians out there who think their faith is a private thing that exists apart from the company of believers, the Church.

Unfortunately, that’s a dangerous belief brought on by modern mainstream evangelicalism. We’ve been led to think of faith as something worked out almost entirely in the private interior world of the individual, as though the threshold between belief and unbelief can only be discovered between me and my thoughts, me and my feelings, me and whatever other sensitivity may be dominating my emotions in the moment.

I’m not saying faith isn’t personal. It is. That’s why the creeds begin with “I believe,” and not “We believe.” But that right there, a creed—a public confession of what’s true in the Christian Faith and what isn’t, meant to be spoken by the community—reminds us that faith is not less than communal, either. Thomas is not restored by being left to himself. He’s restored in the midst of believers.

A week earlier, he had been absent when Jesus came and stood among them. Again, we aren’t told precisely why Thomas wasn’t there, so we don’t know for sure. Maybe it was grief. Maybe it was disappointment that had turned into detachment. But whatever the reason, what we do know is that he simply wasn’t there. And while he was gone, he didn’t see Jesus. When he came back, he did.

That should resonate for all of us.

I know there are folks out there who fervently believe they can be a Christian without being part of a gathered church. But remember, when the Bible wants us to know something, it includes the details. I think there’s something quietly sobering in this particular detail. In other words, I think it speaks volumes that the disciple who missed Christ’s appearance was the one who was absent from the other believers.

Of course, I can already hear the usual suspects saying that I’m turning this detail into a crude moralism about church attendance. Well, read it as you will. The Bible does mandate church attendance (Hebrews 10:24-25). Genuine believers, by faith, tend to try to align with what God wants. Apart from that simple fact, common sense shouldn’t lead anyone to avoid the point here. Even Saint Paul says rather plainly that “through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known” (Ephesians 3:10), and by “manifold wisdom,” he meant the Gospel, both in its verbal and visible forms. This is to say that the Lord appoints the Church—the gathering of His people—as both the locale for giving and receiving the gifts of mercy He has established and desires to give.

And so, someone might ask, “Why would God do it this way?” I think a better question would be to ask, “Would you expect God to work in ways that leave you guessing?” Or perhaps better, “Would you want to go looking for God in places He hasn’t promised to be?”

These are more so intellectual questions, I know. Thomas’s problem was more than intellectual, by far. He was away from the fellowship into which the news of the resurrection was first promised and had, even then, already come—and he thought that was best.

But now, keep reading. Thomas didn’t vanish from the narrative after his doubting episode. He didn’t make his separation permanent. That’s something else I really like about him. Too often, people get angry with me when I come to them, wondering where they’ve been for so long. Of course, I never come without an invitation. Still, it’s becoming more and more common for folks not only to lash out with something like, “Who the h*#% do you think you are telling me how to live my life?” or “I’ve been gone for a long time and no one reached out. What an unloving church!” as if the responsibility for faithfulness has nothing to do with them. But both of these are usually followed by the worst kind of response—a doubling down on the idea that they can maintain a healthy faith apart from the fellowship, apart from the Means of Grace that Christ gives to actually serve and sustain that faith.

With that, here’s another very important detail.

Thomas didn’t get angry when the others invited him back. He was at least willing to entertain his fellow believers’ invitation and return. And as a result, he’s there the next Sunday. He’s back in the room. However unconvinced, however guarded, he has returned to the company of believers. That’s no small thing.

I suppose I should’ve also added “however bruised” to the list, too. That’s another ready excuse today.

To that, I’ll simply say, we all know what it feels like to be let down by someone. The Church is made up of people, and people do fail each other. But is that really a sufficient reason to stay away altogether? I once heard someone say that McDonald’s can get a person’s order wrong fifty times and they’ll still keep going back. But then, someone at church makes one mistake, and they’re gone for good. I’ve also heard it said that anyone looking for the perfect church shouldn’t join it if they find one, because doing so would ruin it.

These sayings are more truthful than most would admit.

We all get offended. And we all cause offense. That’s what sin does. But we have bigger problems when we let sin decide our location relative to Christ. The ordinariness of life that comes with living among sinners is never a valid reason to abandon faithfulness in worship. Besides being trapped in the middle of the Pacific Ocean on a deserted island, one of the only reasons a person should remain apart from a congregation and its worship life isn’t even on the list of the most common reasons people actually do it. The biggest reason should be false doctrine, and even then, a person should only leave after fighting to correct it, if only for the sake of concern for other Christians being infected by it (Romans 16:17 and Titus 3:10). That said, a person also doesn’t leave a church teaching false doctrine to never end up in a faithful one. That would bring into question the person’s own understanding of faithfulness.

I’m already wandering further than I planned. The point is that Christ has already shown us by His Word how much wiser it is to remain where we are best sustained: near that same Word and among the people of Christ born from and immersed in it (Romans 10:17 and 1 Thessalonians 5:11). This is true even when the Christian heart is struggling to find value in being there. Thomas, for all his confusion, even when it seemed like there was no good reason to return, at least had the honesty to bring his confusion and concern into the place where Christ had promised to be with His own, ultimately seeing his concern eventually become joy—or better said, his unbelief become belief.

And by the way, the rest of us can take a hint from the other disciples. Notice, they invited Thomas, and then they didn’t shame him when he actually returned, as if Christ had made and kept promises to them that He wouldn’t keep for Thomas.

That’s probably the best part of the whole narrative. Jesus knew the foolishness in Thomas’s behavior just as much as he knew it among the others in that room. Do you remember what Peter did? Jesus did, and still He came. He knew exactly what Thomas said, too. In fact, he repeated the words back to him almost verbatim. He knew every condition Thomas had set, every demand dressed up as an excuse. Still, the Lord came to be with Thomas.

So, yes, Thomas gets a bad rap. And much of it is earned. He is usually only remembered for the first half of the story rather than the second. Not only was he asking all the right questions, but he also returned to where those questions could be met with answers, the kind that sustain a living faith.

There’s a reason John included this story of Thomas in the account. It wasn’t to embarrass his friend. At the very least, it was to show the rest of us an important pattern. At its maximum, it was, as John himself said, that we might also believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing we might have life in His name (John 20:31).

Easter 2026

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Last night’s Easter Vigil service here at Our Savior was, as always, extraordinary. For one, most of the service occurs in the dark. No lights. Only candles. Until a particular moment. Then, there’s nothing quite like having gone nearly nine weeks without speaking the word “Alleluia,” as is the tradition for the churches embracing the better traditions, when suddenly, after the Gospel Proclamation “Christ is risen!”, all of the lights come on in a blaring flash as the congregation shouts, “He is risen, indeed! Alleluia!”

It’s a splendid moment, to be sure, adorned with Christian hymnody, as the congregation continues directly—powerfully—into the Hymn of Praise, singing, “This is the feast of victory for our God!”

And yet, what is it that makes the moment so arresting? I think part of it is located in the Church’s historic wisdom, in the sense that worshippers are meant to experience the very real contrast between darkness and light. And maybe even mourning silence and jubilant song. It’s so startling that it’s hard to ignore.

Although I suppose it isn’t just these contrasts. I think, in the Church’s wisdom, she grew to understand, through the centuries, the weight of what was carried during the days before the Resurrection vigil. That first Alleluia, after weeks of somber reflection, doesn’t return cheaply. It’s not like it’s merely added back into the service. We certainly don’t just stumble upon it. It has literally been buried—intentionally silenced—because the Church has spent her time walking in solemnity with Christ to the cross. In that moment when the lights come on, and the Christians shout “Alleluia,” we understand that the absence has done its work. It has trained the heart to actually sense the cost of our redemption.

In other words, even during the Easter celebration, we don’t lose sight of what sits at the heart of our confession. Good Friday lingers behind every note. The echo of the hammer, the finality of “It is finished,” the stillness of a tomb sealed and guarded—all of it locks arms with the Easter proclamation. Which, again, I’m guessing, is precisely why the joy is not thin, nor is it merely sentimental. It’s a sense, maybe even a microscopic taste, of joy that has passed through death and come out the other side carrying something indestructible. When the lights blaze on, and the Alleluias return, they do so as defiance to sin, death, and all of hell’s battalions.

Jesus won. They lost. There’s the proof—a living, breathing Jesus. My Jesus. Alleluia!

I won’t speak for the folks who attend our Easter Vigil service, but for me, it’s not some sort of reenactment or merely a highly liturgical remembrance. It’s more of a participation. I’m not even a spectator to what I’m seeing. I’m a direct recipient of the Resurrection’s ongoing reality. Because of Christ’s Easter victory, sin not only lost, but it can never have the last word. Death and hell not only lost, but they no longer have a final claim on me—on any believer! The grave was not the end of the story for Christ, and therefore it isn’t for those who are in Him.

I suppose that’s why the joy feels almost too large for the room where it all happened last night. And if you’ve ever been to Our Savior in Hartland, it’s a big, wonderful space. Still, no matter how many are in attendance at the Vigil, the joy spills over into the kind of thunderous song I’m willing to bet leaves the devil without question. When the Vigil bunch starts singing, the old evil foe knows for certain that his house has been ransacked, that what was lost has been found, and more than found—redeemed and restored.

Admittedly, when it comes to the emotion of it all, there’s no earthly Good Friday or Easter service that will match the scale of what Christ accomplished. And after looking back at everything I just wrote, I should be careful to mention one more thing—something I already made a point of clarifying during the Good Friday Tre Ore service.

Keep in mind, no matter the century, the goal of genuine Christian worship has never been about making you feel something. At least, not worship born from a biblical understanding. That’s partly because genuine Christian worship doesn’t begin with you—with what you do for God. It approaches God with empty hands extended, knowing there’s nothing we can bring into worship that He needs, but instead, we need everything He can give.

I like how Rev. Dr. Norman Nagel explained it in the Introduction to Lutheran Worship, the LCMS’s hymnal prior to Lutheran Service Book. He wrote so crisply: “Our Lord speaks, and we listen. His Word bestows what it says. Faith that is born from what is heard acknowledges the gifts received with eager thankfulness and praise. … Saying back to Him what He has said to us, we repeat what is most true and sure. … The rhythm of our worship is from Him to us, and then from us back to Him. He gives His gifts, and together we receive and extol them” (LW, p. 6).

Unfortunately, many churches have it the other way around, inevitably falling into a trap. And when they do, they lose sight of something important. The goal of worship is always to deliver something: Christ for you, crucified and risen! This happens through a Law and Gospel message that establishes the need and then delivers the means to overcome it! They’re means that are placed into ears by the preached Word, and into our mouths by the Lord’s very body and blood, given and shed for the forgiveness of sins.

When this is our understanding of worship, that it’s about God serving us, rather than the other way around—not from the moment’s emotion, but from the divine means; not from what we bring into the space, but from what He gives objectively, concretely, outside of us—when this is the understanding, Christian joy holds. It holds even when the lights go out again, we get into our cars and drive home, and the alleluias fade into the ordinary days that follow Easter’s exceptional festivities.

And so, with that, I pray the Lord’s blessings upon you and yours as you celebrate this wonderful day. May it be for you a day of days, one that fills you to the brim with Christ’s merciful love. It was a hard-fought fight. But it wasn’t hopeless. Again, there He is. He is risen! He is risen, indeed! Alleluia!

Good Friday 2026

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Here at Our Savior in Hartland, we spend Holy Monday, Holy Tuesday, and Holy Wednesday making our way through John 12:20-50. The context of the reading is Palm Sunday. It’s the Lord’s immediate beginnings in the temple after He entered the city to fast-fleeting fanfare. He’s there teaching.

We handle the reading in sections. Monday considers verses 20-36. Tuesday, we hear 37-43. On Wednesday, we digest 44-50. I’ve been doing it this way for a while. It works, if only because the Lord’s words here are wonderfully bottomless. And their point? His truest glory. His death on the cross for sinners.

Right now, I’m thinking about Tuesday’s reading. It ended with John telling us, almost in passing, that “many even of the authorities believed in Him, but for fear of the Pharisees they did not confess it, so that they would not be put out of the synagogue; for they loved the glory that comes from man more than the glory that comes from God” (vv. 42-43).

As a pastor, those words are familiar. I’m not trying to be negative. However, the plain truth is that there is a kind of belief that teeters dangerously at the edge of unbelief. John more or less describes it as the kind that never quite finds its voice, but instead, stays hidden. His words are a passing indictment of something that’s far more dangerous than we may realize.

Most often, we might assume things like open hostility to God’s Word or flat-out rebellion against this or that are the real dangers leading to unbelief. Maybe they’re the worst of the bunch. But they’re not the only pavers on the path to destruction. Some are much subtler. Here, John references the deadly nature of self-preserving hesitation. He describes the kind of faith that remains hidden because it’ll cost too much if it’s seen.

Today is Good Friday. Good Friday presses directly into that space. That’s because, regardless of those in the churches who’d prefer to keep the crucifixes hidden because they seem offensive, the fact is, the cross doesn’t allow for a private allegiance. It doesn’t leave room for a faith that exists only in the interior life, safely insulated from consequence. The crucifixion of Jesus was public. It was out in the open and very public.

That’s right where it belonged, making it, in every sense of the word, costly.

I think that’s the real reason some churches, even some here in my neighborhood, shrink from displaying crosses in their buildings—and why they jump from Palm Sunday straight to Easter, without even the slightest glance toward Good Friday. It’s not that they don’t believe. I won’t go that far. John was clear. They did believe. Something in them knew and recognized the Savior. Something in them was drawn to Him. But belief—the kind refusing to confess the glory Jesus had been describing all along—it began to bend. It began to accommodate. It learned how to survive without ever having to embrace Christ entirely. It might not be unbelief, but it’s really darn close.

“They loved the glory that comes from man more than the glory that comes from God.”

That’s the fault line right there. And it should sound familiar. It describes competing loves, and we all know that sensation. Jesus warned against this in the Sermon on the Mount. He preached, “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other” (Matthew 6:24).

But what does this look like in a practical sense? I already mentioned the churches near me that have openly expressed disdain for displaying crosses, one in particular having been quoted in a local newspaper a few years back. For the rest of us, the reasons are not far removed. Christ takes a back seat to the desire to be thought well of. He’s pushed aside by the instinct to remain inside the popular circle. We do quiet calculations that weigh what faithfulness might cost against what acceptance provides. And when those scales tip—even just a little—keeping quiet about our faith in Jesus begins to feel reasonable, or in certain circumstances, maybe even necessary.

“If they know, I’ll never get the promotion.”

Good Friday weeps over this reasoning even as it refuses to let it stand. Because on this day, the One in whom they believed is no longer teaching in parables or confounding His critics in the temple courts. He’s lifted up in the open. He’s stripped of all dignity before the crowds. He’s nailed to wood while the masses mock Him. He’s cast entirely from everyone and everything. He’s openly and publicly rejected by every man-made structure this world uses to define belonging. Indeed, it is as Isaiah foretold: “He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not” (Isaiah 53:3).

I know it couldn’t have been an easy scene. Of course some people hid their eyes from it. But that doesn’t change the fact that the crucifixion of Jesus was the “hour for the Son of Man to be glorified” (John 12:23), and that according to that hour, as Jesus continued, “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself” (v. 32). John explains, “He said this to show by what kind of death He was going to die” (v. 33).

The Christian Church has no more important day than today. Yes, the Resurrection is crucial. But in a sense, it’s proof of today’s significance. The crucifixion of Jesus is the moment of moments for the Christian faith. It’s where the Son of God exacted what was necessary for your salvation. And in that moment, every believer, open or hidden, is forced to reckon with something the world will never embrace. Behold what the Christian faith finds so beautiful! The death of God’s Son for me!

The devil hates everything about the crucifixion, most importantly, what it earned for us. He’d love for it to become something we avoid, interpreting it as little more than jewelry-worthy while, at the same time, convincing us to prefer a version of faith that never disrupts our place in the world.

As is often the case, the Bible provides real-life examples so we know better. John 12 is just such an example. Some of the Jewish authorities believed, but they stopped short of faith’s confession. And in stopping short, they forfeited something essential. Because faith that never speaks or moves or risks anything—it almost always conforms to the very pressures it fears. It becomes quiet enough to coexist. It remains safe enough to go unnoticed and, as a result, steps away from Christ’s insistence that believers have been recreated by faith as salt of the earth and lights in the world. Christ would have us as recognizable conduits—a means for the unbelieving world to see and meet Him and, ultimately, give glory to the Father in heaven (Matthew 5:13-16).

Good Friday stands entirely against the kind of belief John described—the kind that’s weak enough to disappear in every crowd. Again, John doesn’t scold it in his account. He simply presents it as a dangerous reality that we shouldn’t ignore, if only because the One preaching in the temple at that moment didn’t remain hidden to preserve His standing. He didn’t adjust His mission to avoid trouble. He embraced the hour of true glory—His death for sinners. And lest you doubt what I’ve said about the hour of His glorification being His death, read our Lord’s passionate announcement in verse 27: “Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? But for this purpose I have come to this hour.”

I suppose part of my point this morning is to invite you to step a little closer to the Lord’s hour. Go to church today. Make time—not as a formality, or as an obligation squeezed into an already crowded day—but as a deliberate act of open alignment. Ask your boss. Invite a friend. Make time and go to the place where so many others in your church family are going, a place where the cross is not background noise, but the central reality of the faith we are to live before others each and every day.

Today—especially today—go! Refuse to remain at a distance from what stands at the center of history. The intense Gospel rendering of this day strips away the lesser things you’re prone to holding onto, even the ridiculously simple things like the need for approval, the fear of exclusion, or the quiet compromises you’ve made to keep everything around you safely intact.

Let Good Friday interrupt you and give you something better. Let it press on you. Let it ask more of you than is comfortable. Let it show you more than what you’re willing to see.

If you don’t have a church home, or your church does not offer Good Friday services, I’m sorry. Rest assured, you’re welcome to join us here at Our Savior in Hartland. Our first Good Friday service, Tre Ore, is at 1:00 PM. The next, Tenebrae, is at 6:30 PM. I’m preaching at the 1:00 service. Our headmaster, Pastor Scheer, so graciously offered to help by preaching at the 6:30 PM service. Attending either or both, I promise you’ll be blessed with all that’s necessary for a faith that can stretch its legs beyond the borders of anything this world might call belonging.