Wednesday, May 22, 2024

Wisdom Wednesday: Three Days in May

Grace and peace to you, I’m Rev. Joe Cailles, the pastor of Peakland United Methodist Church in Lynchburg Virginia. Today is Wednesday, May 22, 2024. This past Sunday Peakland celebrated Pentecost, the day the Holy Spirit filled the disciples with languages and conviction to share the good news of Jesus life and death and resurrection with all those around them. Here at Peakland, we had a united worship service here in our fellowship hall. Our youth praise band led the music, two of our youth confirmed their faith and we celebrated our graduates! It was a great day, and I’m grateful to Peakland’s deacon Andrew for working with our Peakland After Dark families in creating the service, for Linwood and our amazing tech team for ensuring that our online folks could worship as well. What a happy holy day we had! Now, as it happens there are three other holy days at this time of year, that don’t fall on a Sunday but deserve some attention. Ascension Day, Aldersgate Day and Memorial Day A couple of weeks ago, Thursday, May 9 was Ascension Day. Both the Gospel of Luke and the book of Acts tell us that after Jesus’ resurrection, he stayed with his disciples for 40 days, walking and talking with them, eating with them, and commanding them to go out into the world and make disciples of all people, and to welcome all people into the life of the church. After the 40 days, the scriptures say that Jesus ascended from the earth to heaven, and as the Apostle Creed says, He sitteth at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. This is important to us because we believe that Jesus is with God in full authority over heaven and earth. Jesus’ ministry of healing and forgiving and seeking justice and salvation is no longer limited to one place and one time, but Jesus ascended into heaven reaches all people in all times. Pentecost celebrates that his Holy Spirit remains among us to guide us and inspire us. This Friday, May 24 is Aldersgate Day. This is a particular United methodist holy day. John Wesley, who established the methodist movement served as a parish priest in the new colonial town of Savanah Georgia for a few months beginning in 1736, but his ministry there was a disaster. He returned to England dejected and demoralized about his failures and wondered if he ever had faith at all. On May 24, 1738, Wesley wrote in this journal that he reluctantly attended a Bible study at a Moravian meeting house on Aldersgate Street in London. As the group considered Martin Luther’s preface to Paul’s letter to the Romans, Wesley wrote that during the reading he felt this heart was strangely warmed. He describes it as, “I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation, and an assurance was given me that he had stake away my sins, even mine, and saved from the law of sin and death.” Coming out of the Aldersgate experience, Wesley experienced a reviving of his soul, which fueled his commitment to helping methodists to do all the good that they could, to avoid harm, and to follow the ways of Jesus Christ. We United Methodists today are at our best when we unite our faith in Jesus Christ with our commitment to do good and avoid harm for each other and for all the world. Ascension Day. Aldersgate Day. Next Monday is Memorial Day in our country it’s the unofficial start of summer which is great news for students and teachers, and Memorial Dahy is the day set aside for honoring those who have died while serving in our military. We’ll see American flags all around our community. Memorial Day isn’t a religious holiday, but it is an important day for many of us, so in worship this Sunday, we’ll have a special Memorial Day prayer. All of these holy holidays are meant to help us worship our One Trinity God, to strengthen our Christian faith and our own commitment to do good and avoid harm in the world. Peakland United Methodist congregation is a great place to do all of that. If you’d like to know more about life here at Peakland and finding your place here, reach out to me at PeaklandPastor@gmail.com Thanks be to God!