April 2017 Ankeny UCC Newsletter
April 1, 2017
Dear Church-
It’s two short weeks until Easter, and with it an end to our journey in the gospel of Luke. Throughout the spring, we’ve seen Jesus’s journey from the manger in Bethlehem to the Jordan River in Jerusalem, synagogues in Galilee, and back now one last time on the road for his final confrontations and meditations in Gethsemane. We’ve seen throughout Luke a warning that deliverance will not come to us just because we are from the right family or worship in the right way, but that God seeks most of all to reach people we put outside our boundary lines. This theme has come up over and over again in Luke’s Gospel, and we’ve tried to echo it both in our sermons and in our studies, as we’ve listened to different stories of people outside boundaries we are familiar with: boundaries of language, boundaries of national identity, boundaries of gender. As we come into the conclusion of our Insiders and Outsiders theme and move back into our annual series on church identity, I encourage you to keep reading the scripture and looking for ways that God has brought people from the outside to the inside. As you do, look around and wonder what it is that defines insiders and outsiders for you. How can we broaden the net, just as the Jesus Luke portrays has?
Easter Sunday, we’ll once again be celebrating at 9am with breakfast, followed by a 10am Easter Egg Hunt and worship led off by the bell choir at 10:30. Come and worship!
Blessings,
Nathan
