Last night I contemplated the death of Jesus with my church community, guests, and friends.
I say contemplate b/c you don't really celebrate that moment.
We intentionally stopped, pressed pause, and made sure we didn't get to Easter Sunday without first making an intentional pit stop on Good Friday.
The theme was GAVE, the greek word - paradidomi - which means handed over, given up, delivered into, betrayed. This word is used in lots of references throughout the passion narratives and later NT texts referring back the cross.
We talked about 3 main ways Jesus was given up:
1. The people gave Jesus up to die: Judas, the priests, Pilot, the crowds
2. God gave Jesus up to die for all of us
3. Jesus gave himself up to die for the church, the world, you and me
GAVE, GAVE, GAVE... all so we could LIVE, LIVE, LIVE.
A few more things I really liked about last night:
- great variety of people, people out who were seeking or friends of ours
- a full crowd
- it was a short gathering, only 60 min., but every element connected
- we sat around tables and not in rows
- we hung out for over an hour after just talking (this is rare for some of us b/c we're always tearing down stuff - we're in a rental situation)
- the kids had a great time reenacting the Last Supper
- an original spoken word piece was performed
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