Even as we journey deep into the heart of Lent, we’re keeping our eyes lifted toward Holy Week and the great hope of Jesus’ resurrection.  The culmination of all of our Holy Week services and the beginning of our celebration of Easter is the Great Vigil of Easter.  The Vigil is held the Saturday night before Easter Sunday.  This year, it’s on April 3rd at 8:30 pm.

The Vigil is a beautiful, powerful service of worship (definitely my favorite of the whole year).  The liturgy is in four parts, and through scripture, song, and sacrament, it unfolds the great story of redemption.  It begins in silent darkness and proceeds to a joyous, light-filled proclamation of Alleluia!

The Vigil dates back to the earliest centuries of the church, when it was the time that new converts to the Christian faith were baptized. (This came after a period of preparation and fasting — what eventually became the season of Lent.)  Baptism is still at the heart of the Easter Vigil.  Not only will we all renew our baptismal vows, but we’ll have the opportunity to baptize any adults who want to be baptized!

Would you like to be baptized? If you have committed to following Jesus as the one who forgives and rescues you — or if you would like to — and you’ve never been baptized, we would love to baptize you at the Easter Vigil.  If you’re interested or have questions, please contact David or Erin (you can reach us here). We’d love to talk with you!

(If you have an infant whom you would like to be baptized, we’ll have infant baptisms on Pentecost, May 23rd. Please contact us if you’re interested.)

I really hope that all of you will consider coming to the Great Vigil of Easter. I promise that you’ll experience the joy of Christ’s resurrection in a profoundly powerful way!

Here’s something several Restoration members are working on that you’ll want to make space for in your calendar:

Art/Music/Justice

It’s a weekend event featuring concerts (Sara Groves & Jars of Clay), an art show, and a day full of thought-provoking speakers in interactive seminars.  Come for all or part of it!  Throughout the weekend, we’ll have the opportunity to talk in new ways about stewardship and integration.  We’ll think about ideas to incorporate our faith into all the corners of our lives.  And we’ll ask what it means to follow a loving and just God who has equipped us to do something about injustice.

Overall, we’ll be challenged to think in new ways about the resources God has given each of us–  our skills, passions and circumstances–  and how we can fully use them for God’s good purposes.

Tickets are only available on the AMJ website. Set aside the day to have your heart stirred.

Seth Goldin captures one of the values that makes Restoration tick–  people are desperate to be connected.  We want to be a movement that is connecting people to God, to others, and to meeting the needs we see around us locally and globally.  The movement finds its energy, focus, and end in the glory of God and the gospel of Jesus.

People are desperate to be connected.  I’m praying for more ideas to connect ‘em every day.  Will you join me?

Congrats on surviving the Very Blustery Day!  More detail is below, but here’s what I’d appreciate:  Please take five minutes to fill out this information.

Here’s the story.  About this time last year, Restoration was 100 people. We knew how to reach each other, and we pretty much knew what needs and skills everyone had.

God has been so great over the last year and has grown us to about 250 people worshiping together on Sundays.  This creates two issues as we try to connect you to God, to one another, and to the needs of the community.

First:  Connecting you to each other. We need a directory. The link above will let you choose to put information in our directory.

Second:  Connecting you to God and needs. We need to get better at knowing how you want to be involved at Restoration!  The link above will let you tell us a bit more about yourself, which will help me shepherd our community, and will help you connect in ways that fit your gifts and needs.

For those who don’t like to scroll back up to the link, here it is again!  It will literally take 5 minutes.  I would appreciate you taking this chance to connect at Restoration.  Thanks so much!

We’re also hosting an after-church reception at Boulevard Woodgrill, at 2901 Wilson Blvd. in Clarendon. Come by for coffee, pastries, and a chance to meet new people and catch up with old friends.  It’s also a great time to meet Bishop Bena and get to know the wise, faithful man who provides oversight to David and our church.  We’ll get started after the 8:30 church and keep on rolling for the 10:00 crowd to join after their service wraps up.  Come find us in the private dining room downstairs.

Lots happening on Sunday–can’t wait to see you all then!

What a great weekend! We had lots of people shoveling snow from Quincy Street to the backyard of the church. We had a strong team moving Erin to her new place. We had a group of people praying for the needs and opportunities that are outside our church. We tried our new parking plan. (Many thanks to everyone who is beginning to walk from the Washington-Lee Parking Garage).

During Lent, I will be preaching through 6 of Jesus’ parables about Life in the Kingdom. The Kingdom of God is one that is already but not yet. We get tastes of what it is like that mostly seem to fuel anticipation and longing for when it comes in its fullness. We will see during this series that Life in the Kingdom can be captured in 11 words:

Scatter Widely. Expect Rejection. Love Anyway. Pray Like Crazy. Anticipate Grace.

You can hear the first sermon here.

When Jesus tells the parable of the soils, he is explaining why he tells parables and what effect His Words have on those who hear them.  I said,

Parables seem like easy stories to understand–  and in many ways they were.  But Jesus says, I don’t tell them because they are easy.  I use parables to talk about my Kingdom because I don’t want people to get it.  Quoting from the prophet Isaiah, “I want them to see but not see and hear but not understand…”  Jesus tells parables to create a barrier between those on the inside and those on the outside.  It’s a permeable barrier, but it separates those who get the secrets of the Kingdom and those who just parables.

The passage Jesus quotes is this:  Isaiah 6: 9-10  God said to Isaiah, “Go, and say to this people:   “‘Keep on hearing,  but do not understand;   keep on seeing,  but do not perceive.’  Make the heart of this people  dull, and their ears heavy, and blind their eyes;    lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed.”

Isaiah asks the logical next question…  how long do I have to do this, Lord? This doesn’t sound very fun.  God says, “Until the cities are gone and everyone has moved away.”  Isaiah’s task was to preach to a people who would never respond, who would ignore him, and ultimately completely turn away.  What a hard calling!

But this was to prepare the way for the Messiah, to test people’s hearts, to create in them longing for redemption and restoration.  Because Isaiah also foretold of One who would come to bring Good News, who would bind up the brokenhearted, and proclaim liberty to the captive. (Isaiah 61)

Jesus used parables to probe people’s hearts.  You see, you can be curious about God or Jesus and never really get to a place where you yield. Jesus wanted people who wanted Him, not just the cool tricks He could do or the clever way He had with words.  Parables got people curious.  Parables were also a means for people to respond and become convinced.  My hope is that during this season, we would be people who take the words we hear and ‘hold them fast in an honest and good heart.’

Lets peer forward to see the King.

Lent is a season of waiting, anticipation, denial, adding on.  It is our most corporate time as a universal, historic church. For 40 days (just over a tithe of the year!!), we choose disciplines and practices that prepare us to celebrate the death and resurrection of Jesus.

You will notice some differences during our Sunday worship:

1. After a song of worship, we begin with a litany of penitence. The leader will read each of the 10 commandments and we will sing, “Lord have mercy upon us and incline our hearts and minds to keep this law.”  Out of this reminder of the ethic that is to shape our life, we pray the prayer of confession.  We begin each of the 6 weeks with a deliberate choice to face our shortcomings and intentional disobedience.  It is my prayer that this will whet our appetite for grace.  Self-examination is always ‘in vogue’, but only the cross has a means for us to be truly transformed.
2. After the sermon, we have built a song of response around the prayers of the people.
3. We are using a different Eucharistic liturgy. It is older, more robust in its theology, and longer.  You will hear some words you might not immediately recognize:

• Oblation:  from the Latin oblatus which means offering.  On the cross, Jesus was an oblation for our sins–  a full satisfaction for the penalty we deserved, a perfect offering who needed no forgiveness, a sufficient sacrifice for all of our sins.  That’s what we mean by oblation.

• Procured:  Yep, you probably know what this means– to obtain something.  But you’ll hear me say it as I give thanks for all the benefits that Christ’s passion, death, resurrection, and ascension ‘procured’ for us.  Remember, when we come to the table, we come to be reminded that Jesus has rescued us.  It’s a memorial meal so that we can remember what He has done.

If you hear other words you don’t understand or find curious, post them here as a comment.  I’ll answer them in the blog.

At the end, you’ll hear me say ‘we are unworthy to offer you any sacrifice, but we ask you to accept this–  our required duty and service…’ The Eucharist wasn’t our idea, it was Christ’s.  When I pray that prayer, I am asking God, by His Word and Holy Spirit, to make a little bread and a little wine a sacrament–  a visible, tangible reminder that we have been rescued, that we have received grace.  That prayer tells the story of what Jesus did and why He had to do it.  Sometimes it gets a little long and the words might be unfamiliar, but it’s our story.  Thanks be to God.

So, if you’ve come once, you know that we don’t have a big parking lot.  Parking is at a premium in Arlington County and our church is no different.  We want to be great neighbors to the people who live close to the church.  And we would like to change our practice of parking on side streets off Quincy. Our goal is to have no Restoration people using the small side streets. To that end, we are making these requests:

If you are a member or regular attender of Restoration

We would like for you to park in the garage at Washington Lee High school.

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If you have people in your car, you can drop them at the church and then park your car at W-L.

• We will have a shuttle (mini-vans) running from the garage back to the church from 8:15-8:45, 9:30-10:30, and 11:30-Noon.
• You can also walk back to the church in about 7 minutes.

If you are visiting Restoration or if you are a single parent (even for the day) with kids

We invite you to use the small lot behind the church

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or to park anywhere on Quincy Street.

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We would like for NO ONE to park on the small side streets.

They are narrow and congested and need to be reserved for the residents of those streets.  This applies to 18th St (south of the church), 18th Road (across from the church), Oakland (behind the church), and 20th st (north of the church). Thank you for honoring our neighbors by not parking on these streets.

I’d love to get your feedback on these parking solutions. For most of us, it adds at least another 5 minutes to our church commute.  Let us know if this is doable or if we need to tweak it.  Let’s be kind to each other and kind to our neighbors as we grow!

Friends,

This Saturday could be a busy day at Restoration.  I want to invite you to participate in these things:

1.  9AM Shoveling Quincy Street:

That’s right, we’re taking it back.  At the very least we need to clear the space in front of the church, but we’d like to work our way north and south on both sides as a gift to our neighbors.  What do you need to bring? strong shoulders and knees, METAL shovels (breaking a lot of ice), snow shovels, wheelbarrows (we want to dump the snow in our front yard), big smiles.  30 people make light work and we could really bless the neighborhood.

2.  10am Neighbor Relations:

I wrote a note to our neighbors.  We want to pass them out and let people around us know that we are doing our best to serve and be helpful while we dig out from the snow and figure out parking.  What do you need to bring? big smiles, cheerful spirit, willingness to knock on a few doors.

3.  10:30am Prayer Meeting:

Our outreach team is leading us in prayer for the needs and opportunities that exist for us to serve the community outside our church.  What you need to bring? compassion, anticipation, desire to be a part of what God is doing.

Come labor with us on Saturday morning–  shoveling, smiling, and praying.  Good stuff for God’s Kingdom.  Drop in for some or all of it.  Could you let me know if you will be there by posting a comment on the blog? Helps us plan. See you on Saturday.

We had to cancel our 8:30 Ash Wednesday Compline service last night literally at the last minute. As you may know, we share our facility with 2 other congregations. There was a miscommunication with one of them last night. The plan was that they would use the church from 6-8pm for their service and then we would do a whirlwind turnaround and start our service at 8:30. The other congregation’s service went later than expected, parking was at a premium because of the snow, and we needed to cancel at the last minute.

I am so sorry. There were at least 75 people who we literally turned away at the door and sidewalk. I know that you were coming because you wanted stillness and a deliberate beginning to your observance of Lent. We so wanted to provide you that. I also know that many of you put forth significant effort to secure childcare, leave work, and drive to the church. I’m sorry that we weren’t able to tell you earlier. We truly had no idea.

So, yet another chapter in the adventure that is Restoration. For those who attended the first 2 Ash Wednesday services, I think we would all agree that they were powerful. Our music and words were a catalyst for humble, penitent hearts. Thank you to all who made those services happen.

Again, my sincere apologies and my thanks for your grace.

David