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Brothers and sisters,

I wanted to give you all a little insight into our up-coming summer sermon series. At this point in the church calendar, we’ve got a huge swath of time in which there are no major Christian holidays. That means that we’ve got a little more freedom over the next few months to explore some really interesting parts of the Bible. This is the time of year when we get to experiment some with different ideas, different passages, different books and authors.

So, as part of that, we’ll be starting a sermon series on June 11 entitled, “What’s His Name?” Now, writing the name of the series down doesn’t quite do it justice. To really understand the title, you need to imagine you’re having a conversation with a friend or a family member. As you’re talking, you say something about someone you know or know of — a friend of a friend, an old coworker, a famous person—but you can’t quite remember their name. So, you sit there, snap your fingers repeatedly, and say, “Oh, what’s his name? What’s his name?!” That’s the title of the sermon series — the snapping of the fingers, the feeling that you know this, and the question, “What’s His Name?”

For this sermon series, we’re going to be looking at more obscure books of the Bible or more obscure passages from famous books (we’ll end with a passage from Luke’s gospel that almost never gets preached on). The idea behind this is pretty simple—there are some really interesting texts that don’t often get preached on. In prepping for this series, I ran across some interesting numbers related to which parts of the Bible get preached on and which ones don’t. These numbers are based on the passages chosen by the Revised Common Lectionary (RCL). For those that may not know, the RCL is a three-year cycle of verses that cover most of the Bible. In other words, if you read through every passage selected by the lectionary, you’ll read most of the more famous passages from the Bible. In that sense, it can be a wonderful tool!

However, the RCL has some glaring gaps in the passages it chooses, with some books of the Bible being completely ignored (books like Nahum or Jude). To give you the numbers, the lectionary covers 72% of the entire New Testament. But when you break that down, the lectionary covers 90% of all four Gospels and only 54% of the non-Gospel parts of the New Testament. But, are you ready for the most glaring gap in the lectionary? If you exclude the times the RCL recommends one of the Psalms, the lectionary only covers 13.5% of the Old Testament. 13.5% of all those sacred scriptures! This summer, I hope we can remedy that. And I hope that by looking at some of these more obscure passages, you’ll be inspired to go and read some of the books of the Bible that maybe you haven’t thought of before!

Grace and peace,
Pastor Ben

Brothers and sisters,

As many of you know, last week a new video game that I’ve been looking forward to for a long time came out—The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. Now, since it came out last Friday, I’ve spent a good chunk of my free time playing it and have thoroughly enjoyed it and I’m pretty sure I haven’t even gotten to the best parts yet! I haven’t beaten the game, so I don’t know the full story or what all the major themes of the game will be, but there is one theme that has already been explored and I want to talk about it.

Before I do that, though, I want to give you a little con-text about Tears of the Kingdom. See, it is a sequel to a previous Zelda game, which is a rarity in the Zelda franchise. Typically, each game is a stand-alone game with a new version of Hyrule (the fictional world you play in), a new version of Link (the character you play as), and a new version of Princess Zelda (who the series is named after). But since Tears of the Kingdom is a sequel, you play as the same version of Link from the previous game, called Breath of the Wild. And there’s an important change that has happened in Link’s life between the two games.

In Breath of the Wild (the first game), Link is alone. The brief version of the story is that Link has woken up to a Hyrule that has been devastated by a great evil. One hundred years ago, Link had fought against that great evil and lost, nearly dying in the process. The only reason he survived was because of fast thinking from Princess Zelda. In Breath of the Wild, Hyrule has been broken. Link’s memories of his friends have been erased. And the few people Link meets tend to blame him for the fall of Hyrule. He is able to make some friends along the way, but it is a game about grief, burden, loss, and redemption. And while it is an undeniably beautiful game and story, Link undeniably feels alone.

In Tears of the Kingdom, that has changed. Link and Zelda had managed to save Hyrule at the end of the first game and the citizens have begun to rebuild. And now, Link has friends. There are people who care about him and support him. When the game begins, Link has been missing for several months after being attacked by a new great evil threatening Hyrule. But when he makes it back to civilization, everyone he meets starts each conversation by saying they’re so glad Link’s back! They’re worried about the injuries he’s sustained. They caution him not to push himself too hard—they don’t want to lose their friend again. And it’s touching to see that so many of the people who care about Link in Tears of the Kingdom were friends he made in Breath of the Wild.

So, why bring up these two games? Because I appreciate the change they highlight. In Breath of the Wild, Link is made to feel like he is alone. In Tears of the Kingdom, it’s revealed that he isn’t. He has friends and allies who care about him. And I think that’s a good message for everyone to hear right now. You are not alone. If you are getting this newsletter, it’s because you are a member of Hope Valley Baptist Church, which means you have a whole host of brothers and sisters in Christ you can reach out to. You have a pastor whose phone is always on. If you ever need help, please reach out.

Grace and peace,
Pastor Ben

P. S. Once I beat Tears of the Kingdom, y’all can expect another nerdy Illuminator article!

Brothers and sisters,

I want to do three things: thank everyone for helping with our events this month, remind folks of another chance to help out, and share an Easter poem that I appreciate.

First, thank you to everyone who came out to participate in the special Holy Week services we had at the beginning of the month! Between the Hand-Washing service, our Good Friday service, and the East-er Sunday Baptism service it was a wonderful week of worship and community with each other. Thank you to all the volunteers, musicians, and committees that came together to make those services what they were, in particular, the handbells, the Deacons, and the baptism committee. Again, these services were wonderful and they could not have been as meaningful as they were without the participation of so many people.

Another group I want to be sure and thank are the family ministry team and the missions team. They were the two groups that coordinated and led the church’s Easter Egg Hunt this year which was a success! We had twelve kids come out, make crafts, eat snacks, hear the Easter story, and hunt eggs. Thank you to everyone who helped plan that event out, prepare all the crafts, and then help the kids collect eggs. Also, thank you to everyone who filled Easter eggs this year or who donated money to help with this ministry. We were able to share abundantly with the kids because of you. Thank you!

With that in mind, I wanted to remind everyone again that we will be having our Church Yard Sale next Saturday, April 29 from 9 a.m. through 2 p.m. We still need plenty of volunteers to help out that day. You can come and help at different stations within the sale (housewares, books/DVDs, etc.), help with refreshments, or, if you’ve got a truck, you can come help carry anything leftover to Goodwill at the end of the day. You can also come and help out in the days leading up to the sale — setting up the gym, moving items into their stations, pricing, etc. But I’m looking forward to this because it gives us a chance to meet a wide array of people in our community. It allows us to see them and them see us.

In fact, all of the things I’ve mentioned in this article are instances where we, as a church, came together to tell people that they were seen. We came together to embody our faith, to live it out, because we understand that Christianity is not just an intellectual position to be held — it is a life that we live. And that is all based on the fact that we worship a risen Savior. That takes me to the poem I wanted to share with you all entitled, “Seven Stanzas at Easter,” and written by John Updike:

Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the
molecules reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall.

It was not as the flowers,
each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled eyes of the eleven apostles;
It was as His flesh: ours.

The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the same valved heart
that—pierced—died, withered, paused, and then regathered out of enduring Might
new strength to enclose.

Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping, transcendence;
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the faded credulity of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back, not papier-mâché,
not a stone in a story,
but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow grinding of time will eclipse for each of us
the wide light of day.

And if we will have an angel at the tomb,
make it a real angel,
weighty with Max Planck’s quanta, vivid with hair, opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen
spun on a definite loom.

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are embarrassed by the miracle,
and crushed by remonstrance.

Grace and peace,
Pastor Ben