M o n t h l y N e w s f r o m F P C Ty l e r • Vo l u m e 1 3 , I s s u e 4 : A p r i l 2 0 1 8
Hope Is A Good Thing by The Rev. Dr. Stuart Baskin It’s no April Fool’s joke. In spite of Easter falling on April Fool’s Day this year, Christ is risen indeed. I recently took a call from someone at the Tyler paper wanting to know about how I approach Easter and what we do at FPC to celebrate the occasion. I have to admit I was caught a little off guard. He reached me as I was wrangling our dog to take her to the vet, and I was a bit distracted but answered the best I could. There is no single event in the Christian tradition, and no single day, that is as important as Easter. Christmas sets it up with the story of the incarnation. Pentecost follows from it in the gift of the Holy Spirit poured out on Jesus’s disciples. But Easter is the event upon which all other Christian beliefs and celebrations depend. It is the event without which Christian faith is just an odd cult of personality. But what difference does it make, really? Answer: It makes all the difference. It’s not just that it signifies to us that God has acted decisively to destroy the power of death over our lives. It’s that, but it’s also more. It signifies to us that God has acted decisively to destroy the dividing wall that separates us from God.
During Lent, we have been reading Jack Levison’s book, Forty Days with the Holy Spirit. What does the Holy Spirit have to do with Lent, let alone Easter? After all, it’s not until Pentecost, the fiftieth day after Easter, that we celebrate the gift of the Holy Spirit. The answer is that the Holy Spirit underlies not only the ministry of Jesus (remember his baptism, how the Spirit descended upon him like a dove?), the Spirit also guides us in our journey through the difficult days leading to Jesus’s crucifixion, through the empty tomb, to a new life empowered and emboldened by the Spirit. In a world defined by conflict and dissension, where hope for a world restored and renewed seems like something only a naïve sap could believe, the Spirit encourages us to hold firm to our hope. In Stephen King’s great story, Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption (made into the movie, The Shawshank Redemption,) Andy Dufresne writes his friend Red, “Remember that hope is a good thing, Red, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.” But Red is skeptical of hope. He thinks it a dangerous thing. But the story closes with Red taking Andy up on his invitation to join him in Mexico. He says, “I find I am excited, so excited I can
i n t h i s i s s u e | H I GH LI GHT S & F E ATU RE S Kirkin’ of the Tartans | Pg 5 Make plans to attend this celebration of our church’s Scottish heritage.
2018 Confi rmands | pg 3 Welcome the FPC’s newest confirmands!
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Visit Steeple Times Online | Pg 2 Learn how to visit Steeple Times online and help FPC save on mailing costs. First Presbyterian Church of Tyler, Texas 230 West Rusk Street, Tyler, Texas 75701-1696 (903) 597-6317 | www.fpctyler.com