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Jesus Christ said, “Do this in remembrance of me.” He did not say, “Do this to prove something about yourselves to me.” He entered
a covenant of body and blood willingly so that we, in spite of ourselves, may have life. He proved that death is life eternal with him.
Prayer: God of love, lead us gently and faithfully. Help us walk in Your compassion and share it with others. Amen.
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Prayer: Holy One, walk with us as we enter the sacred days ahead. Keep hope alive within us. Amen.
Easter morning breaks open with a hope that cannot be contained. The stone is rolled away, not only from a tomb, but from every place where fear has tried to close us in. Resurrection reminds us that God’s love is stronger than death, stronger than despair, stronger than anything that tries to dim the light within us. Today we rise with Christ into new life.
Prayer: Risen Christ, lift our spirits with Your joy. Fill us with the hope of resurrection and guide us into the newness You offer. Amen.
Luke 22:14-20; 1 Corinthians 11:23-26
At the Lord’s Table we do not renew a contract with God—we receive again His covenant mercy in Christ. In eating and drinking together, we quietly proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes, trusting His finished work and offering ourselves anew to His cross‑shaped love. So, when you next hear those familiar words—
“This is my body, given for you… This cup is the new covenant in my blood…
Do this in remembrance of me”—
hear them as a gracious command from your Savior: “Come back again to My cross. Stand again in My covenant. Let My finished work be the heart of your worship and the shape of your life—
until I come.”
Each time we eat this bread and drink this cup,
We stand once more beneath the wounding tree,
And let the story of His love rise up
To hush our fears and set our doubting free.
We do not boast in ardor we have shown,
Nor in a heart that never goes astray;
We simply tell what Christ has done,
And let His cross be all we have to say.
Each time we eat this bread and drink this cup,
We hear Him whisper, “This is My new vow.”
Though we have stumbled, He still lifts us up
And seals His covenant upon us now.
Not like a contract, fragile, cold, and small,
But like a bridegroom’s promise, fierce and true,
His blood declares, once for always, once for all,
“I give Myself, and I will not leave you.”
Each time we eat this bread and drink this cup,
We learn again the shape our lives must take:
Poured out in love, in mercy lifted up,
In quiet losses only heaven will wake.
So let this feast our hidden wills re‑bend,
Till every path we walk, and word we speak,
Bears His cross‑patterned beauty to the end—
His dying love in lives made low and meek.
Ned Holderby May 3, 2026 Communion Sunday
From Innocence to Open Wound: A Christian Response in the Way of Love
Primary texts: Matthew 5:43–48; Romans 12:9–21; Ephesians 2:13–14
Supporting texts: Lamentations 3:22–24; Jeremiah 6:14; Romans 3:23; Micah 6:8; Psalm 122:6
I suggest that there are times when a pastor must speak not because every answer is plain, but because silence itself begins to form the soul. The present anguish surrounding Israel and the Palestinians is one of those times. It is emotionally charged, politically manipulated, morally painful, and spiritually exhausting. Yet followers of Jesus Christ are not permitted either the luxury of indifference or the indulgence of hatred. We are called to a more difficult path: to see clearly, to speak truthfully, and to love faithfully.
A helpful companion in thinking about this difficult matter is Amos Elon’s The Israelis: Founders and Sons, recently loaned to me. In his chapter “Innocents at Home,” Elon describes the founding generation of Israel as people of enormous seriousness, sacrifice, and vision, yet also as people who did not fully see the Arab population already in the land and did not adequately reckon with Arab national aspirations.
In “An Open Wound,” he turns to the later generation living inside the consequences of that conflict and names the Arab–Israeli struggle as a continuing wound in the life of the nation. Amos Elon is candid about Palestinian suffering, but he also refuses the easy moral stance of assigning all guilt to Israel alone; he insists the tragedy is deeper, more tangled, and more dangerous than one-sided accusation can express.
That pairing gives us a sober lens for Christian reflection. The chapter, “Innocents at Home,” shows what happens when a people see some truths vividly and others dimly. The chapter, “An Open Wound,” shows what happens when realities once minimized or deferred come back as pain, fear, anger, and permanent crisis. One chapter is about moral earnestness mixed with blindness. The other is about inheritance: children living in the unresolved consequences of their fathers’ decisions.
This is not only a book about Israel. It is a book about the human condition.
How often do people do something partly noble and partly blind? How often do communities act out of real fear and real hope and still fail to reckon with the neighbor standing right before them? How often do the next generation inherit not only blessings but wounds? Scripture knows these patterns well.
The Bible is never sentimental about nations, and it is never simplistic about sin. The apostle Paul says in Romans, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” That does not erase distinctions. It does not flatten all actions into sameness. But it does remind us that no people, no movement, no government, no ideology stands before God clothed in untroubled innocence. The founders of Israel were not monsters. Neither were they free from blindness. Palestinian suffering is real. So too is Jewish suffering, Jewish memory, and Jewish fear. Arab rejectionism and violence are real. So too are the injustices endured by Palestinians across generations.
And because these things are all true at once, Christians must resist the temptation to tell the story in a way that makes one side pure and the other demonic. That temptation is strong, because moral simplicity is comforting. It allows us to feel righteous quickly. But moral simplicity is often a form of falsehood.
Jeremiah condemned those who said, “Peace, peace,” when there was no peace, and he condemned those who healed the wound of the people lightly. There are false healings that come from denial. There are false healings that come from propaganda. There are false healings that come from choosing a villain and refusing all remaining complexity. Elon helps us here. He does not say that Israel must accept unilateral blame or endure endless punishment in order to prove moral worth. That is an important word in a moment when some political and even religious speech has become so reflexively anti-Israel that it stops being a cry for justice and begins sounding like selective indignation. Christians should beware of every moral framework that assigns to Jews, or to Israel alone, a unique burden of guilt while ignoring the repeated refusals of peace, the reality of terrorism, and the existential vulnerability that has marked Jewish life for generations.
To impose solitary blame where history itself is shared and tragic is not justice. It is distortion. But we must also beware of the equal and opposite error. Christian love does not mean excusing cruelty, denying Palestinian grief, or baptizing every policy of the modern State of Israel. Christian love is not tribal loyalty. Christian love is not sentimentality. Christian love does not require blindness. In fact, because Christian love rejoices in the truth, it demands that we tell the truth about suffering wherever suffering is found. So what does it mean for followers of Jesus Christ to respond within the framework of Christian love?
First, Christian love begins with truthful seeing. Jesus teaches us to remove the log from our own eye before attempting to remove the speck from another’s. That command is personal, but it also has a communal application. We should ask: where have we repeated slogans instead of seeking understanding? Where have we consumed images and commentaries that inflame outrage but do not cultivate wisdom? Where have we spoken as though a centuries-long conflict can be explained by a single sentence or a single accusation? Truthful seeing means refusing caricatures. Israelis are not all the same. Palestinians are not all the same. Jews are not reducible to a government. Palestinians are not reducible to Hamas. To love our neighbor truthfully means to refuse lazy moral shorthand. It means to see persons where ideologies tempt us to see abstractions.
Second, Christian love requires fair judgment. The prophet Micah tells us what the Lord requires: to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with God. Justice without humility becomes arrogance. Humility without justice becomes cowardice. Kindness without truth becomes indulgence. The Christian calling holds all three together. Fair judgment means we condemn the murder of civilians whoever commits it. We grieve hostage-taking whoever practices it. We reject antisemitism in old forms and new ones. We reject contempt for Arabs and Palestinians in every form. We do not ask one people alone to confess while the other is excused from moral scrutiny. Nor do we pretend all acts are equivalent. Christian judgment is not partisan; it is moral.
Third, Christian love takes seriously the command to love enemies. Our Lord says, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” That text is not decorative. It is not there for peacetime only. It is addressed precisely to the moments in which anger feels justified and love feels impossible. If Christians speak about Israel and Palestine without prayer for both peoples, then we are not yet thinking Christianly.
To love enemies does not mean to approve evil. It does not mean abandoning self-defense. It does not mean refusing to name wickedness. It means that even when we must condemn, we do not surrender the conviction that those on the other side remain human beings made in the image of God. It means that we pray not only for the safety of those we instinctively identify with, but also for the repentance, protection, and restoration of those we have learned to fear or resent.
Fourth, Christian love calls us to reject inherited hatreds.
One of the most haunting aspects of Elon’s contrast between “Innocents at Home” and “An Open Wound” is generational. What one generation failed to face becomes the wound of the next.
The children inherit fear, grievance, memory, rage, and defensiveness. We know this pattern from Scripture and from ordinary life. Families do it. Churches do it. Nations do it. The sins of one generation become the atmosphere of the next. But in Jesus Christ, inherited hostilities are not absolute. Paul writes in Ephesians that Christ “is our peace,” and that in his flesh he has broken down the dividing wall of hostility. That text does not erase history. It does not solve geopolitics. But it does announce a miracle stronger than inherited enmity.
In Christ, identities that seemed permanently opposed may yet be gathered before the throne of grace. This means the church must never mirror the world’s appetite for totalizing hatred. When public rhetoric trains us to despise whole peoples, the church must answer with a different voice. Not a vague voice. Not a cowardly voice. A holy voice. A voice that names evil, honors suffering, and still refuses to deny the image of God in those across the line.
Fifth, Christian love is sustained by lament. Some wounds cannot be addressed honestly without lament. Lament is not weakness. Lament is what love sounds like when it will not lie. Lament says: this should not be. Lament says: children should not die. Lament says: hostages should not be taken. Lament says: fear should not define a people forever. Lament says: there must be a better way, even if we do not yet see it. The church should be a place where such lament is voiced before God without collapsing into despair.
The book of Lamentations gives us language for grief without surrendering covenant hope. “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end.” That is not denial. It is faith spoken through tears. So then, what shall we do? We should pray for the peace of Jerusalem, and we should pray as well for peace in Gaza, the West Bank, and across the region. We should pray for Jewish people who live with the memory of exile, massacre, and annihilation. We should pray for Palestinian families living with displacement, fear, humiliation, and grief. We should pray for leaders to possess wisdom, restraint, and courage. We should pray for the defeat of those who profit from hatred. We should pray for the protection of the innocent. We should pray for the repentance of the violent. We should discipline our speech. Before repeating a slogan, we should ask whether it tells the truth. Before sharing a claim, we should ask whether it honors human dignity. Before speaking with certainty, we should ask whether we have listened long enough to speak justly. We should remember, too, that Christians stand in a particular relation to the Jewish people. Paul says in Romans 9 that to Israel belong the covenants, the law, the worship, the promises, and from them according to the flesh comes the Messiah. Therefore, Christians may never traffic in antisemitic habits of thought, whether old theological contempt or new political contempt clothed in moral language. The church has too often sinned here. Repentance requires vigilance.
And yet because we belong to Jesus Christ, our solidarity cannot be tribal. It cannot stop with one people only. The crucified Lord stretches out his arms wider than our camps, wider than our parties, wider than our grievances. At the cross, the Son of God bears human sin without endorsing it, suffers violence without sanctifying it, and opens a way for mercy without calling evil good. That is the pattern Christians must follow.
If Elon’s chapters help us name the movement from innocence to wound, the gospel gives us the deeper word: wounds need not have the final claim. Not every political conflict will be healed in history. Not every injury will be repaired before the Lord returns. But Christians refuse the lie that hatred is inevitable or that truth and love must be separated.
So let the church be a people who see clearly. Let the church be a people who judge fairly. Let the church be a people who refuse one-sided blame and refuse one-sided compassion. Let the church be a people who pray for Jews and for Palestinians. Let the church be a people who love enemies because we were loved while we were yet enemies of God. And let the church be a people who bear witness that Jesus Christ, and not rage, and not ideology, and not vengeance, is our peace. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
St. Stephen’s UCC April 26, 2026
Living in the Care of the Good Shepherd
Psalm 23; John 10 –
We hear it at bedsides and gravesides, in weddings and confirmations, on plaques in our homes and in prayer. It is a psalm for joy and a psalm for sorrow, a psalm for beginnings and endings. Psalm 23 is more than something to recite; it is a voice to follow. For those in green pastures today, give thanks and use your strength to care for more vulnerable sheep. For those in the valley today, take comfort: you are not abandoned; the Shepherd is with you. For those who feel pursued by regret or fear, remember that a stronger pursuit is underway: goodness and mercy are on your heels.
In this Easter season, may we live as people who can truly say:
“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.”
Sonnet on Psalm 23
You lead us, Lord, through pasture, stream, and shade,
A quiet strength beneath our restless fear;
In whispered winds your gentle call is made,
And weary hearts find home because you’re near.
You walk the valley where our shadows crowd,
You share the darkness we would face alone;
Your rod and staff drive back the threats that shroud,
Your wounded hands still claim us as your own.
You spread a table where our foes can see
That grace is stronger than the grave’s demand;
Our cup runs over with your victory,
Anointed, we arise at your command.
Till goodness, mercy, all our days pursue,
We dwell in Easter light, at rest in you.
In the love of Christ,
Ned
St. Stephen’s UCC April 19, 2026
Third Sunday of Eastertide
Friends in Christ, hear this good news:
Jesus comes to ask us, in love and with deep knowing,
“Do you love Me?”
If in your heart you can say—even with trembling—
“Yes, Lord, You know that I love You,”
then hear His next words as yours to own:
“Feed My lambs. Tend My sheep. Feed My sheep. Follow Me.”
In Jesus, love replaces fear.
In Jesus, a call replaces shame.
And in Jesus, even our deepest failures become the soil where His grace bears fruit.
When morning broke upon the Galilee,
The waves recalled the tears of Peter’s fall;
Yet through the mist, Love’s patient eyes did see
A heart still called though broken by recall.
Three times the question burned—“Do you love Me?”—
Three times the trembling answer met the flame;
Each word of grace “un-spoke” his misery,
Till silence bowed beneath redemption’s name.
Now by that fire our hearts are kindled too,
Restored to serve the Lamb whose mercies bloom;
His voice still asks, “If love is truly true,
Then feed My flock and banish death’s dark gloom.”
Love’s three-fold light will never cease to shine—
Our loss transformed by His forgiving line.
Ned Holderby 3rd Sunday in Eastertide April 19, 2026