Messiah continues its observance of Lent with our final midweek Service of Prayer; identical services will be held on Wednesday, March 25th at 11:00 am and 7:00 pm. The 7:00 pm service is scheduled to be livestreamed at www.youtube.com/messiahgr, our website and our Facebook page. A soup supper will be held before the evening service at 6:00 pm in our Fellowship Hall.

We continue our Lenten sermon series, which is based on the ancient hymn “O Love, How Deep” (Lutheran Service Book 544), with the theme “For Us Betrayed”:

For us by wickedness betrayed,

For us, in crown of thorns arrayed,

He bore the shameful cross and death;

For us He gave His dying breath.

Jesus foretells His own betrayal, death, and resurrection in today’s text . This shows us that the way of salvation only comes through the path of suffering. Jesus’ suffering, His Passion, does not simply mean that He sympathizes with us. Rather, it means that He participates in our suffering, and we in His. His betrayal, the crown of thorns, the shameful cross—all of these lead to how Jesus “gave His dying breath,” as we sing in the series hymn. In the Passion reading, we will also hear how He dies and what that means for us today. (Psalm 41; Hebrews 2:1-12; Mark 8:31–9:1; Mark 15:33–47)