Church guide

Happy Easter! “ “Why do you look for the living among the dead," the angels said.... The encounter between Mary Magdalene and the risen Christ continues to coax me deeper into the mysteries of this. Mary has to decide whether she will try to cling to what she has known, or whether she will accept Jesus’ invitation to leave the garden and proclaim what she has seen this day. This Easter morning, what is the good news that the risen Christ calls you to proclaim? On this day: blessings, blessings.

Please join us for Easter Service! Times of service are 9:00 and 10:30 am.

Join us for Easter Breakfast Sunday 8:00-10:15 am

We hope you will join us tonight at 7:00 p.m. for The Service of Tenebrae (Latin for Shadows) in the sanctuary.

Pondering Good Friday: Peter Storey, retired bishop & leader of the Methodist Church of Southern Africa reflects on Jesus’ crucifixion, “Woman, here is your son…Here is your mother,” he observes that in giving his mother & his beloved friend John to one anther, Jesus created a community that was to become family to the widow, the orphan, the outcast, the stranger.” Peter asks, “If we accept, can anybody suffer hunger, homelessness, or need? Would there be any lonely old people? Could there be a single unwanted child? If Jesus has made everyone kin to me, would that not make every war in history a civil war & every casualty a death in my family? From the cross where he is nailed, Jesus nails us to each other.” When I read this sentence, I cringed. I wanted some other word there besides nailed. I wanted Peter to say that Jesus binds us to each other or joins us to each other…some other image less graphic & bloody. But maybe Peter’s right…in our loving, in our call & struggle to be community, we get nailed. I have listened to the stories of women & men who live with abuse; I have seen images of terrorism; I have seen ways that some people participate in their own wounding because they don’t know how to live otherwise or they believe that suffering is somehow redemptive. Everything I know about the love of God causes me to resist the idea that Christ desires suffering. What Peter claims is not that Christ desires or wills our wounding. Peter names what happens when we try to be family to one another. Pain seems to be part of loving. As we expose ourselves & open ourselves to one another, the wounds will open of their own accord. Pierce, break, tear, rend, nail: the more we love, the more we can see how the words we use to avoid are part of the vocabulary of the community to which Christ calls us. It is part of the language of hearts that seek to live in relationship with one another, with all the risks, & losses & joys that come in loving. But we know the rest of the story, we who have glimpsed the other side of Good Friday…There are more words to come, words that Christ will add to our vocabulary…For now, we wait. Together. Nailed to one another.

Join us tonight @ 7:00 pm for Maundy Thursday service! Musings for Holy Thursday: sometimes it's daunting to receive a blessing. It requires something of us. It calls us to let go of what hinders us, to cease clinging to the habits & ways of being that may have become comfortable but that keep us less than whole. For those who are accustomed to constantly doing & giving & serving, being asked to stop & receive can cause discomfort. We have to give up some of our control. We cannot direct how the blessing will come, & we cannot define where it will take us. We have to let it do its own work in us. On the night when Jesus takes his basin & towel to wash the feet of his disciples, Simon Peter learns how difficult & wondrous it can be to take a blessing. He resists, then allows himself to receive, the grace of it dripping from his toes. This blessing will indeed require something of him and his fellow disciples. When Jesus finishes the washing, he turns to them and says,"...For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you...if you know these things, you are blessed if you do them." You are blessed if you do them. A blessing is not finished until we let it do its work within us & then pass it along, an offering grounded in the love that Jesus goes on to speak of this night.

Lent Musing: Palm Sunday...This is the week we remember the moment when Jesus enters Jerusalem, moving with intention & deliberation into what waits for him there. Jesus isn't a helpless victim here, no passive participant. Jesus chooses to walk with courage & clarity. This week invites us to consider how we are moving through our own journey—through Lent as well as through life. Are we swept along by circumstances, traveling our road by default? Or do we walk with intention and discernment, creating our path with some measure of the courage & clarity by which Christ walked his, even when forces lie beyond our control? There is a time for stillness, for waiting for Christ as he makes his way toward us. And there is a time to be in motion, to set out on a path, knowing that although God is everywhere, and always with us, we sometimes need a journey in order to meet God & ourselves.

Lenten thoughts #30...To Learn From Animal Beings... “nearer to the earth’s heart, deeper within its silence: animals know this world in a way we never will. We who are ever distanced & distracted by the parade of bright windows thought opens: their seamless presence is not fractured thus. Stranded between time gone & time emerging, we manage seldom to be where we are: whereas they are always looking out from the here & now. May we learn to return & rest in the beauty of animal being, learn to lean low, leave our locked minds, & with freed senses feel the earth breathing with us.” ~John O’Donohue

Day # 17 in a Lent...Traveling confirms a thought I have had through a few years of wandering: if you travel with reverence & wonder, with a lively sense of the potential and preciousness of every moment & every encounter, then wherever you go, you walk the pilgrim’s path & you become a bridge…through the money we have the privilege to spend & through the values of tolerance, understanding, peace, & goodwill we have the opportunity to embody, extend & become in ourselves bridges across the divide. So today...say YES to the World!

Day #11 in Lent: the word today is hands... think about all the ways your hands touch the world~ "God went to Beauty School" He went there to learn how to give a good perm and ended up just crazy about nails so He opened up His own shop. "Nails by Jim" He called it. He was afraid to call it Nails by God. He was sure people would think He was being disrespectful and using His own name in vain and nobody would tip. He got into nails, of course, because He'd always loved hands-- hands were some of the best things he’d ever done and this way he could just hold one in His and admire those delicate bones just above the knuckles, delicate as birds' wings, and after he’d done that awhile, he could paint all the nails any color he wanted, then say, “Beautiful," and mean it. ~Cynthia Rylant~