From the Pastor...
Beloved Christ Congregation:
If you’ve lived a full life, you have died more than once, and have come back from the dead. I know that. We’ve only been together for a couple of months, but already you have shared so deeply with me about the losses in your lives. Death of relationships, the ravages of addiction, and the pain of losing an identity. I have sat with you as you’ve told me stories of survival and triumph. I have sat with you as you have remembered the feeling of slowly rolling away the stone on the tomb of mourning you built around yourselves—how the sunlight began to slowly beam through the cracks until you were alive again. You know what resurrection is.
As we approach Holy Week this year, in the midst of so much political turmoil (including more devastating news out of Syria just this week), I know that we are dying to skip the suffering and the cold tomb of Good Friday and Holy Saturday. I know how tempting it is to avoid that part of the story and go straight to Easter morning. We are desperate for the message that new life is on its way and that Love wins.
But those of us who have lived through death and resurrection over and over again in our lives know that we can’t feel the joy of feeling alive again until we have felt death: the betrayal of Maundy Thursday, the pain of Good Friday; the darkness of Holy Saturday. Rolling away the stone on Easter Sunday means little without sitting in the tomb for a little while. Rolling away the stone of grief doesn’t mean as much if you haven’t grieved.
So I want to urge you, please, to come to our Good Friday Tenebrae service on April 14th. We will begin with a simple soup supper in the fireplace room at 6:30 pm before moving into the sanctuary for our Tenebrae service at 7 pm. Tenebrae, the service of the shadows, is a traditional Christian Holy week service that honors the suffering inherent in the human condition. Join us. It is beautiful, simple and meaningful. Boston Globe columnist Alex Beam says “Tenebrae is a small group of people gathered together in a darkening room. If that isn’t a definition of the human condition, I don’t know what is.”
And then, please join us on Easter Sunday, for our 10:00 am celebration service in the sanctuary. We will shout our Alleluias! We will shout “He is risen!” And friends, WE will rise. ALL are welcome. We mean that.
Beloved, let us be together this Holy Week for all of it—for the betrayal, for the suffering, for the joy of Easter morning. We need one another.
Pastor Alexis
