Beloved,
This morning at breakfast my three year old said to her grandfather, “Do you know what we goin’ do on Easter, Grampa?” I braced myself for the inevitable litany of things the Easter Bunny was going to bring her, and cursed my dereliction of duty as Minister Mom.
“We’re going to say (drops to sotto voce) hallelujah.”
There is something to joy deferred.
There is something to going through hell, but knowing–knowing–you will come out the other side.
That is what Easter is for. Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.
Today, we weep. The church has been swept of communion crumbs, for today we have no communion with God. We feel our aloneness, the aloneness of Jesus. As DH Lawrence put it,
And God is good, for I wanted him to die
To twist and grovel, and become a heap of dirt
In death. This death, his death, my death
It is the same death, this death.
The church will be open from 7:30a-5:45p today, Good Friday, for quiet prayer, hourly chant and scripture, healing prayer with ministers and deacons, a chance to mingle your suffering and the suffering of the world with that of Jesus, on the cross, or to sit with Him in silent vigil, so that He will not be alone after all.
Tomorrow, Saturday, we gather in the hush, for communion with each other, if not yet God. Easter preparations, and pizza, happen starting at 5p in the sanctuary. If you want to help set the stage, join us. If you want to be surprised, stay away.
At 6p tomorrow, Saturday, mortals join the happy chorus which the morning stars began. Oops. Wrong composer. All who want to provide the solid core for our Easterly Hallelujah Chorus from Handel’s Messiah, gather to rehearse with Thom. Rest assured, on Easter morning everyone will have the score–but this here’s your chance to know the score, too.
Sunday, 6a, Sunrise Service: We gather at the peak of Powderhouse Park–follow the luminaria through the dim dawn–with five neighboring churches, to resurrect Jesus and watch the Son rise. Our own Joe Zarro will deliver the message, and Laura Ruth brings the music.
Sunday, 10a, Service of the Resurrection: Trumpets! Strings of Glory! Children, flowers! Your pain, transformed into art: the bricolage cross from our Lenten wreckage shines. I’ll preach, and John Olson is our liturgist. The Fellowship Committee makes their coffee hour debut, and our children go on an egg hunt after worship. Dress in your finery! Wear your hats, your spats! Come, shine before God! Come, learn what it is to live again!
blessings and peace
Molly
Beloved,
And so, we enter the high holy days of the Christian year. Palm Sunday is upon us, with its paradoxical parading, and the passion–the suffering–of Jesus.
It all begins at 9a, in Powderhouse Park, as we gather with our marching band, a larger-than-life Jesus puppet, Chester the Donkey, and 6 other neighborhood churches. We’ll sing songs, hear the story of Jesus’ ridiculous and noble entrance into Jerusalem, wave palms and march, if not to Zion, at least to Davis Square, where we will pray for our city. Please come in throngs! This is what it means to be a fool for Christ!
At 10a, we’ll begin worship in the Sanctuary with the Procession of the Palms. If you’d like, bring an old coat to pave the path of Jesus to Jerusalem (aka around the pews). Again, we’ll follow the marching band: children, choir and our 11 fabulous new members, whom we will welcome in an act of celebration and covenant at the beginning of worship.
After welcome, prayers, offering, and then we’ll lean back into the choir’s cantata: The Lamb of God, a cantata for Lent, as we let the events of Jesus’ last week of life on earth wash into us through song and spoken word.
And after worship: joy again, in the form of warm, homemade hot cross buns, and deacon-served tea and coffee with our silver tea service, among old friends and new. Bring a friend! Bring ten! If you are passionate about your church, why keep it a secret?
blessings
Molly
We would be pleased if you’d join us for the most sacred week of the Christian year, Holy Week, 2009. Here is our schedule:
Morning Prayer, Each Weekday, 7:30 AM
Palm Sunday, April 5
•The Multi-Church Donkey Walk, 9 AM, Powderhouse Park to Davis Sq.
•Cantata & Communion Service, 10 AM, Homemade Hot Cross Buns for Tea after the Service
Holy Wednesday, Rest and Bread, 6 PM
Maundy Thursday, a Tenebrae Service, 6:30 PM for quiet supper and 7 PM worship service
Good Friday, 7:30 AM to 5:30 PM. The sanctuary will be open all day for quiet meditation with an opportunity for healing prayer,
Easter Sunday, April 12
•Multi-Church Sunrise Service, 6 AM, Powderhouse Park
•Service of the Resurrection for all ages, 10 AM
The Sunday after Easter, April 19, 10 AM, Soul Sunday, a service for people of all ages
Hello Beloved!
Were you outside this lunchtime? Did you smell it? Earth. Dirt. Soil. The Ground of Our Being, Paul Tillich called it, another name for God.
We started Lent in February, when the earth was unyielding, “stood hard as iron,” in the bleak midwinter. Now, the thaw, and we can smell things again. The smells, here in the city, are not always pleasant, but it is a relief to smell them. Like our feelings, when they thaw, are not all pleasant–but it is just good to feel again, to feel anything.
We are past the midpoint of Lent. We are hurtling toward Jerusalem, toward the parades, toward the cross, toward the tomb, toward the garden at night, the one in the morning. We are hurtling into new life.
This Sunday in church: new life! fresh blood! Colleagues and new friends Vicky and Georgeanne, the pastor and director of spiritual formation from the UCC in Natick will be with us in Jubilee Intergenerational Worship, making two Bible stories come alive for us: the story of the Great Family, our Abrahamic and Sarahic origins; and the story of the Mustard Seed. The Bible in 3D, for children ages 0-100. We will need participants! Come a few minutes early if you feel like being a fool for Christ, if you want to be enlisted.
Laura Ruth and I will welcome, liturgize, pray and bless. The children’s choir will sing! as will our adult choir. We are still collecting items on the communion table for our “making the faith our own” sculpture project: bring old clothes, electronica, broken pottery. Bring any other flotsam and jetsam, broken bits, memorabilia–anything you are ready to offer for transformation. We will incorporate it into a cross in time for Easter. Bring it, and lay it on the communion table as worship opens, with a plea to God for redemption, to make good news out of bad news.
Come early to church, if you will: to fold bulletins, to stretch body and spirit with Lisa C. in the parlor, to sing, to drink coffee among friends, to drink in the Spirit.
blessings, brothers and sisters~
Molly
Greetings, Beloved!
Psssst….I hear First Church is having worship this Sunday! It’s by invitation only–do not–I repeat do NOT come unless you are a ticketholder. Police will be standing by for crowd control. It is rumored that U2 may, or may not, open, if we can’t get the famed Joe Turbessi.
Of course, it’s our inclusivity, not our exclusivity, that makes our church home so valuable to us, yes? It’s the lack of luminaries, our humility and democracy, our openness and warmth to all, that are our greatest treasure. Thanks be.
This Sunday at First Church: we continue our Lenten series on Making the Faith Our Own. I’ll be preaching on “Planned Obsolescence,” or, as Chinua Achebe put it, things fall apart. Is the untimely breaking down of things, from small appliances to our sense of order and control, all part of God’s work in us? What about the Church itself–does it have a warranty; is it meant to be forever, or is it just a placeholder for the Kingdom of Heaven?
You are invited to bring, as a symbol of brokenness and our need for redemption, busted or obsolete electronics: motherboards, boomboxes, 8 tracks and VHS tapes, whatever is in the back of your closet awaiting new life or your courage to toss it. If you didn’t bring an item of clothing (last week’s offering to the Communion table), you may bring that as well. You can put either or both items on the Communion table before worship, or during the passing of the peace. By Easter all of these offerings will be redeemed, in the form of the Easter cross of resurrection.
Liz D. is our fabulous liturgist. Laura Ruth offers prayers, and we will have 4 beautiful baptisms: Abby, Rebecca, Eva & Celia will all be sealed by the power of the Holy Spirit in baptism. The courage! The Mystery! Bring hankies.
After worship: please stay, if you will, to vote on our new Mission and Vision statements; the fruit of many conversations, which will guide God’s work among us for the next five years. This will happen in Duhamel Hall, after we’ve grabbed coffee and goodies.
blessings, brothers and sisters~
Molly
Greetings Beloved,
Can you feel the thaw, not only on your skin but in your bones? I knew it when I didn’t automatically reach for the warmest thing in my closet, yesterday. I knew spring was coming.
This is the strange time of year for Christians. There is more and more evidence of the light–it hits the kitchen table at a different angle when you’re eating your toast–and yet, we have one more long drink of the darkness, during Lent. It’s not a dark-night-of-the-soul darkness, more the dimness of just-before-dawn, the little light by which you can see the soft shapes of things, the sharp insight that comes in the liminal space between sleep and waking. This is Lent: the gaze goes soft, and yet crisp; we look inward, not to be narcissistic, but to see what we can drag out to the curb and leave there for trash, what we can re-use, recycle, recast. It’s about new life. It’s time to head down to the spiritual basement, out to the curb, basement, curb, basement, curb.
This weekend in worship:
I’ll be kicking off our Lenten sermon series on “Making the Faith Our Own in This Generation.” What’s it mean to be a Christian in the 21st century? How are we called to re-cast the church, to remake ourselves? What stays, what goes–in orthodoxy, theology, creeds, culture, our own hearts and bodies? What cherished sins must we relinquish, what renewal of the mind embrace?
Owen Robinson is our liturgist. Choir sings! and we with them–the Psalms return to our liturgy. We’ll share Communion; the Deacons invite you to light candles for the path, and to receive healing prayer from their hands, at the back of the sanctuary.
We will receive one of our five annual wider UCC offerings: One Great Hour of Sharing fights poverty globally and comforts our most comfortless brothers and sisters. Come prepared to share generously.
Laura Ruth is on loan for Sunday to First Church UCC in Natick, where she will be teaching drumming for the day. Natick returns the favor at the end of the month, when they will be in our worship teaching us about the Montessori children’s ministry Godly Play!
Church ladies, both male and female, are invited to Duhamel Hall before worship to fold the bulletin (extra inserts this week!), read the Sunday paper, drink good coffee in community. Yogis or just people with tight spirits and hamstrings are invited to easy yoga and meditation with Lisa Cawley in the Parlor before worship, 9:15-9:45a. Finance also meets before worship. Rooftop People, come lay your burdens down together after worship in the Chapel.
Have a beautiful, beautiful day people. It’s coming.
Molly
Brrrrrrrrrrrbeloved!
Lace up your crampons. Make your way across the tundra. You only have to get as far as the corner of College and Francesca: Andrea, Gary and our other secret snow angels have made a little stretch of Francesca Ave safe for pedestrians everywhere.
There’s something about it being hard to move, that makes getting anywhere a victory. That goes for church. I know what it costs to overcome the inertia of home, bed, introversion, depression, delicious hibernation. But remember the old Jack London story, from 7th grade? We must keep moving, or we die.
Besides, this Sunday holds wondrous things. We have two baptisms: one-year-old Nina Stockwell, and her mother Sarah, will be baptized together. We will celebrate both our sacraments on the same day, as we take communion as well. During communion, you are invited to the back of the sanctuary for healing prayer with our deacons, if you so desire.
Dennis Mariere is our fabulous liturgist; Laura Ruth will pray; choir sings with gusto; Katy and Joe will tend and teach our children until they come up to witness baptism and share in communion with us. I’ll be preaching: on discontenting winters, and the spiritual joy of beginning, again, each new day. Of starting the day by saying, not “God is Good,” but, in fact, “God is Great!” Read Psalm 111 if you want to start celebrating early.
After church: Sacred Conversations, Compassionate Caregivers, Rooftop People. Hot coffee, new friends!
warmly,
Molly
Hello Beloved!
So much dreaming, planning, praying, grantwriting, interviewing, calling, retreating, meeting, and Laura Ruth Jarrett is here, our Minister of Outreach, deep in the heart of First Church Somerville!
She’s been here for over 6 months. She’ll be here for at least 18 more months, and, God willing and we do our part, many years beyond. She has made our life together more joyful, self-reflective and God-centered, in the little time she’s been with us. This Sunday in worship we will make promises to her, and she to us, in the covenant of Installation. It feels good that it took a while to get her installation organized: it’s like having a bite of a delicious feast before saying grace in thanksgiving for it.
Beloved, will you come in hordes, and make promises to support Laura Ruth, and the future of our community?
Will you bring a pie (storebought or homemade, no judgment), and eat with us afterward?
Will you bring a little bell to ring in acclamation and alleluia?
Rev. Wendy Vanderhart, our UCC area minister (LR’s minister and mine, and that of all the churches in the Metropolitan Boston Association), will preach about promises. Pete Shungu debuts as liturgist! Whoop, whoop! Strings of Glory will play, choir will sing (and don’t forget: Choir Retreat is tomorrow 10a-4p at Unity Church of God across the street from us: all are welcome!).
And our joy is magnified: Duhamel Hall is now painted a glorious warm orange: Benjamin Moore Morning Sunshine, to be exact. It may not be morning in America, but it sure feels like it at FCS…
blessings,
Molly
