This Saturday (March 22nd) we had our first yard sale in a long time. A fund-raiser for our preschool, we raised over $3,000!! I give a huge thank you to everyone who gave all their time and effort to pulling off a project on this scale. The Preschool Advisory Board (PAB) and preschool staff, thank you all. The funds will offset costs and cover some of the expenses of advertising and marketing for fall.
It has been fun this year watching as we have increased our commitment to making it a more explicitly “church” preschool. It always was, but the connections were not as visible. Now we have art in the sanctuary, more flyers going out to parents with invites to church events, church members doing special presentations, such as Rick’s special music days. We also have more faith instruction in the classroom, beyond the weekly chapel times. It’s all part of our long-range plan to make the preschool more of a church ministry and less of a side-hustle. Again, our director Laura Tanem-Hernandez and the PAB are doing a great job with our new program.
With all this our liturgical year keeps moving towards Easter. I’ve enjoyed the Lent sermon series on Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Cost of Discipleship. I will admit that sometimes he gets a bit intense, leaving you feeling like you’re never a good enough disciples. And while I understand that intellectually – that I can never reach Jesus’ levels of love and obedience to God – it still can feel heavy. Of course, Jesus also says his burden is light, so while the challenge to discipleship is there, we can also view it as freeing us from serving the other things of our lives that pull us away from Godly lives.
Palm Sunday is April 13th, where we will walk with the crowd as they cheer Jesus on for being the earthly revolutionary he never claimed to be. They call it the “triumphal” entry, but it’s only so on the surface. The subtext is darker, knowing that Jesus knows the people will be disappointed when their dreams for him don’t come true.
Then comes Holy Week. Maundy Thursday will be a traditional worship service this year, not an agape meal. We end, as we always do, with the stripping of the altar.
Good Friday will feature the stations of the cross liturgy from last year. From 11am-1pm you can come in and walk through the art in the sanctuary at your own pace. Then at 6:30pm is the full service. One change I will make is to shorten the musical interludes between stations, just to keep things moving better. I still love the black-and-white graphics that come with each part of the story.
Holy Week is the highlight of our year as Christians, the time of spiritual focus, of walking through the last days of Jesus, of walking through his final dinner, his farewells, and his suffering, before the big celebration of Easter. It always sees thinner crowds, to the chagrin of many clergy. And I get the challenge with scheduling (I had to run from a dance practice to worship one Good Friday. That was the day they all learned what I did for a living 😊). I also get the desire to avoid the “downer” parts of the week and skip to the “happy” part. Who wants to sit and wallow in sin and death. Of course, that’s part of why I like doing the stations liturgy, and having music and art, to make it more of a spiritual journey than an exercise in self-flagellation for our moral failings. I avoid the dirgiest songs, like “Go to Dark Gethsemene” that literally ends with “teach us Jesus how to die”. Ouch. That’s all part of that “heavy religion”– where it just makes you feel sad and guilty, instead of living into the mystery and meaning of what Jesus did for us. The cross is not to induce emotional guilt, but a life of discipleship.
And, of course, we will end it on Easter, April 20th, with the first service and easter egg hunt and continental Easter breakfast and second service. If you have friends maybe looking for a church, it is a good day to invite them.
Finally, I have my usual gripe about how Holy Week is so counter-cultural. In a world where everything is marketed as being happy and fun, our culture has lost its ways to deal with grief and loss. They happen, to all of us, a lot, but yet when they do we lack the rituals and structure for them. We haven’t spent time allowing ourselves to be sad when we’re sad, to admit there’s emptiness, to dwell in the moment even when the moment is horribly unfulfilling. Then, when it happens, we’re uncomfortable and rush to make it “fun” and “celebratory” again. Our faith does not try to sugar coat what happened to Jesus, or hide from it, and, in fact, brings us to a healthier and more authentic faith by giving us spaces, at least one week of the year, to just dwell in the journey of betrayal and suffering before the rising again.
Peace,
Pastor Lars
