Easter Aftermath

It's hard to believe it is already Friday after Easter. The week has been an odd one. Monday and Tuesday were just ... gone. Holy Week was NOT as full as it could have been, but in some ways it was anyway ... Though community Lenten services were being held, including Maundy Thursday services (and I suspect I could have found a tenebrae service on Friday if I'd tried) ... There were other things to be tended to. Irene Hinson, a lifelong member of JBC, passed away on Tuesday morning. The funeral was on Thursday. Irene was the woman I had just visited last June when I was hit with my own personal realization that this (pastoring) is what I was born to do. Her passing somehow leaves a space. Visiting her each week gave me a touchstone. Her illness made it hard to communicate freely with her ... Correction-- made it hard for HER to communicate freely (she had Parkinson, and was not able to speak very much) ... But despite that trouble, our visits were still meaningful. Her mind was intact, and never missed a thing. She would rate my sermon each week (she got tapes), and she always threatened to steal me away from Leslie. :-)

There was a real sense of ... anxiousness ... facing Easter Sunday. Worrying about 'getting it right' ... or more appropriately, making sure I didn't FLUB it. As it turned out, we held a sunrise service, but because it was rainy, we had to do it indoors, in the sanctuary, rather than in the park next to Totuskey Creek. Maybe next year. Morning service was full. The children's choir had their Easter cantata ... and did a WONDERFUL job - in a simple, straightforward telling of the Easter story, they got the message across better than I ever could have.

The first part of the service is what we played with. Right after the welcome, and giving everyone a chance to greet each other and visit for a minute, I had the children's sermon. From that, we went right into the responsive reading and wove it into the serving of communion. Rather than having the usual arrangement, we shuffled things around a bit, some seating was different for the Deacons, and the order of service was a little off kilter. So there was a little fumbling, a little hesitation, a few looks of 'what comes next?' ...

That was the whole point.

Easter catches us off guard. Things that die are supposed to stay dead, not rise again. God catches us by surprise if we really think about Easter. So we are a little uncomfortable with it. That's a good thing. We NEED to be less smooth ... less polished, more spontaneous, more extemporaneous. We need to take the notion to heart that we really don't know what's coming next, in the grander scheme of things. So facing it on a smaller scale will hopefully help us to deal with the 'grander scheme' better.

For the afternoon, we hosted a 'flipped' Encuentro. Flipped in the sense that we flipped the order of activities. Generally, we've had the first hour and a half dedicated to simply having fun - board games, outdoor games, checkers, dominos, things like that, followed by the meal and then the devotional time. Sunday I asked to do the Worship time first. We didn't start until 2:45, an hour and forty five minutes later than intended. But that was okay.

We got to share communion. I prefaced the serving by comenting that, regardless of what Christian tradition you come from (most if not all were from a Catholic background), the sharing of the Lord's supper was a central part of the faith - a central statement and proclamation of what it is we believe and we practice as followers of Christ. I served it by intinction. And was able to call most of them by name, and say 'the body of Christ and the blood of Christ.' As the line was coming through, at one point I was looking down at the bread and the cup, and when I looked up, Jimmy, my brother, was there. He had tears in his eyes.

Talk about a Holy moment!


Grace & Peace.