Connect to God
Our seminarian, Joanna Benskin, and I were reminiscing yesterday about our favorite Holy Week celebrations in years past. We both remember the drama and beauty of our first Holy Week as Episcopalians, when we were surprised and won over by the way that the celebrations appealed to all of our senses - the stark and intimate grief of the stripping of the altar, the smell of incense and lilies, the Easter fire shining in the darkness, the music, the sound of a child laughing as she emerged from the waters of baptism. It was magical.
This Holy Week will be very different. St. John’s will be streaming Holy Week services, and all are invited to download our
Holy Week at Home guide
, which offers ways to create sacred space and time at home, and suggestions for participating more deeply in the streamed services.
This Holy Week will be different, but God’s promises have not changed. We will still remember the story of Jesus’ death and resurrection together as a community. Our experience of these events might be quieter, gentler, less hectic. It might be harder to focus without being physically present in the church, without the aid of the usual sounds and smells and rituals of the week. But perhaps there will be a hidden blessing in this new way of celebrating.
We enter into this story in order to meet and be transformed by God. Perhaps without the padding of our usual routines and distractions, God will even meet us in a new way.
Right now, the world desperately needs people who have met and been transformed by the love of God. I invite you to walk the way of the cross and resurrection with us this week so that we might encounter the love of God and be transformed by it.
Yours in the-soon-to-be-risen Christ,
Rev. Ginger
P.S. Our church was mentioned in Wednesday's Marin IJ. Click
here
to read.
