April 4, 2020
A Reflection from our Clergy
Dear Holy Comforter Family,

It breaks my heart not to be able to worship with you in the same physical space for Holy Week and Easter. I have always felt that walking Jesus’ last days on earth together and the celebration of his resurrection is one of the most meaningful and renewing things a community of faith can do. It kills me that we can’t hear each other shouting ‘Hosanna!’ and ‘Crucify him!’ or wash each other’s feet in the narthex or share together in the last holy eucharist on Maundy Thursday before the glory of Easter with bright brass and loads of lilies. But suffice it to say, that we will be together, just not in the same physical space.

We will be together because we will provide various different forms of virtual worship, meditations and rituals that you can do in your own homes. We will be together because we are already bound by the Holy Spirit as the living, breathing body of Christ in the world. We will be together because we are already an Easter people; Jesus has already died and has already risen. Our yearly marking and remembrance of Jesus’ ultimate sacrifice for us is an essential and important encounter to deepen and strengthen our faith. We must take the time to remember our own culpability in the crucifixion of Christ, to ask forgiveness for ourselves and the whole world, and experience again our own redemption. This year is like no other. As part of our Holy Week practices, I invite you to be intentional about looking into our world and present circumstances for places in which we are culpable. I invite you to be generous with your forgiveness and to be bold in asking forgiveness for yourself. I also invite you to experience the miracle and wonder of resurrection which is everywhere around us. These are days of miracle of wonder.

In closing, I would like to share with you the beautiful words of a poem written recently by one of my closest friends from seminary. The Rev. Erika Takacs is rector of Church of the Atonement in Chicago. I hope her words give you resurrection hope.

Your sister in Christ, Ann+
A Coming Alleluia by the Rev. Erika Takacs

They say there will be no Easter this year.
No hats.
No hunts.
No hymning.
No lilies to fill a bright room
with a fanfare of pollen.
No garden, no angel,
no victory.

They say that our journey
born in sackcloth and ashes
will lead us at last
to nowhere.

And so we sit worried
that the tomb, this year,
will be found, for once,
still full.

That Mary and the others
will leave with their spices
and come back home with nothing.
That this year the women will finally end their work –
anoint and then
leave empty.

Ssh. Be still.
Do you not hear her?
Clucking close by like an old mother hen,
brooding and sighing and
stretching her wings?

Fear not, she says,
for I did it before –
in the silence
in the dark
in a closed and locked room
in a world that had known
only death.

Did I not once prove
once for all
that there is nothing you can do,
no decision you can make
(for good or for ill)
that can stop
me
rising?