• Simple service of the imposition of ashes: 7:00 am in the chapel
• Simple service of the imposition of ashes: noon in the chapel
• Combined St. Sebastian’s & First United Service of Ashes and communion: 7:00 pm in the church

Please join us!

• 4:30 PM: Vigil Mass of Christmas
• 11:30 PM: Musical Prelude to Midnight Mass

Christmas, Thursday, Dec. 25

• 12:00 AM: Midnight Mass of Christmas
• 10:00 AM: Christmas Day Mass

Know that you are held in prayer this day, please remember your Pastor and our community throughout this Easter season!

Today, forty days after Easter day, the author of the Gospel according to Luke and the Acts of the Apostles gives us the traditional setting of the Ascension of Jesus. Different from both the scenario described in Mark and John’s Gospel accounts, this 40 day marker leaves the apostles in a holding pattern for the next 10 days.

In the ancient Church, as the Gospel was concluded, the paschal candle would be extinguished, marking the physical departure of Jesus from the midst of those earliest believers. Standing alone again, their Lord and Teacher ascended to the skies, the Apostles are left one final question from the angels that appear in their midst. “What are you doing here, looking at the skies?”

Get on with it.

As an early Church tries to communicate to it’s members what it is that happened on the morning after the Author of Life entered into Death, the Easter narratives differ greatly in their time line, their images of the Risen One and their inclusion (or exclusion) of who was truly to take leadership in Jesus’ absence. But on this one point, the speak a single message; the resurrection of Christ is for all people, for all times.

In early February, Jeffrey Hawks brought something to my attention that he had found online…a sort of litany of the resurrection. The Pastor of the Community Church of Wilmette, a suburb of Chicago had preached this in an Easter sermon last year and it has stuck with me.

I spoke with Pastor Tripp Hudgon and got his permission to use this in the morning Communion service we will celebrate on Sunday. I leave you with this final Easter moment as we prepare to welcome the Spirit again into our lives at Pentecost next weekend.

Resurrection is liberation for the oppressed.

Resurrection is the end to injustice.

Resurrection is liberation from cruel poverty.

Resurrection is liberation from cruel affluence.

Resurrection speaks truth to power.

Resurrection is in solidarity with the powerless.

Resurrection asks for mercy where we might want vengeance.

Resurrection proclaims violence to be a lie.

Resurrection is the addict making amends, listing wrongs, and begging forgiveness.

Resurrection is impractical, impolite, and confusing.

Resurrection is admitting our mistakes,

and the role they played in the injustices we have experienced.

Resurrection is apologizing to our children, our spouses, and our friends.

Resurrection is the end to isolation…to segregation, to all that would bind us,

enslave us, imprison us, and keep us from God’s fire-y, world creating Love.

Resurrection is the liberation of the entire world.

And there is no end to Christ’s Resurrection.

Know that you are held in prayer this day, please remember your Pastor and our community throughout this Easter season!

The image of Baptism is so very closely identified with the Easter season in the readings we hear and the prayers of the Church, but folks often wonder, “Why?” The thoughts that come to mind when someone mentions going back to the font, the moment of rebirth into the Spirit of the Beloved seldom seem to conjure up “Easter”.

For some of us, the trip to the life-giving waters of Baptism happened long before we began collecting conscious memories. Another generation of parents advised their grown children-now parents, to “Get that child Baptized!” It is what was handed on to them by their parents…a misguided Church led some to believe that the act of Baptism was a safeguard against the fires of Hell (or at least, the boredom of Purgatory!) The sooner, the better!

For others, Baptism was that moment in early adulthood or the late teen years when we made that profession of faith in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. Once we memorized and proclaimed the prescribed formula, we could enter the mighty waters of new creation and an adult Christianity.

While the many understandings of what Baptism is and how it effects our lives, have formed us for good or for bad; they each had that one component in which the faith, the life in Jesus, the safety of life in the community was procured through the personal involvement in this moment of grace. It was important for each of us to do it as an individual, a unique and lovely creature of God’s mighty love.

The Ancient Church held Baptism, Confirmation and the reception of Communion for the first time as one single moment of Initiation. Rather than safeguarding one against punishment by an angry God, it was seen as the personal walk into and through the death of sin, following the footsteps of our Beloved, the Christ.

Then it made perfect sense that this would all be celebrated and identified with the yearly commemoration of the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus. The victory of Christ’s destruction of death was ours, to enter into, to hold dear, to use as an example for daily living and care for one another.

The waters of the font name us “Family”, you and I. From water sprinkled on a child’s head, to the plunging under water in a pool or river, we have seen and heard the wonders of the Almighty’s love for us in the resurrection of Love and Life in Him we name Christ. Something to celebrate, indeed! Alleluia!

Every year the readings for the Sunday after Easter include the infamous story of “Doubting Thomas”. This Easter story from John’s Gospel has given name to any one who has ever called into question something. Unless Thomas gets to do some rather grisly investigating of Jesus’ wounds, he will not believe.

What Thomas wants more than anything is for this whole mess of Jesus’ passion and death to have not happened. I believe he wanted that so badly, he could not even consider accepting something different. Until he could mourn the loss of what he wanted and heal from the pain and alienation it brought, he could not and would not accept the Risen Christ.

Perhaps that is what happened over the week between the two appearances. For when Thomas can truly accept the new idea that Christ lives…he can begin a new relationship that will bring life and love.

As we consider what we are doing here in our church communities, it appears to me that sometimes folks are coming to this experience of Church having been hurt or alienated from their last community.

They often come to our Church family and find that here, we truly do celebrate the Christian tradition. They also find that we nurture and challenge one another to own that tradition in a new way. A key element of that “new way” is welcoming women and men no matter who they are or where they are on life’s journey.

And yet, sometimes these people find that this unique experience of Church does not meet their needs. What they truly want is some kind of healing and forgiveness within the community they left. What they really desire is sometimes something we cannot give them.

Like Thomas, unless we are willing to open our minds and hearts to the healing love of the Risen Christ, we can not and will not accept something other than what we want. When we are able to see that we are surrounded in this community by those who love and support us for all that we are, we are able to grow in relationship together with the new life that Easter brings.

Then this community of faith radiates with the light and love of Christ risen and alive in our midst…in the hearts and hands of those we name, “Church”.

Know that you are held in prayer this day, please remember your Pastor and our community throughout this Easter season!

Today’s warmth and light seem to have brought a sense of delight to the streets here in Upper Fells Prospect! Folks are smiling, walking around the neighborhood and taking time to soak in the sun. It is very easy to feel as if the world is engaged in some pretty serious Easter celebration this afternoon.

Then I come back to earth and realize that of the folks that may have celebrated on Sunday, for most folks Easter is done. Walking around the National Cathedral Monday afternoon and taking in the beauty of that space, I came to my yearly realization of what a true church-nerd I am.

But the church calendar proclaims that this joyful Eastertide is indeed, a season; stretching over 50 days from now to Pentecost (Sunday, May 31st). Seven Sabbaths, seven weeks, seven times seven…symbolizing infinity x infinity plus adding one day more just to make the point.

The truth of our Easter celebrations can not, and must not be contained in one day. Nor can we keep the jelly beans and ham going for over a month and a half. Our Easter must evolve and grow even as the earliest of disciples evolved from the fear and confusion of Easter day to the courage and energy of the day of Pentecost.

So we grow, from this day forward, together in peace.

Holy Friday 04-10-2009
12:00am: Morning Prayer
12:00pm: Stations of the Cross
8:00pm: Service of the Lord’s Passion with the People of First United

Holy Saturday 04-11-2009
12:00pm: Mid-day Prayer
8:00pm: Great Vigil and First Eucharist of Easter

Easter Day 04-12-2009
6:00am: Sunrise Service at Cemetery with First United (6115 O’ Donnell Street)
9:00am: Family Mass
10:45am: Morning Service of the Word and Table with First United
4:30pm: Mass

Know that you are held in prayer this day, please remember your Pastor and our community as well.

The services which make up the days and moments of this week we are about to enter have become some of the most sacred throughout the church year.

While it has borne an historical remembrance of the events that lead to the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus, these days of “Holy Week” and “Triduum” (’the three days’, in Latin) also bear the opportunity for each of us to see ourselves following in his footsteps.

Please consider attending one or all of the different services listed on our calendar. We share these moments between First United and ourselves. You will find a unique mixture of ritual and reflection, song and silence, stillness and movement.

If you are unable to attend, know that you are remembered and held in holy fellowship throughout these days. Let us pray for our church community as well.