Featuring Aaron’s sermon from Sunday, a new recording of a favorite Spiritual from the Parish Choir, A Prayer for Veteran’s Day, and a link to the full text of Bishop Rob Hirschfeld’s 2025 Diocesan Convention address, plus links to several of our content clearinghouses for all your SJC content needs!
Featuring Rob’s sermon from Sunday, the link to revisit our evening Requiem Mass Service for All Saints, a Prayer for Elections, as well as links to all our content!
Featuring Aaron’s sermon from Sunday, a recording from last year’s Choral Eucharist Service for All Saints, and links to several of our content clearinghouses for all your SJC content needs!
Featuring Rob’s sermon from Sunday, and a new recording of a powerful anthem from the Parish Choir, as well as links to all our content!
Today is Good Friday, we are living in a Good Friday moment...a time of uncertainty and waiting and hoping and loving. The writer to the Hebrews reminds us that Jesus give up his life, suffering death on a cross, for you and for me, and for all. The once-and-for -all sacrifice has been made, and we are free, free to love God and love each other and love ourselves, as a new and living way of being is opened up by Jesus’ life, death and resurrection.
By his death and resurrection generations of people would be drawn to Jesus, and follow him, and serve him and shine light and love into places of darkness and suffering. We don’t know how the story we are living at the moment will unfold, but Jesus invited those who didn’t know how their story would end to become ‘children of light’ and Jesus invites us who don’t know how our story will unfold to do the same.
Beauty in the midst of disaster. In the final days of Jesus’ life, he takes time to sit and have dinner with Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, to enjoy the company of friends. And when Mary anoints his feet with expensive and fragrant oil, he doesn’t chastise her, or feel guilty about the cost. He savors the smell that filled the house and reminds his disciples to appreciate the present moment, the time they have with him.
God is ready to listen, ready to see, ready to love us with a love beyond our dreams. I invite you, during this strange time of isolation, to lean into that Home with God. Now, more than ever, we and the world need to remember that God, Love and Home are still present to us, and we can share that with good news with others.
That first crowd cut palms and put them before Jesus because that’s what they had available. For centuries, people who live in places where palms are not native have connected to the story with whatever they had available. So, this year, we encourage you to harvest what you can – pine boughs, birch branches, beech twigs, forsythia – and to decorate your doors and homes for Palm Sunday! Ann Tarlton offers a DIY tutorial!
I believe that by holding the world in prayer, we are doing something. That’s not to say that we shouldn’t be writing letters, making cards, or offering donations – those things are important too. I hope we can see our prayer as our gift to the world, one of many ways we can continue to radiate God’s love into a world and time that desperately needs it.
It is now clear that we will not be able to gather as usual for our Holy Week and Easter celebrations. The earliest we might consider returning to our sanctuaries for worship may be Sunday May 10, which happens to be Good Shepherd Sunday/Mothers’ Day. In the meantime, your local church is providing on-line worship services of word, prayer and spiritual communion, even as we experience this time of sacramental exile and fasting.
