Update on Eaarth Advocates

The cold reality of human impact on the environment

Update on Eaarth Advocates’ Environmental Activism
So, Why is “Eaarth” spelled with two “a’s?

Answer: Because the earth that God created, and that our grandparents grew up on, no longer exists. It has been changed irrevocably by human activity. Bill McKibbon in his book Eaarth uses the different spelling to denote the forever-changed earth that we have now and which we need to protect from further damage.
The Eaarth Advocates group in our church grew up from grassroots concern – what can we do, individually, as families, as a church, and advocating in the wider world…. to care for our planet?

In 2014 Mary and the Eaarth Advocates group focused on giving each of the weeks of Lent an environmental theme tying together worship and social hour activities. The first week, Eaarth Advocates led Sunday worship, emphasizing mindfulness of our relationship to the earth, and, for the social hour, Jan Day prepared delicious snacks that were all locally sourced. She also brought in items available in the supermarkets that are brought from the far side of the world at tremendous cost in fuel and therefore in greenhouse gases that contaminate our atmosphere and are the major culprit of global warming. The second week’s focus was on the atmosphere, and we made prayer flags during the social hour. The third week the focus was on water; the congregation was invited to submit words that spoke to their concerns about water and a “word cloud” was composed from those words. The fourth Sunday the topic was energy; kids and adults insulated all the electrical outlets in the building. The final Sunday a scavenger hunt led people to explore energy efficient and environmentally friendly things in our church.

This year, everyone is invited to take part in our Environmental Eastertide during the period from Easter to Pentecost on May 24. On Easter Sunday, Eaarth Advocates Jan Day and David Durfee convinced the Easter bunny to bring eggs for adults as well as kids; each egg contained a tip for making the earth a sweeter place for us and our descendents, in addition to jelly beans and wildflower seeds. On April 12 Barbara True-Weber and Kathy Shaw made a Spring Cleaning Display with non-toxic cleaning options and a list of what ingredients to avoid when looking for cleaning products. On April 19 the Eaarth Advocates led worship, exploring food and farming in connection to care of the environment.

On April 26 there will an opportunity during the social hour to learn about bats as well as about other organic, non toxic ways of dealing with insect pests in our gardens. Come see how bats are a natural pesticide against insects, much better than chemicals. Sunday May 3 we are all invited to ‘dress down’ (or come as you like) and, after worship, help clean the inside of our church with non-toxic materials. On May 10, Mother’s Day, come see the artwork that invites us to honor and celebrate our Mother Earth. The weekend of May 16-17 we plan a plant sale, together with instructions on how to make good black earth by composting (good for your garden and the environment). Eastertide concludes on May 24 with Pentecost Sunday. Our celebration of the installation of our solar panels will follow later, possibly in June.

Throughout all this we aim to further the ways in which we are a congregation of what the United Church of Christ calls “Green Justice” – building a community spirit based on care of God’s creation at the individual, community, and global levels.

Read More

"Living Within Love"- John 10: 11-18, 1 John 3:16-24-- April 26, 2015

At first glance, the "fuzz factor" may seem to be pretty high in today’s readings–fuzz as in fuzzy wool of sheep, fuzz as in the images of love that we see on greeting cards or in movies or ads, fuzz as in many of our associations with shepherds, from the little kids in bathrobes portraying the shepherds keeping watch over their flocks by night in Christmas pageants or the pastel pictures of Jesus holding lambs in his arms. "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want," begins what is many people’s favorite psalm. And who, in this harsh, cold, often frightening, world, doesn’t need a warm blanket, a strong but gentle protector, let alone love?

As you may have come to expect by now, before we get all comfortable and cozy, we would do well to look at how the first readers, the first listeners, of these passages might have heard them. The image of shepherd was a familiar one to the Jewish community. Their leaders were referred to as shepherds–good shepherds or false shepherds. Moses was a shepherd, herding his flocks when he saw the bush burning but not being consumed. And David, of course, often called the Shepherd King, was a beloved, if not complex, figure.

But shepherds were not sentimental figures. In fact, the shepherds keeping watch over their flocks by night on Christmas Eve would have been the last people anyone expected an angel messenger, let alone an angel choir, to come to. They were not folks you’d want to get too close to–smelly, rough, dirty, not the most sociable of characters. And the word that usually gets translated as "good" when Jesus says, "I am the Good Shepherd," is more often translated "beautiful." You didn’t often hear the words "beautiful" and "shepherd" put together. "I am the Good, the Beautiful, Shepherd," Jesus said. Really? How does that work?

The image of shepherd was not sentimental, but it was intimate. Sheep do, apparently, know and respond to their shepherd’s voice. And, of course, a good shepherd knows his or her sheep. You have to wrap your arms around a sheep to shear them, and of course, you can only shear one sheep at a time. You can’t just "know the flock."

From both the passage from John and the 23^rd psalm, we know that being a shepherd is risky business–the table is set in the presence of enemies, and Jesus uses words like bandits and thieves, wolves, and strangers. He talks about laying down his life for the sheep. Which, of course, is what he told his disciples to do–lay down their lives for one another. "We know love by this," the writer of John’s letter says. Yikes! So much for the Hallmark version of love!

Martin Luther King Jr, who knew a thing or two about laying down his life, told his congregation in one of his sermons that when he spoke of love,

I am not referring to some sentimental or affectionate emotion. It would be nonsense to urge [people] to love their oppressors in an affectionate sense. Love in this connection means understanding, redemptive good will...We speak of a love which is expressed in the Greek word agape. Agape is not a weak, passive love. It is love in action. Agape is love seeking to preserve and create community. When I am commanded to love, I am commanded to restore community, to resist injustice, and to meet the needs of my brothers [and sisters].... [Cited by Ryan Herring in Sojourners, May 2015, reviewing Cornel West’s The Radical King].

"I am the Good Shepherd," Jesus says. "The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep...The hired hand runs away [when a wolf comes], because a hired hand does not care for the sheep." The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.

Why is Good Friday good? That was one of the things we wondered about a couple weeks ago, in "wondering" about Easter. Why is Good Friday good? One of the reasons it’s good, perhaps, is because we are shown how far Love will go with and for us–not running away from our deaths, from our experiences of being crucified, not even our experiences of doing the crucifying and betraying. Love–God’s love-- does not run away, like the hired hand. Love lays down his life, her life, for the other. For us. That’s good news.

"We are not loved by God because we are precious," the late Henri Nouwen wrote, "but we are precious because we are loved by God." I am–God’s name–I am the good shepherd. God knows us–in the incarnation, as one writer puts it, God knows the people [us] from up close" [Bernard Brand Scott, in Kate Huey’s sermonseeds, 4/26/15] and — still, often to my amazement– and yet, God loves us, willing to lay down God’s life for us.

But not just for us. "I have other sheep," Jesus says, "that do not belong to this fold." Bruce and I actually have an embroidered version of this that someone in one of our churches made for us–"I have other sheep which are not of this fold." Let’s not get too smug here [in other words], too parochial or exclusive, as Christians sometimes have a tendency to get. "I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd."

Do those other sheep include migrant workers? immigrants fleeing from wars and poverty and violence? People who, like the shepherds of old, are dirty and smelly and socially inappropriate? What about Muslims or Buddhists or Hindus? Might they be part of God’s flock? What about the "nones" as in "what is your religious affiliation"? "I have other sheep that are not of this fold." We heard this weekend at Annual Meeting about physicist David Bohm, who wrote, "No one piece [of the universe] can have the entire picture of the whole." Maybe we can hear from science, from quantum physics what we apparently haven’t believed from Jesus–"I have other sheep that are not of this fold"–unless the fold is as big as Love.

"I came that they may have life," Jesus says in the verse just before we began reading this morning, "and have it abundantly." "God is my shepherd. I have everything I need." Abundant life, not more stuff. And abundant love, love for you just the way you are. You are enough. Right now. Already. What if we could really believe that–"You are, each one of us is, a beloved child of God and you are enough." Do you know anyone else who needs to hear that? For whom hearing you say that and believing it might just plant a seed that could change their life? "I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd."

Oscar Romero, the Archbishop of El Salvador was fatally shot while saying Mass on March 24, 1980. He had just read the passage from John which says that unless a grain of wheat falls to the earth and dies, it remains only a grain. But if it dies, it bears much fruit. Archbishop Romero himself became that seed that bore fruit in the struggle for justice for the El Salvadoran people. Weeks before he died he said, "A church that doesn’t provoke any crises, a gospel that doesn’t unsettle, a word of God that doesn’t get under anyone’s skin, a word of God that doesn’t touch the real sin of the society in which it is being proclaimed, what gospel is that?"

Now, we may not think that proclaiming a provoking, unsettling, get under your skins kind of gospel is any way to grow a church. Who wants to give up a Sunday morning or a Wednesday evening, to be unsettled? Maybe that’s our problem. We’ve been too fuzzy. We’ve been too boring. We’ve been too harmless, too innocuous. Who cares about a gospel that only stays on the surface of things, that only offers a momentary pleasant diversion, that never goes deep enough to the real, root causes of human suffering?

I got a Facebook message from a friend of mine this week, addressed to all her "minister friends." [I think she meant that in a kind way–her dad was a minister.] It was a link to a blog from the Sojourners community in Washington, DC, entitled, What Struggling Congregations Need to Know to Renew Their Churches." Those congregations addressed are struggling in the same ways we are–declining and aging membership, diminishing resources, ... The answer offered was: "There is too much shallowness." I hope we go deep, but maybe not deep enough.

"We know love by this," John writes, "that he laid down his life for us–and we ought to lay down our lives for one another." The word for "life" here is psyche, which looks like our word "psyche," often used with the sense of "soul." Martyrdom is not everyone’s calling– literally laying down one’s life for another. But "martyr" does come from the root word for "witness." What might it mean for us to "witness" to this incredible Love that knows us intimately, that does not abandon us, even in death, in all the kinds of death that we experience in life? Might it mean, for starters, that we could speak openly, in public, that we are part of Second Congregational Church? Might it mean that we could, individually as well as collectively, maybe even in a variety of media, that we could love, not in only in word or speech, but in truth and action, and so counteract the messages that our culture is blasting out that you are not loveable, you are not enough, you are not worthy of love or generosity?

How far are you–are we–am I–willing to go for love? Maybe begin by thinking about how far you’d go for your children or other loved ones. Would you do that for a stranger? For an "unattractive" stranger? Would you go to the point of civil disobedience? Would I have gone to Selma? Would you go to the place of confrontation–as in a drug or alcohol intervention–or a public demonstration? Would you or I go to the place, the action, the statement that would not make people like you/me? For love? How far would go for love?

"It’s your public face, your public invitation," our new Next Level coach said, "that we can work on taking to the next level." I believe she can help us develop such a process that has integrity for us, and I believe the proposal to begin the search for our next pastor points us in that direction. The Next Level–"up" from or beyond-- our current comfort zone is almost by definition a place that is unsettling, uncomfortable, but it s place of growth and new life.

"I am the Good Shepherd," Jesus said, "and the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep." "We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us–and we ought to lay down our lives for one another. How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help? [Brothers and sisters], let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action."

The flock that Jesus is the Good Shepherd of is bigger, wider, more diverse, more abundant than we an imagine. It’s as big as love. May we live within that flock and be guided and shaped by the Shepherd, with joy, with courage, with hope. Amen, and amen.

Rev. Mary H. Lee-Clark

 

Read More

"Thomas the Twin Reflecting"--John 20:19-31--April 12, 2015

"Thomas the Twin Reflecting" John 20: 19-31 4/12/15

Thomas was called "The Twin"–Didymus is the word–and maybe he’s the Twin of all of us. I consider him a fraternal twin of mine, in spite of the 20 centuries between us. It’s always bothered me that Thomas has been called "Doubting Thomas," because it’s always said with that kind of shaming tone of voice–Mm, Mm, Mm, accompanied by that headshake. Like the other disciples were all that brave and believing and pure.

Thomas was the only one with guts enough to leave that upper room where the others were locked in on that first Easter night. And did you notice, they were still there, locked in, a week later, only this time Thomas was with them.

My twin brother, Thomas, was the one who, when Jesus said they were going to where Lazarus had died, even though they knew there were people there who wanted to have him arrested, Thomas was the one who said, "Let us go and die with him." I’d like to think I’d have the same courage as my twin brother.

Paul Tillich said that "Doubt isn’t the opposite of faith; it’s an element of faith." In fact, he said, "The opposite of faith is certainty." I like that. "The opposite of faith is certainty." If you’re all that certain, if you know who’s in and who’s out, what God is and what God isn’t, then why do you need faith? You’ve already got proof. "Doubt isn’t the opposite of faith...the opposite of faith is certainty."

Khalil Gibran–the Lebanese poet who wrote "The Prophet"–put it this way–"Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother." I think we’ve pushed Thomas – "Doubting Thomas"– away from us for too long, and we’ve become lonely in the process. Jesus didn’t push him away, –"he didn’t scold me"--and he won’t push us away either.

"The doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews," John tells us. It wasn’t just the doors that were locked. William Sloane Coffin wrote, "You can’t think straight with a heart full of fear, for fear seeks safety, not truth. If your heart’s a stone, you can’t have decent thoughts–either about personal relations or about international ones. A heart full of love, on the other hand, has a limbering effect on the mind." [cited by Kate Huey in sermonseeds, 4/12/15]

I guess that’s where I wish I were more like my twin brother Thomas–not locked down in fear, but out looking for answers. "The opposite of love is not hate," God says in Neale Donald Walsh’s Conversations with God. "The opposite of love is fear." I know fear shuts me down. I know it narrows my vision. The walls and blinders go up when I think about what might happen on those snowy roads, what random, crazy, wounded person is going to pull out a gun and start shooting, what we are doing to the air and the creatures and the water and to each other on this planet. "The opposite of love is fear." "A heart full of love, on the other hand, has a limbering effect on the mind."

Thomas, my twin brother, at least had a heart full of love. In that wonderful painting by Caravaggio, Jesus presents the wounds on his side to Thomas and Thomas reaches forward, practically falls into Jesus, his eyes wide with amazement. It’s almost as if, as someone has written, he’s saying,"There’s another world in there!" [David Lose, inthemeantime, 4/10/15] .

Thomas’s whole perception of reality changes when he looks inside those wounds. He’s no more certain than he was before, but he is full of wonder, full of love.

"Blessed are you," Jesus says to him, "blessed are you who have seen, and blessed are those who haven’t seen, and yet believe, yet trust." So, all of us are blessed as well, we who haven’t seen, but still, somehow, on the occasional Thursday morning, or a quiet Monday afternoon, –we are blessed when we "believe" or trust in the One whose wounds open up a whole new world to us.

Another of our twin brothers, Wendell Berry, suggests this approach– "Give your approval to all you cannot understand. Praise ignorance, for what [humanity] has not encountered, [we have] not destroyed. Ask the questions that have no answer. Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias." [from Manifesto for the Mad Farmer Liberation Front]

The Risen Christ gives us his peace. So, along with Thomas, may we give him our hearts. Let us pray...

Rev. Mary H. Lee-Clark

​

Read More

Early Easter 2015-- John 20:1-18

You may have heard of the custom in the Ubuntu African tribe, where

...when a woman of the tribe knows she is pregnant, she goes to the jungle with other women, and together they pray and meditate until they get to "The song of the child." When the child is born, the community gets together and they sing the child’s song. When the child begins his education, people get together and sing the song. When the person becomes an adult, the community gets together again and sing it. When it comes to the time for a wedding, the person hears his or her song. Finally, when the person’s soul is going from this world, family and friends gather and, like at birth, sing their song to accompany the person on the "journey".

"In this Ubuntu tribe, there is another occasion when men sing the song. If at some point the person commits a crime or aberrant social act, they take him or her to the center of town and the people of the community form a circle around her or him. Then they sing "their song." The tribe recognizes that the correction for antisocial behavior is not punishment, but is the love and memory of one’s true identity. When we recognize our own song, we have no desire or need to hurt anyone. [Tolba Phanem, singingteachers.wordpress.com]

You could do a lot worse than to imagine God or the Church as the One who knows your "song," who knows your true name, before you were born, who sings it to you in all the joys and sorrows and wanderings of your life, and then sings it to you as you pass into new life.

Jesus had taught Mary Magdalene her true name. She had heard her own song in the melody of his voice, in his teaching, in his healing, in his laughter. But the events of the past three days had muffled that song, had blurred her vision, had broken her heart.

She went to the tomb alone, as John tells the story, "while it was still dark." She finds the stone rolled away from the entrance of the tomb, and assumes the worst. Running to find Simon Peter and John, she tells them that someone has taken the Lord’s body and hidden it. They come and enter the tomb, and, John says that the disciple whom Jesus loved saw the empty grave cloths and "believed." Then the men go home.

Mary, though, cannot leave, any more than she could have left that Good Friday scene of crucifixion. When she finally bends over and looks into the tomb, she sees two in angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying. She still thinks somebody has stolen Jesus’ body, and continues to weep. "When you live only in a Good Friday world," a wise woman observes, "and your eyes have gotten too used to the dark, and you are crying over a stolen body, a stolen hope, a stolen promise, everyone you meet is not a potential friend, but a potential thief–even two angels sitting in an empty tomb." [Shannon Johnson Kershner, Journal for Preachers, Easter 2015, p. 35]

Mary even assumes the gardener is a potential thief–"Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away." And Jesus says to her, "Mary." "What an empty tomb, two angels, folded linens, and a separated wrapped up hanky could not do, [one writer says] the call of one’s name does. This is a beautiful moment." [Mark Davis, leftbehind. 3/30/15] Mary has heard her song, her true name, and at last she is able to see clearly and truly. "Rabbouni!" she cries, and falls at his feet. "Don’t cling to me," Jesus tells her. This is not where the journey ends. Go and tell my brothers and sisters.

Life in God’s reign is far more than "surviving," more than simply becoming accustomed or adjusted to the Good Friday world that so many people–and most of us at times–can only see. The only way out of that Good Friday haze, as one woman puts it, is to remember our true names, or, when we forget them, to have them sung to us. It may not be the actual song, like the Ubuntu tribe sings, but we might hear it in some other music, in poetry, in the hug of a friend, the laughter of a child, in a dream or vision, in the voices and faces of all kinds of people, in the view from a mountain. "Mary," he said, and she knew who he was and who she was.

"While it was still dark," Mary went to the tomb. The darkness does not last forever, and in fact it is precisely out of the darkness that the dawn arises. God does some of God’s best work in the dark–at the creation of the universe, on Christmas Eve, on an early Easter morning, "while it was still dark." In your darkest hour–at the bedside of a loved one, when you feel like a failure, when your life is a hot mess, when the pain seems never to go away, when you feel all alone –know that God is especially experienced at this kind of thing. Listen for your true name, perhaps the name given you at your baptism. Perhaps your true name, your own song, has only become clear to you in the years following your baptism. Maybe you’re still waiting to hear it. Know that your searching, your straining to hear it, is part of the melody. And know that this One, whom death could not contain, is even now singing the song of every heart which is open to Love and Truth. Like a bottle of precious essential oil, a fragrant perfume of the most beautiful flowers and blossoms, broken open and filling the world with its fragrance, so the risen Body of Christ infuses and pours over the wounds of the world, including each one of us.

"Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed." It was when she heard him call her name that she too experienced new life. Listen for his voice–"You are beloved, a precious child of God, beautiful to behold." He’s singing your song.

Rev. Mary H. Lee-Clark

Read More

"Ragged Edges"- Mark 16:1-8-- Easter 10 a.m.– April 5, 2015

You can see why they thought it must have been a mistake. Mark couldn’t really have intended his gospel to end like that–"So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid." He even ends the sentence with a preposition–gar–"for". There must have been a mistake. The real ending of the gospel must have been lost or torn off–surely there was an appearance of the risen Jesus, some happy reunion with the disciples, something other than the women running off in terror and saying nothing to anyone, "they were afraid for..."

So in the later manuscripts, the ones copied faithfully by the monks, Jesus does appear to Mary Magdalene, and to the disciples, and sends them all out to spread the good news. He even tells them they’ll be able to do all sorts of things–cast out demons, handle poisonous snakes, drink poison. You get the feeling that maybe the monks or one of Mark’s followers got carried away with their own imaginations about what the ending of the gospel really should have been–not "they were afraid for..."

But they were frightened. All the gospels–even the ones with longer endings–say that the discovery of the empty tomb wasn’t an immediate cause of joy and celebration. We may shout, "Christ is risen!" and respond to such news with "Christ is risen indeed!" But the first reaction to that discovery was more like, "Holy ... you know what! Let’s get out of here!" Instead of confidence and joy and a desire to go and tell others, the first followers of Jesus responded with fear and silence and running away.

The apostle Paul wisely insists that there is no resurrection that is not resurrection from the dead. Tom Currie suggests that "the church has always wanted something less miraculous. We would like a resurrection that would be more like self-improvement, a resurrection that would not so messy, so intrusive, so threatening."[Journal for Preachers, Easter 2015, p. 3] "Because," as another writer notes, "when a guy executed for sedition is raised to new life, the line between life and death suddenly grows paper-thin. As a result we’re asked to re-assess all our familiar assumptions." [Mark Skinner, Odyssey Networks, 3-30-15]

You may be here this morning under protest. Not only may the whole "Church Thing" feel incredibly uncomfortable and even alien to anything else in your life; but you may also be thinking this "resurrection" stuff is just impossible to believe. It’s a fool’s crutch. You should know you’ve got lots of company–a company that goes back thousands of years–all the way back to that first Easter morning when the women got away as fast as they could and no way were they going to tell anybody about they’d found. A person could get killed for saying stuff like that; and they did. At best, you’d be called a fool; and they were.

Mark is not interested in proving that Jesus was raised from the dead. The ending of his gospel–what I think was the real ending–leaves us all in krisis–in a moment of crisis or decision, which is what that word means. Maybe it’s incomplete by design, as David Lose says, for "no story about death and resurrection could possibly have a neat and tidy ending." It’s open-ended so we’ll jump in. "It’s only just getting started,...[he says] Resurrection isn’t a conclusion, it’s an invitation." [David Lose, inthemeantime, 3/30/15] Your future–our future-- must be lived into, and we have to decide how we will do that–paralyzed by fear, deadened by cynicism, carelessly without hope, or trusting in the power that is able to bring life out of death.

"The ‘Fear not’ of the Easter message [Tom Currie writes] is not a declaration that there is no reason to fear or that our fears are illusions which we can ignore or wish away. It is not even a message that tells us that death has no power....The reason we are told to ‘Fear not’ is not that there is not reason to fear, but that amidst our fears, amidst our running away in terror, our walking in discouragement and isolation, there is one who has broken through the imprisoning bonds of death, one whose fellowship has overcome that deep loneliness that death intends for all of human life, one whose risen life is always a life together." [Currie, op cit., p. 4]

"Do not be alarmed," the young man in the white robe said to the women. "You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here...But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you." Death is a scary thing, but we know that life can be a scary thing too. And we know that life is full of all kinds of little deaths–disappointments, failures, sickness, injury, betrayals, moving, graduating, divorce, losing a job, losing a loved one, endings of relationships. We get lots of chances to practice dying during our lifetimes, and it doesn’t always feel good.

But the message of the Easter story is that we don’t have to live our lives in a state of fear, despite what the news media and politicians would sometimes have us believe. We can acknowledge our fears and anxieties–after all, our bodies have built in ways to handle dangers and assaults– but then we might remember to breathe, especially if we’ve practiced taking deep breaths in the midst of anxiety. And maybe in that moment we can remember that we’re not alone. There is One beside us who’s been through all those little deaths and the Big Death, who did not run away but went through them, so we wouldn’t have to be alone, so we wouldn’t think that God wasn’t right there with us. And then on the other side of death–whether big or little–we are still not alone. We may be different, our loved ones are not present in the way they were before, in those same bodies, but they–we–are still held, together, in God’s loving embrace. Just how that all is is a mystery. Words fail us here; it gets messy and ragged. We might even end the story with a preposition.

"So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid." Mark’s gospel may have ended there, but we know the story didn’t end there. They must have eventually told someone, because we’re hearing the story today! As Fred Craddock said, "When the women finally find their voices, what powerful witnesses! No glib and easy Easter words here. They had been to the cemetery." [Christian Century, 4/5/03] Their story passed the reality check of their own experience of encountering the risen Christ. Their story passed the reality check of the experience of generations of followers who have experienced the presence of the Risen Christ, who have experienced new and abundant life even after the most crushing of defeats and death.

The resurrection is not a conclusion but an invitation. Enter into the story. Don’t let your head become a dead end for possibility. Open up to new life. Be part of the blossoming of hope –and blossoms always start out as little things–seeds or bulbs or buds. So find one small act to begin the revolution–you might help us transform the cross into not just and ending but a beginning. Place, if you will, one of the flowers into the wire, and help us create a symbol of new life. Become part of the good news!

Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed!

Rev. Mary Lee-Clark

Read More

Easter Bloom

In Lent last year, 2014, a fire-pit bowl was brought into the sanctuary and filled with stones from a local stream. People of the congregation were invited to write their concerns, regrets, and "sins" on purple slips of paper and to slip them in between the rocks. On Easter the bowl was transformed with greenery and bright yellow forsythia. Later the purple slips were burned.

Read More

Maundy Thursday worship service

Maundy Thursday worship service of simple supper in remembrance of the Last Supper, with communion, music and readings:

Read More