This Lent (February 14-March 30), our worship and Church School curriculum follows A Sanctified Art’s Wandering Heart series, reflecting on the sometimes mercurial discipleship of Peter and the words of a favorite hymn, “Come, O Fount of Every Blessing.”
As we begin Holy Week with Palm Sunday, we prepare for the often heart-wrenching way that we will confront our own role in Jesus’ arrest, torture, and death. It’s heavy, there’s no way around that. I also think that it is one of the regrettably few times we explicitly encounter Christ in such a visceral way, drawing such clear parallels to our own experience in our own time. In a similar vein, Pope Francis remarked in 2019 that when “‘situations of injustice and human pain’ seem to be growing around the globe, Christians are called to ‘accompany the victims, to see in their faces the face of our crucified Lord.'”
Last weekend, several of our community members answered that call by participating in CityReach, a ministry of common cathedral that brings youth together for an overnight intensive where they learn from, and offer direct service to, the unhoused community in Boston. One of our youth participants writes of her CityReach overnight, “I didn’t know what to expect from the experience but I was surprised by how much community, love, and kindness I saw. It was eye opening to be able to not just see but understand that there is so much more that people have in common that bring us together rather than pull us apart.”
Stella, Daniela, Lani, Janet, Amalia, and two CityReach staff ready to learn and serve!
Rev. Carrington Moore leading CityReach orientation and prayer
Beloved, this is how encountering Christ transforms us. Even when what we witness or learn breaks our hearts, it breaks them open. That’s how God’s love works.
This Sunday, we’ll hear of another encounter with Christ, a whirlwind of praise and hope and confusion, that simultaneously brought us closer to understanding Jesus’ mission on earth even as it brought him a step closer to his eventual torture and death. We will have the privilege of welcoming as guest preacher the Executive Minister of the UCC’s Southern New England Conference, Rev. Darrell Goodwin. Darrell will be sharing with us a message inspired by Howard Thurman’s concept of the “Sound of the Genuine,” and how recognizing this sound within ourselves calls us back to one another in beloved community.
Join us for worship at 11am in our Sanctuary and on YouTube to learn, sing, pray, and remember together!
In faith,
Amy
Holy Week Schedule
Image credit: “Then They Remembered” by Lisle Gwynn Garrity. Inspired by John 12:12-16. © a sanctified art | sanctifiedart.org
