This Sunday, April 4th, is Easter Sunday! We will be wrapping up our Tough Love series with an exploration of how Tough Love Tells the Story. Which is a message at the heart of Easter, at least in the way we tend to understand it.
After Jesus’ death, his friends and followers were disoriented and grieving, and trying to make sense of it all. Who he was, what had his life and death meant, and what would come next. They were in shock, and they had to decide how to move forward – and how, or if, they would talk about it. How or if they would tell the story.
As we try to imagine what’s next in our lives today, we, too, are faced with the question of how or if we will tell the story of what has happened in this year. Or if we will instead try to just quickly move on as humans so often do in these threshold moments. We are compelled through societal pressures, deep-rooted cultural norms, shame, fear of judgment, and more to suppress rather than digest and share our most difficult stories. And yet it is in the telling of our stories in their whole truths, especially as a collective experience, that we can find transformation, or you might say, resurrection.
Join us this Sunday at 9 or 11 am as we creatively explore the transformative power of telling the story as a whole community. We encourage you to invite a friend or family member to join you for virtual service this Sunday – especially if they are looking for new ways to understand the stories of Easter and the stories of our lives today. Especially if they are seeking companions to journey with them in this search. As we say on Sundays, we need each other to make sense of anything in this life – and it is the true gift of these times that we can welcome guests from anywhere around the world.
With love and in partnership,
Rev. Gretchen