2024
A Letter from Pastor Andy: April 3, 2024
Dear U Park Family,
I want to thank all of you who shared such encouraging words during Holy Week and Easter Sunday. The services went well, and a number of people let me know that our worship in this most important week of the Christian year was very meaningful. (You were also very kind in checking in with me to ask whether I was tired. I was, but it was a good tired.)
This coming Sunday, we’ll start a new sermon series called “What Now?” After Easter, after the unexpected and unexplainable resurrection, what do we do? How do we live? The early church had to answer that question, and many of their answers are recorded in the Gospels and the Book of Acts. We’ll look at a variety of responses those first followers of Jesus had, and what they can tell us about our own faith and life today. I hope you’ll join us for worship in Wasser Chapel at 9:00, in the Sanctuary at 11:00, or if you can’t be there in person, that you’ll catch our video worship on Facebook at 11:00 or YouTube later Sunday afternoon.
As we’ll see, one thing the early Apostles did was serve people in need. We have two opportunities coming up to do just that. For the next two Sundays, we’re all invited to contribute shoes we no longer need to a shoe drive. The shoes not only end up on the feet of people who need them, they also stay out of landfills and help employ people here and abroad to process and distribute them. Bring shoes this Sunday and next Sunday; we’ll collect them and make sure they get distributed.
On Thursday April 11, Jim Van Someren of Metro Caring will be at our monthly United Women in Faith meeting. Metro Caring is one of Denver’s premier hunger relief organizations, and Jim will be talking about their innovative approach to ending hunger at its root. Everyone is invited to the meeting on Thursday, April 11 at 10:00 A.M. in the church library.
Earlier this year, our church council approved a process of strategic planning, and that process is moving forward. In the next month or so, all of us will have the opportunity to weigh in on our goals. We’ll send out a congregational survey, both electronically and in hard copy, to ask for your thoughts. Once we’ve settled on goals, we’ll lay out a set of milestones and steps to get us there, and we’ll inform the congregation at every step of the process so that you can offer us your feedback. I’m very grateful to be working with such wise and experienced leadership, and I look forward to what you have to say.
I hope that your Holy Week and Easter were rewarding and fruitful, and that you are enjoying the signs of resurrection all around us!
Grace and Peace,
Andy
March 2, 2022
Dear U Park Family,
Blessed Ash Wednesday to you. I hope it’s been reflective and rewarding. We have services at the church today at noon and 6:00 P.M., and I hope you can join us for one of them.
I’ve talked with several Pastor friends of mine, and we are unanimous about one thing: traditional Ash Wednesday and Lenten themes don’t resonate very well this year.
Traditionally, Ash Wednesday is a time to reflect on the transience of life and to think about how we can appropriately use the time we have. It’s the beginning of Lent, and the Ash Wednesday liturgy usually includes what’s called the “invitation to the observance of Lenten Discipline.” Traditionally, when we make the sign of the cross in ashes on the hands or foreheads of worshipers, we say, “you are dust and to dust you shall return.” It’s meant to be a solemn reminder of our mortality, as the beginning to a season of reflection and repentance.
But discussing it this year, my friends and I all agree that we’ve had more than enough reminders of mortality over the past couple of years. Thank God, vaccinations continue to increase and the pandemic mortality continues to decline. But the pandemic is far from the only thing reminding us of our mortality lately. Climate change (complete with the recent, bleak IPCC report), escalating rates of violence in our nation, Russia’s sudden and disturbing attack on Ukraine: it seems like everywhere we turn we’re being told that we’re dust and to dust we shall return.
For that reason, I’ll be approaching Lent differently this year. What if the Gospel stories are not just stories about Jesus, but stories about us? What if the resurrection story isn’t just about Jesus’s miraculous triumph over death, but a template for us? In our Lenten reflections this year, I’ll be focusing on what we’re called to leave behind in order to be resurrected – to be formed into the joyful and thriving people we’re called to be. This Sunday in worship, I’ll focus on the story of Jesus’s temptation in the desert, found in the Gospel of Luke. I’ll be asking the question of what the story asks us to leave behind. I hope you’ll join us at 10:00 A.M. in the Sanctuary, or later that afternoon from home by watching on our YouTube Channel.
Speaking of things we’re leaving behind, this coming Sunday we’ll move from “masks required” to “masks encouraged” status. As always, I’m very grateful to our congregation’s medical professionals who have advised the staff throughout the pandemic. We’re all agreed that this is the right move. Of course, there are a number of people in the congregation who need or wish to remain masked, and we completely support that need and encourage you to do so. Others may decide to go unmasked. What’s most important, it seems to me, is that we continue to respect one another and support one another’s needs just as we have done throughout the pandemic.
On the 20th and 27th of this month I will be in Guatemala with our church’s mission team, serving a medical clinic operated by the nonprofit agency Salud y Paz (“health and peace”). Those two Sundays, we’ll have guest preachers – I’ll keep you posted here about who they will be.
May your Ash Wednesday and Lent strengthen and ground you in these unsettling times, as we begin this season of reflection.
Grace and Peace, Andy