2024
A Letter from Pastor Andy: March 28, 2024
Dear U Park Family,
I hope that your Lent has given you opportunities for introspection and time with God. This past Sunday was Palm Sunday, which begins Holy Week. I want to thank JoAnn Gudvangen-Brown, Renae Gudvangen, and our choir for the beautiful Cantata they presented in worship. Many thanks also to Caroline Gilbert and Kathy Hulse, who narrated the cantata. Listening to the music and narration, I was reminded once again of how much a strong music program enriches our worship.
This week, we’ll be walking through the classical Easter “triduum,” the three nights of worship that retell the story of Jesus’s last night with his disciples, his arrest, crucifixion, death, and resurrection. On Thursday evening, we remember the story of Jesus calling his followers to serve one another by kneeling before them and washing their feet. On Good Friday, we’ll reflect on his arrest in the garden of Gethsemane, his trial, and his death. Holy Saturday is traditionally considered the first service of resurrection, starting at sundown around a fire in our courtyard, then moving into Wasser Chapel to mark the moment of his resurrection and what it means for us.
Throughout these three days, we’ll also have a prayer labyrinth available in East Fellowship Hall downstairs. I’m very grateful to Les and Hope Law for setting up and hosting this quiet, contemplative method of prayer for anyone who would like to try it. The labyrinth is a way of praying involving slowly and silently walking a twisting path to a center circle and back. It’s a metaphor for our spiritual life: the twists and turns we take, the way we get close to God and the center of creation, then find ourselves further away, finally coming back to where we started but seeing it differently. (As T.S. Eliot writes, we “arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”) If you’d like to try this ancient method of embodied prayer, the church will be open from 9:00 to 7:00 today through Easter morning.
On Easter morning, we’ll start with a Sunrise service at 7:00 in Wasser chapel. Then our 9:00 and 11:00 services will be in the Sanctuary, featuring our choir and a brass quartet. I hope you can be here in person, but for those who can’t be, a worship video will premiere on our YouTube channel at 9:00 on Sunday morning. For those who do plan to be at church, our adult Sunday School classes are cancelled and we won’t be serving our usual coffee and food since we’ll have a large group of people coming and going between services. Kevin Flomberg-Rollins, our church administrator, will be sending out parking passes for those of us who can make room in our lot by parking at DU.
If you have young children or grandchildren, or know a family with young children, you’re invited to bring them to our Easter Egg hunt on Saturday starting at 11:00. Bethany Hader Crabbs, our Director of Children’s and Care Ministry, has organized a time of games and music on the front lawn of the church, followed by the Easter Egg hunt at 11:30. We have 1300 plastic eggs stuffed with candy, and more keep coming in by the day. It’s a fun event, and over the past few years we’ve had quite a few people from the neighborhood show up – so this is a great way to introduce them to our church.
Finally, I want to thank all the people who came out for our church cleanup day last Saturday. We had a three-page list of jobs ready to be done, and I anticipated the whole thing taking about four hours. Not only did the group finish the list in just over two hours, they even did jobs that weren’t on the list! The church is ready to receive visitors, and I’m grateful for all the people who helped.
May your Holy Week be meaningful and nurturing – I’ll see you at church!
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