2024
A Letter from Pastor Andy: March 20, 2024
Dear U Park Family,
Each Sunday throughout Lent, I’ve preached on a spiritual practice like worship, prayer, or fasting that can help us grow closer to God. This coming Sunday will be the final week of the Lenten season, and we’ll have two different themes in our worship services. At 9:00, I’ll talk about the spiritual practice of silence, which the 16th century mystic John of the Cross called “God’s first language.” (I recognize that talking about silence is maybe not the best way to approach the subject, so it will be a fairly short sermon.) Then at 11:00, instead of a sermon we’ll hear a Cantata presented by our Choir. As you know, we have a strong music program at U Park, and our two annual Cantatas are highlights of the year for me. I hope that you can attend worship in person, but if you can’t make it to the church on Sunday, you’ll be able to hear the Cantata live on our Facebook page and later in the day on our church’s YouTube channel.
Next week is Holy Week, and we have a series of worship offerings and opportunities for prayer. Starting on Thursday, we’ll celebrate the classical “triduum” of Holy Week worship, with services Thursday, Friday, and Saturday evenings. All will begin at 7:00, and all will be in Wasser Chapel. This sequence of worship is the pinnacle of the Christian year, and attending all three services is a way of entering the story of Jesus’s arrest, trial, and crucifixion that has been part of our faith almost since the beginning. On Sunday morning, our Easter celebration will begin at 7:00 A.M. with a sunrise service in Wasser Chapel. Then at 9:00 and 11:00, we’ll host Easter worship filled with music and celebration. A special video for Easter morning will be released on YouTube at 9:00 and will be available from then on.
On Holy Saturday, March 30th, we’ll host an Easter Egg hunt. We can still use donations of plastic eggs and candy to fill them, as well as people to help stuff the eggs. Each of the past two years, we’ve given out more than 1000 eggs filled with candy and toys to the children of our church and neighborhood, so this is an important community event. Please contact Bethany Hader Crabbs at the church for more information.
If you want to help the church prepare for all these festivities, come by this Saturday morning, March 23, starting at 9:00. We’ll be cleaning and sprucing up the church to prepare for Holy Week and all the visitors we’ll host on Easter. We’ll start by cleaning the lobby, the entryways, and Wasser Chapel. Then we’ll move into the Sanctuary to make sure that the place is ready to receive new people. Drop by for any amount of time from 30 minutes to three hours to help us be ready to offer our best hospitality!
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