The week after Easter I took
some time to rest a bit from Holy Week. I invited the staff to do the same
because people who work on church staffs are bad not to take a Sabbath rest. We
all need encouragement to be good stewards of our health. Karen is my encouragement.
The effort to pull all the services together, Palm/Passion Sunday to Good
Friday to Easter morning, is a huge job involving multiple musicians,
volunteers, and staff. I want to thank all the staff and all the volunteers for
their creativity and commitment. We offered shofars and palms to start the week
of worship, Tzaise and
Communion on Holy Thursday, Gregorian chants on Good Friday and a splendidly
musical, liturgical, consolidated service on Easter morning.
Karen
will attest that the way I rest from church work is by physical labor. I had a
few days, a window of opportunity, to take care of the deferred maintenance to
our house and yard—a lot of rest to get done. Thankfully, I still had to preach
on the second Sunday of Easter so there was sermon preparation to do and calls
and emails to handle. There were periods when I had to sit and think but mostly
I rested by hauling multiple loads of soil, plants, compost, lumber, and other
building material. I did some plumbing
and repairing of doors and windows, mowed the grass, and made far too many runs
to Home Depot and Lowes. It was an exhaustingly restful week.
So here
I sit in the early morning of the second Sunday of Easter ready to preach from
the story of Thomas in the Gospel of John.
I will baptize a baby girl at the eleven o’clock service, attend a
Trustees meeting after church, go to a study on the Kingdom of God at 5:30 and
then a Council meeting at 7 PM. There will be calls to make this afternoon
because I missed them while I was out catching up on my rest. And while I was
resting, there were at least two deaths of members’ loved ones in distant
places; others received bad lab reports and diagnoses of serious illness; and a
new baby entered the world. Life goes on.
And that
is in part what Jesus said to Thomas. “You believe because you see the wounds
on my body; you know the sound of my voice, the blessing from my heart. But
there will be many who believe simply because they believe, many who work
because work is there to do, many who know the sound of my voice and no other,
and many who follow my lead to love others and to love themselves.
And the
people who do those things in worship and praise of the Risen Christ are called
Easter people.
Blessings.
