Life Goes On

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.