Read the full issue of this week’s newsletter here: Weekly Liberal April 4

In this week’s Liberal, Rev. Justin writes:

Every year, the staff Worship Team at First Universalist wonders: What do we do with Holy Week (the week leading up to Easter)? And what do we do with Easter itself? Though many Unitarian Universalists don’t usually identify as Christian, these are our roots, and the archetypal story of hope, death, and new life, is powerful and transformative. Don’t get me wrong, we always celebrate Easter, and the rebirth of hope; we lift up the idea that “resurrection” can happen in this lifetime; we point to the distinct possibility that one might die as an individual and rise again (live on) as, and through, a community.

As the staff Worship Team talked through the arc of the Easter story, we reflected that too often we try to fit that cycle of hope, loss, and new hope into a 20 minute sermon on Easter!

This year we’re taking a different approach. We invite you to walk with us on an Easter journey. Our intention is to hold three services that create an arc, a movement from hope to grief and despair, to new hope. On Sunday, April 14 (Palm Sunday, Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem), we’ll hold the idea of promise, the hope that something better is about to emerge. On Friday, April 19, in a 7 p.m. Good Friday service, we will sit with the losses that have shaped us, the deaths, big and small, that are just a part of who and what we are. In our Easter service on Sunday, April 21, we will celebrate the reality that new life is possible, that resurrection is a practice, and hope abides even now. We’re inviting you to attend all three of these services. Easter isn’t a stand alone experience. It is only in the larger context that each component of this spiritual journey makes sense.

Join us this year, as we ground these three services in our Unitarian Universalist identity, and let your spirit move through this ancient and archetypal story. Let the resurrection/new life message of Easter live in a new way in you!

With love and care,
Rev. Justin