prayer concerns and celebrations (Apr 29)

Please pray this week for the following concerns and celebrations brought before God on the fourth Sunday of Easter, April 29th:

CONCERNS: prayers of healing for Laura’s grandmother, cousin Kyle, and co-worker Brad, for Kathryn’s clients, for Sue’s mom, for Cliff, for Shayla in Seattle, and for Karen in the Tri-Cities; and prayers of safe travel for Jerry.

CELEBRATIONS: celebration that Sue & Janine have found a house all three of them are happy with.

Living Christ, you are risen from the dead!  Love reigns!  You are life stronger than death; raise our eyes to see you as the new day dawns.

Yakima Pride Festival 2007! (June 8-9, 2007)

The 2007 Yakima Pride Festival has its own myspace site. Here’s their blurb:

This site is dedicated to the 11th annual Yakima Pride Festival. The Festival will be held on Saturday, June 9, 2007 at Fulbright Park in Union Gap from 10AM to 4PM. Activities will include information from a wide variety of agencies, fun items for sale, free potluck/picnic, refreshments, great local entertainment, invited speakers, and fun games. Bring a blanket, sunscreen, etc., and join us for a wonderful and fun celebration of diversity in the Yakima Valley. Following the Festival, the Yakima Pride Dance & You Make the Difference Awards will be held from 9PM-1:30AM at the Yakima Sports Center Restaurant and Lounge. A Yakima Pride Festival Youth Dance on Friday, June 8th from 8PM-12AM is planned – location TBA. Check back often for updates.

See you there! (Check their website for updates/announcements.)

in God’s shoes… prayer concerns and celebrations (Apr 22)

Please pray this week for the following concerns and celebrations brought before God on the third Sunday of Easter, April 22nd:

Please continue to pray for those concerns and celebrations listed from last week.

Tonight during worship, instead of having us pass on our concerns and celebrations to her and to the congregation as a whole, Rev. Jane had us break up into pairs.  Each person would play both God and pray-er.  It was a way to help us get a stronger sense of Someone hearing our prayers, as well as a way to help us imagine what God must feel when hearing our prayers.

So, perhaps another way to pray this week is that all the prayers we offered to each other tonight be answered.  We could also pray that we continue to gain a stronger sense of God right there listening and a stronger sense of God’s true nature (i.e., Love) by imagining how we ourselves would respond to our own prayers (and others’).

Look graciously upon us, O Holy Spirit, and give us for our hallowing thoughts that pass into prayer, prayers that pass into love, and love that passes into life with you for ever.  (Book of Common Prayer, Collect for the Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost)

Happy Birthday to Orion!!!

Happy Birthday to Orion!!!

Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday, dear Orion, Happy Birthday to you! And many more!

With thanksgiving and love that you have been given to be a part of our heart and of our church family, we celebrate this day of your birth, beautiful child, delightful spirit. May you have a year full of joy and may your prodigious talents, like arrows, find their true mark through a long life in this world. (Daphne Rose Kingma)

prayer concerns and celebrations (Apr 15)

Please pray this week for the following concerns and celebrations brought before God on the second Sunday of Easter, April 15th:

CONCERNS: prayers of healing for Blaine’s grandmother, for Lou’s nephew, for Laura’s grandmother and cousin, and for Sparky’s foot; prayers of support for Terry and Kathy in the loss of Beagle; prayers of support for Terry for her carpal tunnel surgery this Friday; and for a silent prayer.

Christ, our paschal sacrifice, is the fresh fragrance of life for us. By his resurrection, he has made known to us the life that lasts forever. With faith and joy we cry out to him: Hear us, Lord of glory!

By your resurrection, show us the light of life.
    Hear us, Lord of glory!
By your resurrection, speak to us the word of life.
    Hear us, Lord of glory!
By your resurrection, nourish us with the bread of life.
    Hear us, Lord of glory!
By your resurrection, pour out on us the Spirit of life.
    Hear us, Lord of glory!
By your resurrection, prepare for us the crown of life.
    Hear us, Lord of glory!
By your resurrection, hear our prayers.
    Hear us, Lord of glory!

CELEBRATIONS: praises that Beagle is now running free; celebration of life itself; and thanksgiving for the beautiful day and for our Lord raising us up with him to new life.

This is the day, Lord God, that you have made!  Raising Christ from the dead, and raising us with Christ, you have fashioned for yourself a new people, washed in the flood of baptism, sealed with the gift of the Spirit, invited to the banquet of the Lamb! We praise you for our new and glorious lives and for these celebrations we’ve brought before you today.  Amen.  Alleluia!

here’s the link to listen to Rev. Jane’s radio interview

For those of us who missed hearing Rev. Jane’s radio interview live last Thursday, here’s the link to locate the archive download:

http://www.wgdr.org/cgi-bin/archive.pl/wgdr_archive

ENTER: date: April 5 …  time of interview: 5:00 PM to 6:00 PM

prayer concerns and celebrations (resurrection Sunday, Apr 8)

Please pray this week for the following concerns and celebrations brought before God on resurrection Sunday, April 8th:

CONCERNS: prayers of protection and well-being for Sparky (Lou’s dog), prayers of healing for Laura’s grandmother and cousin, and prayers of healing and hope that AIDS would soon be eradicated completely.

Lord Jesus, continue to lead, nourish, and protect the people (and all creatures) you have redeemed.  And complete the remaking of the human family which you began as the second Adam.   Amen.

CELEBRATIONS: praises for the fun and fellowship we enjoyed at our anniversary potluck on Saturday night, for the wonderful day Terry and Kathy enjoyed with Kathy’s family; thanks for Orion’s help with hiding eggs; and praises-beyond-praises that our Lord has been resurrected from the dead and that we are raised to new life, new peace, and new spiritual power with him.

Christ has risen!  His radiance enlightens all people.  Alleluia!

This is the day, Eternal God, that you have made! Raising Christ from the dead, and raising us with Christ, you have fashioned for yourself a new people, washing in the flood of baptism, sealed with the gift of the Spirit, invited to the banquet of the Lamb!  In the beauty of this Easter, set our minds on the new life to which you have called us; place on our lips the words of witness for which you have anointed us; and ready our hearts to celebrate the festival with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.  We ask this through Christ, our Passover and Peace, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God forever and ever.  Amen.

Alleluia! Christ has risen! The coffin is empty! (some pics of our Easter worship)

Orion celebrating Jesus’ resurrection. Allelulia!!

Rev. Jane and Orion

Rev. Jane and Orion outside church (with the empty coffin in view inside).

Jesus is alive!! He’s risen from the grave!!

Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach our your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.” Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God!” (John 20:26b-28)

Holy Saturday, the day of death, the day of the tomb

Hi, all. I was doing some internet surfing on the subject of this day (holy saturday) and came across this excellent article. In a way, it’s hard to contemplate our Lord being dead, really dead, cold and in a tomb. We tried to grasp that reality last Sunday, in our funeral for Jesus. But today is another day to stop at the tomb, to grieve, to wait — not to rush to the beauty and glory of Easter.

The earth is silent and waits.

Holy Saturday, the day of death
National Post
Saturday, April 07, 2007

A few weeks back, the story of the “Jesus tomb” dominated the news cycle. Michael Coren dismantled the claims in these pages, and after several days of near-universal debunking by archaeologists and historians of religion, the story died as the publicity stunt it was. James Cameron did not find Jesus’s tomb, but there once was such a tomb. Not for long, but for long enough.

Today is the day of that tomb. We call it Holy Saturday, and it is the day of stillness, the day of death. Good Friday is the day of dying, which means it is a day of living, for to die well is the crown of a life lived well. Tomorrow is the day of new life, the Easter joy of resurrection, of life on the other side of death. Today, though, is the day of death, the day of the tomb.

The Christian belief is that the tomb was necessary. The atonement offered by Jesus on the Cross was a real sacrifice, a real passion, a real death — and a dead man needs a real tomb. Yet this man, this Jesus of Nazareth, was not to be held by death, for He too was God, the author of life. In the custom of those days, three days was the sure sign that death had wrought its destruction. And so Jesus would spend His three days in the tomb, but only the minimum necessary: Friday evening, Saturday and Sunday dawn. He needed the tomb, but not for a moment more than necessary.

The Gospel of St. John tells us about Lazarus, a friend of Jesus, who died and had been in the tomb four days. Four days. Hopeless. The detail is important, for Jesus had raised others who were freshly dead, in a matter of hours. Perhaps they had not really died. But four days in the tomb is different. Martha makes the point in the earthy style typical of the Gospels: “But Lord, there will be a stench, for he has been dead four days.” And then Jesus raises him from the dead.

Lazarus comes out of the tomb, but another day he would need it again. Life on Earth is temporary, life in the tomb is permanent. The good news of the great reversal at the heart of the Christian faith is that Jesus came so that life would be permanent, and the tomb only temporary.

So temporary, in His case, that there was no time for a proper anointing, let alone a mausoleum with inscriptions. After the death of Jesus on the Cross, there is a hurry to lay Him in the tomb before the Sabbath begins. Today is that Sabbath, the day of rest marked by the rest in the tomb.

Christians can’t help looking to tomorrow, to Easter, eager for the activity of life over against rest in the tomb. The Church’s liturgy reflects that holy eagerness, as this very evening the great vigils announcing the joy of Easter are celebrated in the cathedrals and churches and chapels of the Christian world. Yet in the eagerness for Easter we should not forget to stop at the tomb.

The late Pope John Paul II once reflected on the reality and finality of the tomb, calling this a “vast planet of tombs.” The Earth is truly our home; we live upon it for a short while, and are laid in it forever. The tomb forms the definitive destination of each life, no matter how many stops there may be on the way. A human life is a longer or shorter journey toward the tomb, and therefore the God who became man needed a tomb. Without one, His life would have been less human.

So the search for the tomb of Jesus is not wrong, just very late. The holy women who went out that first Easter morning found the tomb, but not the living Christ, for one does not find the living among the dead. Since that time Christians have come to worship at the empty tomb just outside the ancient walls of Jerusalem, for that tomb marks the dawn of the day when the tomb itself became not a destination but a way station.

There was a Jesus tomb. But now it is empty, and that emptiness is the promise already given of the day when all the tombs shall be empty.

somehow, in God’s way of seeing things, crucifixion is power

The message of the cross is sheer folly to those on the way to destruction, but to us, who are on the way to salvation, it is the power of God…. God has made the wisdom of this world look foolish! As God in his wisdom ordained, the world failed to find him by its wisdom, and he chose by the folly of the gospel to save those who have faith.  Jews demand signs, Greeks look for wisdom, but we proclaim Christ nailed to the cross; and though this is an offence to Jews and folly to Gentiles, yet to those who are called, Jews and Greeks alike, he is the power of God and the wisdom of God.

The folly of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.  My friends, think what sort of people you are, whom God has called.  Few of you are wise by any human standard, few powerful or of noble birth.  Yet, to shame the wise, God has chosen what the world counts folly, and to shame what is strong, God has chosen what the world counts weakness.  He has chosen things without rank or standing in the world, mere nothings, to overthrow the existing order.  So no place is left for any human pride in the presence of God.  By God’s act you are in Christ Jesus; God has made him our wisdom, and in him we have our righteousness, our holiness, our liberation.  Therefore, in the words of scripture, ‘If anyone must boast, let him boast in the Lord.’

- 1 Corinthians 1:18-31 (Revised English Bible) 

Our funeral for Jesus: Our God, our God, why have you forsaken us?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We held a funeral for Jesus tonight, as our Palm Sunday service. And it was a moving experience, especially when Rev. Jane invited us to partake of the bread and wine, one by one, up at the coffin, as a way to “pay our respects” to Jesus and to sup with him for the last time.

It was a service like none of us have ever been to before. It was new to all of us, including Rev. Jane. But it was our effort to get in touch with just how much our relationship with Jesus means to us — by getting in touch with what it would be like to lose him, to mourn his death… to try to imagine life without him.

We borrowed a coffin from a local mortuary. We began the service by processing around the building, carrying the coffin and singing “When the Saints Come Marching In” (in New Orleans style). We sang hymns, read and reflected on Psalm 22. Rev. Jane gave the eulogy, and we prayed for ourselves and for all people mourning Jesus’ death. Some of us spoke of our fondest memories of Jesus, what he’s done for us, and how hard it will be to live life without him. We ended by commending Jesus’ spirit unto God.

During this service, we were in a suspended time, as it were. We were pre-resurrection friends and disciples of Jesus. We comforted ourselves that Jesus our Master himself had had faith that God would in the end come to Jesus’ and our rescue. We realized that we don’t know what that help might look like. So while we grieved, we also held on to a hope that God would do something to make it all come out right. Jesus had this hope, so we will try to, too.

Our days will be sterile and dark now, without Jesus. But we have faith that we are living as if inside Psalm 22, waiting between verses 21 and 22… waiting for God to act.