A blessed Good Friday to each of you! As we travel together through this most unusual Holy Week, we pray that the familiar rhythms of reflection on Jesus’ last days are guiding your experience this week. We hope you have found our Daily Dose reflections and the Holy Week Tenebrae devotional guide to accompany you this week. And don’t forget, if you just need a bit of encouragement and lots of familiar, friendly faces, you can join a crew of us who gather each night for evening prayer at 8:00pm through Zoom (contact Amy Cook at acook@firstonfifth.org for link).
In addition to these resources, we give thanks for the ways that our church family will mark Easter this year. Read on for two special ways to do just that.
Easter All Church Gather ‘Round
In the absence of our capacity to be physically together on Easter, ALL are invited to an All-Church Gather ‘Round from 8:45-9:15am on Easter Sunday! We’ll gather that morning through Zoom, simply to see and hear one another, sharing Easter joy, love, and solidarity as a beloved community on this holy morning. Come just as you are (whether that means in PJs or Easter bonnet!), and bring just what you’d like (a steaming mug of coffee, a hot muffin right out of the oven). It might be a glorious cacophony of community, but we will rejoice resolutely — and do so together! Use the link in your Friday Easter Worship – Connecting Beyond the Walls EBlast to join the fun or contact Amy Cook at acook@firstonfifth.org to get the link information
New to Zoom? Click here to read Instructions on Joining a Meeting through Zoom.
Easter Worship
As we have experienced over the past few weeks, you can find our Easter worship service in two places this Sunday:
On our Facebook Page here at 10:30am, allowing you to comment and invite others to watch with you, as we worship together online
On our YouTube Channel here earlier on Sunday morning, allowing closed-captions for those who’d like them and greater flexibility about when you worship.
Resources for this Sunday: A Worship Guide that you can use to follow along in worship on Sunday, filled with images, prayers, songs, scriptures, and words from our staff and members, as well as coloring sheets and the Children’s Worship Bulletin for kids of all ages.
In the midst of World War Two and all its suffering, rationing, disruption, fear, loss, and death, the late great American preacher Harry Emerson Fosdick stepped into the pulpit of the Riverside Church and said, “it’s a great year for Easter!”
And in the midst of a global pandemic and all its suffering, distancing, disruption, fear, loss, and death, we join our voices with Christians around the world in proclaiming resolutely, “it’s a great year for Easter!”
May God’s hope pierce the fearing.
May God’s peace comfort the anxious.
May God’s joy gladden the despairing.
May God’s love enliven the suffering.
For “while it was still dark,” life stirred and a new world was birthed into being!
Together in God’s work of Love,
The Pastoral Staff