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Christ is risen, he is risen indeed, Hallelujah! “We are a resurrection people and Hallelujah is our song”.  (Easter Day. Matthew 28:1-10.) One of the things we do come Easter, after a long and sober Lent, is we break out the hymns with Hallelujah in them! Hallelujah comes from the Hebrew and means God be praised! It is an expression of adoration and worship, of joyful celebration. It is sometimes a chorus of great and glorious certainty and sometimes, as Leonard Cohen remin

Every year we end up here, at the foot of the cross with all our sorrow, remorse, reluctance – all the myriad human responses to the death of Jesus, the one who was like us but more than. (Good Friday. John 18:1-19:42.)  Why, we ask ourselves, death, and death on a cross? What does death on a cross mean – for the world, then and now, and for us? How does such a death make things different or better amongst such a litany of sufferings going back in time, and we fear, forward i

By tradition Maundy Thursday is the beginning of the Three Great Days of Easter. And yet we begin in quiet and darkness, with humble rituals, and intimate actions that recall the last loving actions and teachings of Jesus with his disciples before the events of history took hold. This week, all around the world, many of the faithful of the Christian tradition, are hastening to make space and time for this ancient ritual mystery of suffering love and the victory of life. For m

Palm Sunday is the beginning of Holy Week and the time we hear of our Lord’s passion for us and remember the last week of his human life: the culmination of his life of self-emptying love and obedience. We enter into Jerusalem with our Lord and progress toward the last meal, the garden, the cross and the tomb. (Palm Sunday. Matthew 21:1-11 and 26:14-46; Isaiah 50:4-9a; Psalm 31:9-18; Philippians 2:5-11) Sentence: “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, tho

What a wonderful foretaste of the life that emerges in the midst of death – the hope that is stronger than fear and despair. (Lent Five. John 11:1-45;  Ezekiel 37:1-14; Psalm 130; and Romans 8:6-11.) But these readings do not deny the depths of grief and loss that we endure. Rather resurrection emerges in the very midst of suffering. Sentence: “The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, ‘Unbind him

This week we are invited to explore how God sees us; how well or blindly we see; and how this process of being seen, of being exposed to the light, can transform us. (Lent Four. John 9:1-41; 1 Samuel 16:1-13; Psalm 23; and Ephesians 5:8-14.) Sentence: “ … for once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light. Walk as children of light for the fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true.” Ephesians 5:8-9   Collect: Gracious God, Long ago your Son