Hello everyone,
No doubt Holy Week and Easter will involve a variety of activities for the variety of people we have at St Andrew’s. School holidays are the reality for some – both parents and their children and grandparents as holiday minders – all the best with that.
Some of the rest of you will be heading away to take advantage of the break. As someone pointed out yesterday – two weeks of only three business days are headed our way.
For those of you around, St Andrew’s is offering a slightly fuller package this year. Thursday night’s Maundy Thursday service is quiet, reflective, including communion and hand washing to emulate something of the atmosphere of the Last Supper which Jesus had with his disciples.
Good Friday is a reflective service based on the fourteen Stations of the Cross. You can come and quietly remain in your seats or move around the fourteen stations – just as you like.
This year we will be offering an hour’s quiet on Easter Saturday – the church will open at 10am and the hour of quiet will begin at 10.30am, mostly silence, punctuated on the quarter hour with music or words. This will draw to a close at 11.30am and we will aim to finish completely by 12 noon. This mirrors the utter silence and shock of the original Saturday – ‘With Jesus dead, what could possibly matter anymore?’, the disciples must have wondered.
Easter Sunday is a lot of noise (joyful noise) in comparison. Just today someone was saying to me that the most important thing was the transformation of people through love. As we celebrate the new life that sprang out of the apparent dead end of Jesus’ death, that transformation is evident. For some of us tit takes longer than three days – sometimes years or decades, but if we allow it to happen within us, it will come.
If it doesn’t work out for you that you can join this community this Easter, devise some small moments during the four days when you can be still and remember what day it is, what that day represents and where it finds you on the journey. Remember the camaraderie of Thursday, the deadly hush of Friday, the silence of Saturday and the joy of Easter Sunday. Even five minutes will do it, more if you can would be great.
To begin this special week, this Sunday, Palm Sunday, we celebrate Jesus’ courage in entering Jerusalem at all that year so long ago. We will reflect on our response to that in the light of the transformation Jesus’ words have wrought in others’ lives.
And this Sunday we will join in a community brunch seeing it is the second Sunday in an evenly numbered month! Look forward to seeing you then!
Susan
To view the full e-news click on this link:http://mailchi.mp/cf498ad04137/this-weeks-newsletter-from-st-andrews-on-the-terrace-1471357
