Dear Friends,
Lent seems to be speeding by this year, and we are just a week and a half from Holy Week! The following schedule of worship and events offers many opportunities for us to mark the moments of Jesus’s last week with his disciples to his Easter morning resurrection and enjoy special learning and fellowship.
Thursdays, March 15 (this evening!) and 22, 6 PM ~ Lenten Evening Program
A simple soup supper is followed by an information series on the Global Christian Church. We end with Compline. Bring a pot of soup, some bread, a salad, or other simple offering – and invite a friend! Miss Debbie will be on hand to tend the children.
Saturday, March 24, 9-11 AM ~ Making Palm Crosses
Helen Hall will coordinate fashioning palm fronds into the small crosses we receive each year on Palm Sunday. You’re invited to participate! This year, our children will provide the crosses also for our AA guests.
Sunday, March 25, 10 AM ~ The Sunday of the Passion: Palm Sunday
We begin this service outside at the 14th Street entrance, processing in with shouts of
“Hosanna!” as did the people welcoming Jesus into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey. This year, our children will have special participation in the procession. (They will have a practice following this Sunday’s worship.) We will hear the Passion story.
Monday through Friday, March 26 – 30 ~ Noon worship sponsored by the Ashland Area Ministerial Association
Our local churches will supply preaching and the liturgy (as well as lunch!) at First United
Methodist Church (the “Chocolate Church”) this year. I will be preaching on Monday, and Calvary will supply lunch.
Thursday, March 29, 7 PM ~ Maundy Thursday
We remember Jesus’s last night with his beloved disciples at this service, which includes foot washing and a stripping of the sanctuary. Worship is followed by an all-night Vigil at the Altar of Repose; Liz Alexander once again will transform our chapel into a “garden” where Calvary members may “stay awake for one hour” throughout the night with Jesus in meditation, reading, or prayer. (A signup sheet is posted on the whiteboard in the parish hall.) Child care will be provided.
Friday, March 30, 7 PM ~ Good Friday
We mourn Jesus’s death at this poignant service. Child care will be provided.
Saturday, March 31, 8 PM ~ The Great Vigil of Easter
As we move from the garth to the parish hall to the nave, we move also from darkness to
light and from Creation to the Resurrection in this celebration of the first Eucharist of Easter. Child care will be provided.
Sunday, April 1, 10 AM ~ Easter Sunday
Our joyous celebration: Christ is Risen!
Holy Week provides an unmatched, nearly real-time engagement with the life and death of Jesus – our great story told in beautiful liturgies and with soul-stirring music of grief and joy. Don’t miss a moment of it!
Wishing you every blessing,
Mtr. TJ