There is no other week in the Christian calendar that brings us from the highs of Palm Sunday to the darkness of Maundy Thursday to the depths of Good Friday and back to the pinnacle of Easter Sunday. It’s a bit of a roller coaster ride! And as a congregation, we embody and relive some of that raucous and then solemn and then joyful journey.

Palm Sunday was jubilant at Plymouth, including the most vigorous palm-frond waving I’ve ever seen! But it doesn’t really work in a narrative sense to skip right from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday. This isn’t a week without deep intimacy and tragedy, and to miss that is to diminish the capital-M Mystery of Easter. As is often said, we cannot have Easter’s resurrection without Good Friday’s crucifixion.

My son Chris’s favorite service of the year is the Maundy Thursday Tenebrae service, which demonstrates the shadowy nature of the Last Supper and crucifixion. Many young people “get” the drama of this service, and this year Brooklyn McBride will gather our youngest worshippers and supply them with glowsticks! Our hard-working deacons arrange a simple soup supper at 6:15 in advance of the 7:00 service. (So sorry that snow and frigid temperatures caused us to cancel the Ash Wednesday soup supper!) Join us for this service that will help all of us understand, in both a cerebral and an affective way, the final steps in Jesus’ ministry.

Good Friday is the day of tragedy for Christians. (Even the New York Stock Exchange stops trading for the day!) And we are providing a midday opportunity for you to join us at Plymouth at 12:15 for a program of organ music, spoken word, and quiet meditation. It is a service that helps us as worshipers to feel and acknowledge a small part of the depths of human tragedy.

Easter Sunday at Plymouth reflects the triumph of God’s YES to life, of God’s realm over empire, of love over violence. Our worship embodies this with glorious hymns and alleluias, brass and timpani, abundant flowers, and a celebration of the resurrection. Easter Sunday at Plymouth also means cinnamon rolls from the Silver Grill at 10:00 and an Easter Egg Hunt at the same time. (Did you know that blown Easter eggs reflect the empty tomb and that an Easter egg roll is emblematic of rolling the stone away from the tomb?) I would strongly recommend arriving early for either the 9:00 or 11:00 service. It’s also a great Sunday to invite a friend to church, someone who might need the gift of Plymouth in their lives.

For me, Easter has a special meaning this year. We all have lived through the shadows and depths of the pandemic, and it seems that as a world and as a congregation, we finally are experiencing resurrection. As Paul intimates, it is with a somewhat different body. The world is not exactly the same as it was three years ago, nor is Plymouth the same as it was before Covid. But we are here to testify to its resurrection.
 
Deep peace,

P.S We are “mask-friendly” at Plymouth, so you are welcome to wear a mask but are not required to do so.

P.P.S. You can find the livestreams (and recordings) of the midweek services on our Holy Week & Easter page.

Two years ago, we taped palm fronds on the ramp leading into Plymouth’s Fellowship Hall, because we couldn’t be together due to Covid. The pandemic foiled our plans for “loud hosannas” last year as well. But this year is different. After yelling “Hosanna!” (Save us!), our cries have been heard (by God and the CDC), and we get to worship in person this Sunday as we begin Holy Week.
 
Holy Week is strange because it leads from triumph to tragedy and then back to triumph. We know the cycle of Palm Sunday’s parade, the intimacy of the Last Supper, Good Friday and the cross, and celebration of resurrection Easter Sunday. But the followers of Jesus had no idea how it would all turn out. For us it may seem like seeing a favorite movie over again, even if we know the ending. (How differently did you see The Wizard of Oz as a kid and how do you see it now?) Maybe you will see, hear, or feel something different when you walk through Holy Week this year. Perhaps the Spirit is saying something new to you after two years of isolation! These Sundays are also great times to invite your friends to Plymouth.
 
We have opportunities for you to worship with us starting this Sunday.

• Palm Sunday worship at 9:00 & 11:00 a.m.
• Maundy Thursday Simple Soup Supper at 6:15, Tenebrae service at 7:00 p.m.
• Good Friday Musical Meditation & Reflection at 12:15 p.m.
• Easter Sunday Resurrection Services at 9:00 and 11:00 a.m. (cinnamon rolls and Easter Egg Hunt @ 10:00)

 
Also this Sunday, we are beginning an experiment in which we will Share the Plate, consciously and joyfully giving away half our undesignated Sunday offering to address a concern in our community or the world. Each month, we will support a new Share the Plate recipient.
 
Beginning this Sunday and extending until the end of the month, we will Share the Plate with the  UCC Ukraine Emergency Appeal , an effort that provides shelter, food, and other care to war refugees and internally displaced people. Find out more about this new giving avenue and how the UCC's fund is addressing the crisis in Ukraine at the Share the Plate page on our website. There you will find a link to a dedicated giving form.
 
We encourage you to join our effort by giving in the Sunday offering plate or electronically. If your check on Sunday is intended to help fulfill your pledge or other designated purpose, please note that in the memo (example “Pledge 2022” or “Flowers”). All non-designated Sunday offering donations will be shared 50% with the UCC Ukraine Relief Fund. When giving by text or online, select the “Share the Plate” fund (text keyword SHARE) to participate in this new venture.
 
Thank you for supporting Plymouth and for your generosity in extending our reach!
 
Blessings,

I resonate with the words of Rev. Sarah Are, the poet in our Lenten devotional materials this spring, who writes in her Palm Sunday poem (on page 37 of the devotional book):

I wonder if Jesus could feel his heartbeat
In his throat, the way I do when I’m afraid.…

I wonder, because time has taught us
That it is not uncommon
For a peaceful protest
To start or end
With an unjust death.…

I want to hold what matters most with both hands.

I resonate with these words and use them to invite you to hold Holy Week in both your hands this year and in your heart as we revisit again the story of Jesus’ passion, death and resurrection. Time has taught us in the past year that peaceful protests are deeply connected with unjust deaths. That they may start peacefully and end in violence. That while we must band together in abiding by safety protocols to create herd immunity to a virus, the measures to combat this pandemic do not soften the anger festering under the surface of our social structure. Instead, isolation and fear exacerbate the dis-eases of racism, mental illness, gun violence and distrust of our neighbors.

That is why I want to hold Holy Week in both hands to experience and, perhaps, understand more deeply than ever that the unconditional love of God is tangible in the life, death and new life of Jesus of Nazareth. I want to open my heart to this Love that is God who abides with us in the depths of our pain and the heights of our joy. I invite you, along with all the Plymouth staff, to join me in holding Holy Week with both your hands. Even though we must stay socially distanced, Love will join our hearts through the stories and the music of this week.

Here are the highlights:

• Maundy Thursday Service, prerecorded and released at 7 pm, Thursday, April 1st.
• Good Friday Organ Meditation, prerecorded and released at Noon, April 2nd
• Good Friday Ecumenical Service, prerecorded and released at 7 pm, April 2nd
• Children’s Easter Egg Hunt, 10-noon, Saturday, April 3rd, Plymouth Lawn, please email Tricia Medlock to participate
• Easter Sunday Services
  • 8:00 am “Sunrise” Drive-in Parking Lot Service with Cinnamon Roll Pick-up (please register here - by April 1 for cinnamon rolls)
  • 10:00 am prerecorded Easter Service with Brass Quintet, Virtual Choir and Communion
  • 6:00 pm live Zoom service with Communion

Hope to “see” you during this holy and fateful week!

Blessings on the journey,

PS!! The celebration of Easter does not end on Easter day. It continues into the 50 days of the Easter season. Join with your faith community for “Plymouth Reads” in preparation for our first Visiting Scholar day of 2021, May 16th, with Wes Granberg-Michaelson, author of Without Oars: Casting Off into a Life of Pilgrimage. Books available in the church office (call to make sure Barb or another staff person is there), $10, cash or check! More info on book group discussions coming in the Thursday Overview.

One of the most bewildering elements of prerecording the worship services is the nonlinear nature of the experience from our perspective. For example, we taped the interior portion of the Maundy Thursday service last Thursday. I will record the Prelude and Musical Meditation for that service today, four days later as I write. In addition, we have a weekly template of prerecording the following Sunday service on Wednesday and Thursday. As the music for the 6:00 p.m. Zoom service is now also prerecorded, that necessitates a weekly evening recording session to accommodate musicians’ schedules. Musical Offerings for the 10:00 a.m. service are typically recorded at night as well and sometimes weeks in advance to account for travel schedules and availability. This week, I am also recording the Good Friday Musical Meditation. Simultaneously, Anna Broskie is assembling the virtual choir anthem for the Easter morning Musical Offering, which is a time-consuming task. So, it is not unusual for me to tune in to Sunday worship and be completely surprised by the Prelude (“Oh, I remember playing that one!”)

Now, I do thrive in the abstract as part of my vocation, even unofficially living in my own time zone (approximately 15’ behind: HST— Heiskanen Standard Time!) And this writing is not meant to be a complaint either. One does what you must during these strange times to make it work—that’s it! But this dizzying experience does make you that much more long for the community and connection of in person worship.

I receive my first shot of Moderna on Thursday this week! Many of us in the Plymouth community and millions around the nation are fully vaccinated or soon will be. Isn’t that amazing?! While we all have our head down in being creative and undertaking the work at hand, it is nothing short of awesome to have an eye wide open to the return of physical connection in our church community. And without the assistance of those adept at technology (Anna, Dean Wallace, Stuart Yoshida, Jim Medlock, and others…thank you!!!), none of our online worship services would even be possible.

As a fan of Dr. Who and his/her time machine the TARDIS (Time and Relative Dimension in Space, don’t you know!), I can’t help but feel as if myself and the staff are bouncing around through time but just a week or two into the past or future. I would prefer to just walk at this point—and wait. Soon, that will be the new norm.

Mark Heiskanen
Dir. of Music

You may have wanted to fill those blanks in with a four-letter word other than “Week,” but resist the temptation! The last year has been filled with more “pivots” and “adaptive challenges” than any in our lifetimes.
 
Our very first livestreamed service was on March 15 (the Ides of March!), 2020, as we started to learn more about the spread of the novel coronavirus that would change so many lives, as well as changing our nation, community, and congregation.
 
And while it may seem slightly premature, I want to express my gratitude to each of you for being patient, keeping yourself and others safe, demonstrating flexibility, and going with the flow as much as you have! Please keep up the great work…we’re getting closer to the end of the pandemic day by day.
 
I just returned from a meeting in Santa Fe with two of my three UCC CREDO colleagues (and am self-quarantining), and even though ours is the largest of the four congregations, ours is the only one of those four UCC churches that has not lost a member to COVID. That has required sacrifice and selflessness and generosity of spirit…way to go, Plymouth!
 
Our Pandemic Team continues to monitor developments and is taking a deliberately slow pace in restarting our in-person activities. This month, our Middle School and High School Youth Groups are having their first gatherings with ten or fewer participants, masks, distancing, and open windows in the Fellowship Hall. If that goes well, we’ll extend that opening to other fellowship and spirituality groups within the congregation.
 
Holy Week is not far off — there are only two more Sundays in Lent! And we are busy planning for an online Maundy Thursday Tenebrae service, a noontime organ concert on Good Friday, and an online ecumenical Good Friday service at 7:00 p.m. Easter Sunday will feature three different services: a drive-in service in our parking lot at 8:00 a.m., a recorded service (with brass!) at 10:00, and an interactive Zoom service at 6:00 p.m. (And for the kids there will be an in-person Easter Egg Hunt on Saturday…sign up by March 28 at plymouthucc.org/kids.)
 
We’ve had to make adjustment this year…lots of them. Thank you for hanging in there and being part of the solution rather than part of the problem. I’m very grateful to you and proud of all of us at Plymouth. Blessings as we walk through these final days of Lent.
 
Peace,

We entered Holy Week this past Sunday with all its pageantry and music and story. Church tradition is ripe with ritual to celebrate the passion story of Jesus through this central week of our faith. I hope you will join us for our Plymouth traditions. (See the box below for a reminder of all our events for this week!)

We have many events for participation. Yet I think that each year we have a choice at Holy Week. We can through the liturgical motions vaguely remembering the stories. Or we have the choice to participate letting the tangible and intangible power of resurrection sink deeper into our bones as we go through the week. 

As in the story above, Hakon came to participate in reconciliation and peacemaking, yet he had not chosen those things in his heart as Magnus had. So he was not willingly to let the power of making peace take root deep down. Will you choose God’s power of resurrection this year despite the evidence in our world that conspires against it? External political and social circumstances in our world may rarely give us direct and factual cause to hope for resurrection. Will we choose fear or will we choose compassion and life? The usual stresses of daily life, family concerns and friends who are in need are never ending. Will we choose peace or further engagement in the surface turmoil? 

The traditional lectionary scripture texts for Easter Sunday urge us toward hope in the midst of tragedy and despair. In the face of our “realities” we can choose to trust and affirm that God is “about to create new heavens and a new earth” (Isaiah 65:17).  Choose to trust and affirm that “the stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone” (Psalm 118:22). We can choose with Paul to affirm the testimony of good news handed to him by the first disciples, testimony that he has handed on to us in I Corinthians 15. Christ died, was buried and was raised on the third day, appearing first to his closest disciples, then five hundred other followers and lastly to Paul on the road to Damascus.  

Ironically the Gospel of Luke tells us that the first twelve disciples did not believe when the women who experienced the empty tomb returned and proclaimed the good news. The men thought it was “idle tales,” make-believe. Crazy emotional women! But then Peter, who just thirty-six hours before Easter morning, denied that he even knew Jesus, decided in his inimitable style to choose ACTION in response to the news. In spite of his disbelief and despair he chooses to run to the tomb to see for himself. Will we respond like those first disciples and not take the news of resurrection to heart? Or will we allow the power of God to cultivate our lives and like the sparse, rocky, lifeless soil of the Orkneys become rich, fertile soil full of prayers and promise for Paradise?

This year I challenge us all to take Peter’s choice to heart, to act on the news of resurrection. To go and see for ourselves. To let the deep roots of God’s salvation sink deep within our souls. May we choose to trust the biggest story of our faith. It is not a choice to take lightly. And it is not the safest choice. But it is the resurrection choice. And just as that ancient man, Magnus, following the example of Jesus, chose life in the face of betrayal, God will also work through us and our choice. 

May your Holy Week be blessed as you walk the road into Jerusalem, find the upper room and then the garden, follow to the cross and finally to the joy of the empty tomb. We walk together with God’s presence step by step!
 
Jane Anne