My Dear Doubters of Great Faith,
I hope and pray that this finds you safe and well as we are upon the cusp of what is for all of us, what will most likely be, one of the most unusual Palm Sunday/Holy Week/Easter cycles that we may have ever experienced. We really seem to be living in unprecedented times, at least for our generation, times that call for unprecedented acts of courage, and strength, and valor, and bravery, and hope, and, well, faith. It seems that there are so many things that we cannot do, things we have been “denied” from our daily lives, thanks to COVID-19. And yet, having the courage and the strength to face those denials is actually what can and will save multitudes, thousands upon thousands, even millions, of lives. And so, we must deny ourselves so much of what we are used to. We simply must!
As Americans, our rugged individualism and rampant consumerism does not lend itself well to denial. We want what we want, when we want it. It is our “God given right!”
And yet, we are about to spend a week with Jesus, looking at self-denial, in a completely different and new way. Oh, we’ve done the Passion process many times before. But have we done it from our own place of self-isolation? Have we sat in our own Gardens of Gethsemane? Have we been denied by others? Have we waited and wondered if we’ve been abandoned? Have we looked for the light when it seemed there was no light? Where is the love, where is the peace, where is the mercy and grace to be found?
This would not have been my preference for my first Palm Sunday/Holy Week/Easter with my new congregation. However, I believe we have a unique, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to experience something that is going to be so different, and so powerful, and so transformational, an experience that has the potential to make what we do when we go back to the church building richer and more beautiful than we could ever ask or imagine.
We are going to spend the week searching for God in places that we may have long since forgotten that God exists, in the ordinary, mundane, routine, usual, rote aspects of life. We are going to look for God in the interior of our homes, and quite frankly, of ourselves. Hopefully, we will develop new tools for acknowledging and accessing God out in the world, drawing strength and courage and hope and faith from everything that exists around us, God’s great creation. Because, in reality, God is in ALL of those places, not just on Inwood Road and Mockingbird Lane.
To that end, your Rector and very talented and experienced clergy leadership team has worked diligently to come up with what we think is going to be a really out-of-the-box (or maybe out-of-the-building!) experience for this year’s Palm Sunday/Holy Week/Easter that has the potential to change all our lives, to bring new life and meaning to the ways that we seek and search for God. I hope and pray that you will take advantage of each and every one of these very intentional opportunities. They are planned for a reason, with a goal and an experience in mind. If you trust us to go on this journey, I do not think you will be disappointed!
Palm Sunday/Holy Week/Easter schedule of services will be conducted on the Zoom meeting platform. For the security and health of each of our computers, it will be necessary to authenticate your presence in the Zoom meeting room, and so I will need you to send me an e-mail christopher@thedoubter.org requesting the Zoom meeting link and password for Church. As with any computer platform, there are security risks, and so we must do what we can to mitigate those risks.
I sincerely hope that you will join in each and every one of these worship opportunities. Your presence, virtually, is what “re-members” the body of Christ. It is together that we constitute the body of Christ, each and every one of us.
We come together, virtually, to “en-courage,” to embolden each other in courage, and strength, and valor, and bravery, and hope, and faith to be able to do the hard work of self-denial, emulating as we can the hard work that Jesus did in his most salvific act on the Cross.
Self-denial seems a small price to pay…
Yours faithfully,
Fr. Christopher+
