Many important things happen before most people are awake, and we take them for granted because we weren’t there for the work, only the benefit. The highway crew patched the pothole overnight and you drove over it. The bread at the bakery was shaped and risen and pulled from the oven while you were still in bed so when you arrive it’s just sitting there looking inevitable.
While it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb. She came because grief knows no timetable. When she arrives, the one she was looking for had already left the tomb. While it is still dark, God is moving in the direction of morning, and we cannot always see it yet. April is that kind of month.
On Maundy Thursday evening, April 2 at 7:00, we gather for a Service of Shadows, or Tenebrae. The ancient church called the three days between Maundy Thursday and Easter the Triduum. I came to it relatively late in my ministry. A circle of colleagues, Lutheran and Methodist and Episcopal and Presbyterian, invited me into a shared Holy Week observance. Keeping vigil with Jesus through the Upper Room, his betrayal, his crucifixion, his absence, and then gathering once more late on Saturday night.
At the Easter Vigil, in almost complete darkness, a small reading light between us, we read what felt like the entire Old Testament. Creation and covenant. Sin and sacrifice. Priests and prophets. There was no sermon, just the Scriptures and Holy Spirit, until the Paschal candle was lighted again in the dark. That single light passed around to the hand-held candles in the sanctuary, the way we have only known at Christmas Eve. Resurrection came alive to me when I walked the entire road with him.
For those of us who have been walking that road together since Ash Wednesday, through the wilderness and the woman at the well and the sealed grief outside Lazarus’s tomb, the Service of Shadows holds Thursday’s place. We will not leave with resolution. Come if you have never come. Bring someone who needs a service that does not rush.
Easter morning, April 5 at 10:30, we gather for Resurrection Joy. The angel’s first word to the women at the tomb was a commission. “Go quickly and tell his disciples that he has risen from the dead” (Matt 28:7). They ran, Matthew says, with fear and great joy at the same time, and on the road Jesus met them. Bring someone. The people in your life who are somewhere in the middle of the story, maybe still at the well or still standing outside the tomb, may be readier than you think.
Inside this newsletter you will find devotional reflections for Holy Week, written in partnership with Amber and Naomi Miller. They are wise and thoughtful disciples, and it is a privilege to share this ministry with them. Every time we make room for emerging voices, we lean into the future God is preparing.
The deacons and I have been talking this month about how we carry the good news outward together. The women running from the tomb had good news they could not hold. They told it to the first people they met. I have been introduced to a training program called Conversations, offered through Gideons International and made possible by Yates Gideons Tom Amoreno and Michael Jessup. The name is the whole idea, how to begin a real exchange about hope with neighbors, colleagues, and the people already in your ordinary life. Details are coming for anyone interested.
On April 18, we return to the American Tobacco Trail for our monthly cleanup, this year falling right around Earth Day. Creation care belongs to the same Easter story we have been telling all Lent. The resurrection reaches all the way to the ground beneath our feet. Come for fresh air and good company, and for the conversations that tend to happen when curious trail walkers ask why we keep showing up to clean up after everyone else.
On the evening of April 26, we have the privilege of ordaining Mackenzie Smith, affirmed with great joy by this congregation at the end of March. That service will bring together the communities she has shaped and been shaped by, Yates Baptist, the Yates Sonshine community, our youth and children, and the people of Westwood Baptist Church where she now serves. Come and witness what it looks like when a church sends someone out.
Matthew’s Gospel ends on a hillside in Galilee. Jesus tells his disciples, “I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matt 28:20). A living presence. Company for the road. While it was still dark, he was already on the move there.
And still is.
Grace and Peace,
Christopher