Easter Letter

“Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified.

 He has been raised; he is not here…

go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee;

 there you will see him, just as he told you.”     Mark 16: 6-7

April 2019

 Dear friends,

             One year ago - to the day, as I write - we held our final Worship service in the old building at Marmont and King Albert. Easter Sunday, April 1st, 2018.  To mark the occasion, and the pilgrim journey ahead, we walked out the doors together at the end of the service with the faith that Christ was walking with us…but was also going on just ahead of us, beckoning from the future.

            In all fairness, our pilgrimage journey has not been easy. But then, a pilgrimage is not meant to be easy. It’s meant to be a transformative adventure. We are meant to be changed by the end of it, through the people we encounter along the way, the gifts and experience of fellow pilgrims, sharing our faith and our struggles with one another, deepening our spiritual life, and through practices that hold us true to the intentions of this pilgrim time.

           As we come to the end of another season of Lent and approach Easter onceagain, let us remember the ways in which we have experienced the Risen Christ in this past year… in the welcome and hospitality of the St. Laurence congregation, in the willingness and energy of our Sunday teams and weekly worshippers to support our worship service at the odd hour of 4 pm, in the wisdom to build on that which gives life and to let go that which has come to the end of its aliveness, in the grace to weather the changes and adjustments that being in a different space requires, and in the sacred and prayerful space-holding for an vision that is yet unknown to us.          

           And let us live with anticipation and trust that on the other side of change, loss, death, and empty tombs, Christ will rise again, walk with us in new ways, and also be just ahead of us, beckoning us to take our next best step toward the new thing that God is up to with us in this community.

           May we be caught up in the ways and means of God that can seem too good to be true, just as were the words of the Angel that first Easter. “His has been raised!”  Let us trust the God whom the Scriptures constantly point us to, who can and will do abundantly more than we can ask or imagine. Alleluia! 

Easter Blessings to you and yours.

Rev. Jan