“Fear not; I know that you all are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for he has been raised, just as he said.”
~Matthew 28:5-6

How is it that new and renewed life can somehow not be good news? And yet, at every step along the way there seems to be resistance to it. Systems of power and control and those who guard them jealously show up prominently in Matthew’s story. So does our own personal “stuff.”

They are no match, it turns out, for the holy earthquakes that break open our tombs and our hearts to what can be. Do you believe this? Are you willing to dare to hope for what could be among us and in our communities as light dawns on our story? Are you willing to at least entertain the possibility that the grace of forgiveness and unconditional love can actually lead us to something new? Can lead you to something new? Are you willing to consider what needs to be reborn in you, what might be made new?

Something grows. A sprout of possibility. We are becoming awake. All it takes is a word.

Enter into worship. 

Readings: Acts 10:34-43 or Jeremiah 31:1-6 † Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24 † Colossians 3:1-4 or Acts 10:34-43 † Matthew 28:1-10 or John 20:1-18
 
About the Art: Koenig, Peter. Mary Meets Jesus After the Resurrection, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=58538 [retrieved March 24, 2026]. Original source: Peter Winfried (Canisius) Koenig, https://www.pwkoenig.co.uk/.

All the trees of the field shall know
that I am the Creator of All.
I bring low the high tree,
I make high the low tree;
I dry up the green tree
and I make the dry tree sprout buds.
I the Ageless God have spoken;
I will make it so.
– Ezekiel 17:24
 
Rejoice heavenly powers!
—Exsultet
 
Water. Light. The Deep. The Cosmic. What do these things, both elemental and mysterious, have to say to us as we both stretch to “be still and know that God is God,” and, live actively as beloved people of God in our present context? Both our shared context and our personal context, and how they interconnect. Creation. Resurrection. Life, death, life. Is everything just a circular, repetitive cycle? Or are we gently but persistently spiraling outward? Unfolding, becoming, as we both labor and consent? Creative tensions. Both/Ands. Paradoxes that we both wrestle with and relax into. As we trust. As we watch. As we hope. Together.
 
Enter into worship. Saturday evening at 7:43pm in the Garden.

Please note this liturgy will not be livestreamed. 
 
Readings: Genesis 1:1–2, 26–27; 2:1–4 † Daniel (LXX) 3:52–60 † Genesis 21:2, 8–21 † Psalm 27:5–7, 10–14 † Genesis 21:2, 8–21 † Psalm 27:5–7, 10–14 † Exodus 14:26–29; 15:20–21  † Exodus 15:1–3, 11, 13, 17–18 † Joshua 2:1–14; 6:15–17, 22–23  † Wisdom 5:1–5; 6:6–7  † Judges 4:1–10, 23  † Judges 5:1, 4–7, 12, 24, 31  † 2 Kings 11:1–4, 10–12  † Psalm 9:1–2, 7–11, 13–14  † Judith 8:9–10, 32–34; 13:3–14, 17–18 † Judith 16:1–6, 13  † Acts 16:13–15 † John 20:1-18
 
About the Image: DeWitt, Sydney. Joy, Beauty, Wonder, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=59758 [retrieved April 1, 2026]. Original source: Donated by Sydney DeWitt.

​Holy God, Holy and mighty, Holy immortal One, have mercy on us. Holy God, Holy and mighty, Holy immortal One, have mercy on us.
—Solemn Intercessions
 
Our Three Days service continues tonight at the cross. Good Friday is a day where we give ourselves to the suffering and injustice of the world, and of us, and remember it is not the end. The church prays for the world—the whole world.  It is a day where we take a close look at suffering and power—its use and misuse and we pray. We pray, and we remember that God with us—the Immanuel—remains with us through the worst that the world can give us, and the worst that we can do. God with us—Immanuel—remains with us and loves us in death, even as in life.
 
Readings: Psalm 27 † Hebrews 12:1–4 † John 18:1-19:42
 
Enter into worship, 7:00pm.
 
About the Art: Moyers, Mike. What Wondrous Love is This, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=57146 [retrieved March 30, 2026]. Original source: Mike Moyers, https://www.mikemoyersfineart.com/.

I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.  --John 13:34
 
Three holy days enfold us now in gathering friends and breaking bread,
in cross and font and life renewed: in Christ, God’s first-born from the dead.
 
The mystery hid from ages past is here revealed in word and sign,
for Jesus’ story is our own: new life through death is God’s design.
 
Christ lifted high upon the tree, before you every knee shall bend
and every tongue in praise proclaim: “You are the Holy One. Amen.”
 
The Three Days of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Great Easter Vigil invite us into the fullness of this saving story of the Christ. Come and see what God can do.
 
Enter into worship, 7:00pm.
 
Readings, Maundy Thursday: Exodus 12:1-4, 11-14 † Psalm 116:1–2, 12-19 † 1 Corinthians 11:23-26 † John 13:1-17, 31b-35
 
About the Art: Walsh, George. Eucharist detail, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=58694 [retrieved March 30, 2026]. Original source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tullow_Church_of_the_Most_Holy_Rosary_South_Transept_Window_Mysteries_of_Light_and_Pope_John_Paul_II_Detail_Eucharist_2013_09_06.jpg.​

​10 When he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil, asking, “Who is this?” 11 The crowds were saying, “This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee.”
~Matthew 21:10-11
 
It was a different kind of day. Crowds gathered. Palms and coats spread. Beautiful, frenzied chaos! Something, someone was coming and the world was literally quaking with the disruption and anticipation. Nothing would be the same by week’s end, or ever.
 
Part of the story of this Palm Sunday is connection. Jesus had a guy (or a woman) or two he knew who could source a donkey, and an upper room to use. He had developed a vast network of disciples and partners and allies who spill out of the story! The connection of relationships banded people together and created a movement for care and communion among a surprisingly diverse group of beloveds. Friendship and companionship, mutual celebration and a deep sense of belonging and completeness were the astonishing result. It turns out that relationships are what we need most to thrive—more than wealth, more than stuff, more than power—to get us through the highs and lows that are mirrored in the Holy Week that follows.
 
This, of course, is what the community at Bridge Ministries has long known. They teach it by gathering regularly around a meal and celebration, by living it out joyfully together within our communities. We will gather this Sunday along with our friends from Bridge. We find that we are both sustained physically and emotionally, bodily and spiritually with these shared gatherings over the years.
 
In order to accommodate our Bridge Ministry community siblings, this Sunday only, worship begins at 11:00am. Join us. There is a place for you here.
 
Enter into worship. *This Sunday in-person only*
 
Readings: Matthew 21:1-11 † Psalm 118 † Isaiah 50:4-9a † Psalm 31:9-16 † Philippians 2:5-11 † Matthew 27:11-54
 
About the Art: Mueller-Nelson, Gertrude. Palm Sunday Clipart. From Clip Art for Celebrations and Service. Pueblo Publishing, 1990. 

He said to me, “Mortal, can these bones live?” I answered, “O Lord God, you know.”
~Ezekiel 37:3
 
Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?”
~John 11:25-26
 
The far reaches of evil—the slaughter of school children, the callous regard for the poor—the deafness to God's voice for justice and the care of all creation, is an ongoing reality that cannot be glossed over with a word that everything will be all right with God in charge. Evil is real and ever-present. It is there in the hubris of the powerful. It is there in major tragedies and the suffering they cause. It is present in our own quiet desperation. And true religion does not gloss over these realities. It engages it. True religion renounces evil and actively resists its power in the world.
 
And the good news is that this understanding is at the very core of Christian faith. The stories of our faith are not naïve. In John’s story, the disciples are painfully aware of the presence of danger. They know all too well that the last time Jesus was near Jerusalem he just barely escaped with his life. And Thomas is sure that to return means certain death. And while his dire predictions about Jesus’ immediate death don't come to pass in this story, it turns out he is not wrong. Had we read the next few verses we would have seen that Jesus' return to Bethany does indeed set in motion the story of his death.
 
And Lazarus isn’t allowed to rest either. We find out that, ironically, now that he is raised from the dead his life is in grave danger. The resistance to this story of life only increases as a result of the raising of Lazarus. And yet, even as his prediction comes to pass, John’s story suggests Thomas’ despair is unfounded. Even in this death God works. Indeed, with God, death is a prelude to new life. Self-sacrifice is the way to progress.
 
Look at the seed sprouting. Smell the fragrance of new life flowering all around you. Dry bones? Look again. What do you see?
 
Enter into worship.
 
Readings: Ezekiel 37:1-14 † Psalm 130 † Romans 8:6-11 † John 11:1-45
 
About the Art: Gogh, Vincent van, 1853-1890. Raising of Lazarus, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=57322 [retrieved March 4, 2026]. Original source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:De_opwekking_van_Lazarus_(naar_Rembrandt)_-_s0169V1962_-_Van_Gogh_Museum.jpg.

For [God’s] is the sea, for she made it,
and the dry land, which her hands have crafted.
~Psalm 95:5 
 
Water. You can’t live without it; sometimes you can’t live with it. Lake Tahoe is buried under the frozen stuff currently creating all sorts of havoc, while much of the west is drowning in a self-made water shortage that a deepening drought will only make more devastating. It seems in these days in the Anthropocene you either need a canteen or a life raft. You need water from a rock, or you need to strike a path through the depths (that will also cover a pursuing army).
 
Water is a big deal in our religious imagery because it has always been a big deal in human survival and well-being. Floods become symbols of judgment and promise, sometimes troubling ones. Is the wholesale elimination of the unrighteous in Noah’s story really that much better than the Mesopotamian tale of a genocidal flood because the people were just too noisy (and irritating)?
 
The depths hold vast mysteries and their lurking monsters. Wells become places of meeting. Hagar and her son meet God. Rachel and Rebekah and Zipporah meet their matches. So what’s up with this meeting between Jesus and the Samaritan?
 
We may not really know, despite all of our ideas about it. But that’s always the case, we might argue, with a living God and living water. And that is reason enough to hope. Indeed, “Is the Lord among us or not?” is always a live question—or at least the how of it is for a Spirit who moves over the waters effortlessly, like a breath.
 
Enter into worship.
 
Readings: Exodus 17:1-7 † Psalm 95 † Romans 5:1-11 † John 4:5-42
 
About the Art: Koenig, Peter. Christ at the Well, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=58521 [retrieved February 25, 2026]. Original source: Peter Winfried (Canisius) Koenig, https://www.pwkoenig.co.uk/

The Lord God took [the humans] and put [them] in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it. 16 And the Lord God commanded [them], “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; 17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.”
~Genesis 2:15-17

[Jesus] answered, “It is written,
‘One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”
~Matthew 4:4

Labyrinth indeed! To eat or not to eat… And why? Perhaps we associate Lent with wilderness because, in the invitation to shed what we do not need for survival, what we do not need for the journey, we begin to realize that much of what we thought was essential is, in truth, burden. The wisdom of wildnerness is that we may already have what we need. The wisdom of Lent is to open ourselves to the discovery of what truly makes for life amidst all that doesn’t, and may, indeed, take it away.

What are you hungering for these days?
​​
Enter into worship.
 
Readings: Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7 † Psalm 32 † Romans 5:12-19 † Matthew 4:1-11
 
About the Art: Moyers, Mike. Lenten Labyrinth, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=57142 [retrieved February 12, 2026]. Original source: Mike Moyers, https://www.mikemoyersfineart.com/.

“Thus it is written, ‘The first human, Adam, became a living soul’; the last Adam became a spirit that gives life.”
~1 Corinthians 15:45
 
Humility, vulnerability, authenticity. Three words that draw us into this ancient practice of Lent, of lengthening, of extending and filling out our lives with newness in the same way that the light of day lengthens in Lent. Plants emerge from winter’s rest to explore new growth, new forms of possibility.
 
Humility, comes from hummus—dust, earth, soil—from which we became and to which we return according to the stories of our elders: Dust to dust. Ashes to ashes.
 
Vulnerability. From the Latin vulnus: wound. Indeed, to live is to be wounded, and to (be) heal(ed). To be subject to power and designs greater than ours. To be fully-formed creatures.
 
Authenticity. From the Greek authentes: from two words, autos or self and hentes or doing. One acting on one’s own authority. We are agents with agency, actors with purpose to enact. We are powerful.
 
So here we are, at the doorway to Lent, dusty, wounded, powerful ones seeking to be all that we are, all that we are created to be.
 
Enter into worship. Enter into Lent.
 
Join us this Wednesday evening at 7:00pm in person or online.
 
Readings: Joel 2:1-2,12-17 or Isaiah 58:1-12 † Psalm 51:1-17 † 2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10 † Matthew 6:1-6,16-21
 
 
About the Art: Moyers, Mike. Ash, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=57140 [retrieved January 27, 2026]. Original source: Mike Moyers, https://www.mikemoyersfineart.com/.
 
From the Artist: A painting depicting the cross of ashes imposed on Ash Wednesday. The painting style conveys the themes of mortality, brokenness, and our need of Gods grace. 
 
Mike Moyers loves to paint with the palette knife to keep his work loose, textured and bold. His deepest passion is to use art to communicate matters of faith. From his website: I firmly believe that art is a communion with the soul. Through my art, I strive to make known the beauty and wonder of life and faith. The pieces in this exhibit are inspired by things that have touched my life in a meaningful way. They range from plein air and impressionism to abstract and conceptual. My hope is to successfully communicate those inspirations so that you might be touched as well