Maundy Thursday, Easter Sunday, Steeple Challenges
This Week’s Calendar
Thursday April 5
7:00–Maundy Thursday Communion Service in the Sanctuary
Sunday April 8
9:00–Adult Choir Rehearsal to sing this week
10:00 am–Worship and Religious Education programs–Easter Sunday
Hello friends,
This evening we will celebrate our annual Maundy Thursday Communion Service in the sanctuary. This ritual of communion, grounded in our liberal Christian heritage will be a simple, reflective service with short readings, prayers, and the traditional passing of bread and grape juice (no alcohol). While it is a Christian ritual, we practice open communion in our tradition, meaning that all are welcome to partake, regardless of your theological orientation. We also welcome all ages at this service. It will be relatively short, about 30 minutes or so, depending on how many of us there are.
For those of you who are wondering, the traditional name of this day, “Maundy Thursday” comes from the words, “Maundatum novum” or “new commandment” from the Latin translation of the Gospel according to John, where in the story where Jesus’ gives the disciples the ritual of communion, he says “I give to you a new commandment, that you love one another.”
This Sunday we will honor Easter in our worship, with some special music and celebration, as well as recognizing the sacred festival of Passover. The children will be hosting coffee hour and working on some celebratory treats for after the service.
Many of you have asked about sunrise services. We don’t offer a sunrise service for our congregation, but I’ve been assured that any of you who wish to come are welcome at the sunrise service of the First Congregational Church of Hartland (the Brick Church). Their service takes place at 6:00 am on the hill just up and behind Mike’s Mobil in Hartland Village.
I will be there, not leading the service at all, but helping out leading some music. For those of you who find meaning and joy in the Christian celebration of the season, it is a very nice service.
To end with this week, a little challenging news. For those of you who haven’t noticed, our weather vane and several inches at the top of the steeple feel down last week. It seems that the very top piece of the steeple rotted out and simply couldn’t take the weight anymore. I’ve been told by a contractor who knows such things that this is a common problem for steeples, because it’s hard to water-proof the connection between weather vane and steeple.
Anyway, some folks in our church have been working for some time, collecting bids on painting the steeple, as well as some other long-overdue maintenance projects. There will be a meeting of anyone interested helping decide about these projects very soon (last I knew the exact day of the meeting was being determined, but was likely to be April 15 after the service). At this meeting, the gathered group will do some prioritizing and then some thinking and strategizing about approaching the congregation and the wider community to raise the needed funds.
We will certainly let the process of that work continue, but it’s also clear to me that the steeple project is now likely to need to be undertaken sooner rather than later. It seems that the falling pieces may have poked a hole in the roof, for instance, and we don’t want to let that go too long before we get it fixed. Initial estimates for the painting of the steeple have been about $3000 and up. We’ll need to clarify, now, just what we need to do to fix the top, and get the estimates updated, but I suspect that number of $3000 will still get us started and at least on a contractor’s schedule soon.
Without a doubt, our buildings and grounds folks will be coming to you and to our wider community soon to ask you to support several needed maintenance projects for our building. And I hope that you’ll all be willing to help out at that time as best you can.
My personal request here, in the meantime, is that if you’re willing to help with any size donation to make sure we can get the steeple project going relatively soon, please consider sending a check to Doug Hart, our treasurer, with the note “Steeple” in the memo space. Or, since Doug will be away for a little while, if you’d rather, you are welcome to pass a donation to me, and I’ll get it where it needs to be.
A final note on the steeple issue–after the weather vane fell down, we know it was on the ground on the tavern side of the church. It’s not there now, and I’m hoping that one of you picked it up to work on repairing it–it was in several pieces–or otherwise put it somewhere safe. The thought has occurred to me, though, that it’s possible that someone may have taken it for their own benefit, most likely to sell as scrap, given the shape it was in. We don’t want to jump to conclusions, though, so if you did happen to pick it up to put it somewhere safe, please let me know. Either way, with your support, we can start working on our next steps soon.
Well, I hope to see some of you this evening at the church, and many of you on Sunday.
For those of you beginning the celebration of Passover tomorrow evening–Chag Sameach!
In faith and love,
Paul