"Crossings"

Many of us at FCUCC have an ambivalent view of the cross, for at least two reasons: 1. It's been so sentimentalized in hymns and popular devotional literature that it's lost its power and become a cliché of the Christian Right; and 2. The suffering it symbolizes has been used to excuse and even bless violence.

So when Lent comes around with its traditional emphasis on the suffering of Christ, our spiritual lives can sometimes have a gap that only the Holy-Week-and-Easter part of the Jesus story can fill.  We are liable not to know what to say or do when the inevitable scripture passages of this season come around on Sundays.

And yet, the cross is a vital part of a Christian spirituality.

So this year, Sara and I have chosen to emphasize liberation as a way to see what God has accomplished through Christ on the cross. You'll hear me preaching in sermons on what we are liberated from, what we are freed for, and how liberation happens in human life, both in the Christian story of resurrection and the Exodus, the liberation story that we share with our Jewish sisters and brothers.

The key is, liberation is about a kind of "crossing" -whether it's Israel crossing the Red Sea to freedom, or you and me crossing over into a new life as we discern Christ's way, seek social justice, and discover the holy in the midst of it all!

March 7, during worship at 10:15, we'll experience the Exodus story through "Moses and the Freedom Fanatics," a musical produced by our Sunday School and directed by Sara Weatherman, with assistance from a whole host of other adults.

This year, on April 1, our Maundy Thursday worship will be a Seder, the Passover meal that the Israelites first ate on the night God liberated them from slavery in Egypt, and the meal Jesus was celebrating with his twelve disciples in that upper room on the night before he died.  He transformed it into what we now know as the Lord's Supper or Communion, but it has its roots in the Passover Seder.  Our "coach" is Susan Scruggs of the Shabbat group that meets monthly at our church.  Thanks, Susan!  (See the Holy Week schedule in this issue of the Courier for all Holy Week and Easter service times and locations.)

Easter is our own Exodus experience.  It births liberation, the freedom from the various slaveries in our lives.  As we journey through the season of Lent together, may it be a journey of liberation!