Holy Week and Easter 2024

All welcome for services in Holy Week and throughout the Easter season (50 days between Easter Day and Pentecost Sunday).

Liturgies are available here.

Good Friday and Easter Day also via Zoom (see links below).

March 28 – 6pm Holy Thursday – Last Supper + Footwashing (liturgy includes words by Ali Abu Awwad). You might like to bring a small plate of food to share.

March 29 – 11.30am Good Friday – Veneration of the Cross (with Cana Communities). Hot-cross buns, tea and coffee before the service.
Join via Zoom (Meeting ID: 879 3746 4388/ Password: 087151).

March 30 – 7pm Easter Vigil in the Garden

March 31 – 10am Easter Day – Baptism + Reaffirmations
Join via Zoom (Meeting ID: 879 3746 4388/ Password: 087151).

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See also:
March 30 – 10am to 12.30pm Holy Saturday at Pitt Street Uniting Church
This is the second year Pitt Street Uniting Church (264 Pitt St, Sydney) has offered a sacred space between Good Friday and Resurrection, which is usually glossed over in the Western Christian tradition but is the space we frequently occupy.

Between 10am and 12.30pm on Saturday March 30 people can engage in a range of contemplative experiences, including a labyrinth walk, poetic expression and other embodied practices as they linger at the entrance of the closed tomb of Holy Saturday.

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GOOD FRIDAY LITANY

When I’m lost and disoriented, find me,
My God, my father, my foundation.

Turn to me in my restless hour,
My God, my mother, my maker.

Hear my body and heal my mind,
My God, my soul and sustenance.

Through divine love, reframe my memories of pain,
My God, my past, my future.

By Jasmin and Andrew, Liturgy Resource SSUC, 2023.

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Venerating, touching, kissing the Cross means accepting the reality, the truth of our history and predicament (calling it out, owning it, denouncing violence, and so on) … as well as trusting that something more is revealed in this wood, tree, paper, ink, blood, text, song, story …

What is revealed? What beauty or glory is revealed? 

The Seven Last Words of Christ are emblematic of this beauty or glory.

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Mark 16:1-8 – Failure redressed … discipleship as return to Galilee, starting over, new experiences of life and love … We re-enter the church, open to new experiences of discipleship, love, life … collaborations, friendships on Gadigal land …

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John 20:1-9 – “Even these first disciples … made their journey from no faith to complete faith through their experience of the ‘signs’ that Jesus is victorious over death. The realities of death, tomb and cloths, cannot contain him” (Francis J. Moloney).

The same journey from darkness to light is available to us. The signs of the risen Lord among us are physical/cultural/literary/artistic … they are present in various modes: care and loyalty in love, courage and commitment, faithfulness, and the great joy which comes from our Christian faith.

Inspired, yes, by the faith of Jesus, whose imagination, attention, critical and affective reading of tradition … make all manner of healing possible … 

Easter invites us to read these and many other signs of the risen Lord among us.

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Dorothee Soelle writes: “The more we love God, the threatened, endangered, crucified God, the nearer we are to [God], the more endangered we are ourselves. The message of Jesus is that the more you grow in love, the more vulnerable you make yourself. You have fewer securities and weapons. You can be attacked if you become visible or if ‘that which is of God’ shines out in you. 

“If you share out your life instead of hoarding it, then the great light will become visible in you. Sometimes that will make you lonely, and you will lose friends, your standard of living, profession, career, but at the same time you will change yourself. In this process the cross, this sign of isolation, of shame, of abandonment, becomes the tree of life without which you cannot exist any more … 

“[I]t is not so crazy to love life so much that we love even the cross as a consequence of saying ‘yes’ to the will of God. Then we know that our love is greater than anything that this world can do to us … ‘Embracing the cross’ now means growing into resistance. And the cross will become green and blossom” (Thinking About God: An Introduction to Theology).