We are celebrating Holy Humour this week! You will hear Martha and Mary sort out seating arrangements at a dinner party and there will be a reverse offering! There may be other things happening… 😉
For centuries in Eastern Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant countries, the week following Easter Sunday, including “Bright Sunday” (the Sunday after Easter), was observed by the faithful as “days of joy and laughter” with parties and picnics to celebrate Jesus’ resurrection. Churchgoers and pastors played practical jokes on each other, drenched each other with water, told jokes, sang, and danced. The custom was rooted in the musings of early church theologians that God played a practical joke on the devil by raising Jesus from the dead. In 1988 the Fellowship of Merry Christians began encouraging churches and prayer groups to resurrect Bright Sunday celebrations and call it “Holy Humor Sunday,” with the theme: “Jesus is the LIFE of the party.”
We are also going to start singing the Lord’s Prayer this week as well as learn a new hymn, which we will be singing for the next 4 Sundays, so you will have lots of time to learn it. If you want to take a listen to it before Sunday, see below.
I was delighted at the response to the Good Friday Labyrinth Walk; over 60 people came and walked it and three choirs participated.
This week, I am catching up on the stuff I put off last week, fleshing out the plans for the Thriving Churches Sermon Series, and making tentative plans for a series on grief either in the afternoon or evenings in May.
On a person note, one of my sisters found out, quite unexpectedly, that she needs to have heart valve replacement surgery. Currently, I’m the only family in the area, so I may not be in the church as often as usual as she has testing and surgery over the next few weeks.
St. James United Church Dartmouth 