It’s Holy Humour Sunday! The theme of the service is Spotting Joy! The Choir has a couple of surprises in store for you!
A BRIEF HISTORY on HOLY HUMOR SUNDAY (from the JoyfulNoiseletter)
Many American churches are resurrecting an old Easter custom begun by the Greeks in the early centuries of Christianity-“Holy Humor Sunday” celebrations of Jesus’ resurrection on the Sunday after Easter. 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 (like Augustine, Gregory of Nyssa, and John Chrysostom) that God played a practical joke on the devil by raising Jesus from the dead. “Risus paschalis – the Easter laugh,” the early theologians called it. 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.”
Last week we welcomed Graham Doyle back to sing Hallelujah! And he was gracious enough to sing it again at the end of the service when someone requested it.
When so many people are estranged from or hostile to organized religion, and many more have abandoned it, what are we to say or do? What might the Bible and other resources of our faith have to say? Come prepared to learn but also to participate and be imaginative.
A workshop event “Learning to Speak about Our Faith in a Post-Christian World”, will take place on Saturday, April 11 1pm-2:30pm at Stairs Memorial United Church Sanctuary at 44 Hester Street in Dartmouth.
In this workshop, Rev Dr Rob Fennell, Atlantic School of Theology, will lead us in a discussion to explore the questions, difficulties, and promise of claiming and handing on our faith in this challenging era. We will be exploring this issue in two parts: the first will be about secularism and spirituality in Canadian society today and the second will be how to speak about and grow in our faith as Christians. There will be table conversations and a full-group discussion.
There is an elevator in the lower hall (accessed through the parking lot) which makes the building accessible for those with mobility issues. Donations have made this workshop possible but freewill donations would be appreciated to help support the ongoing maintenance of the church facility.
Past Moderator Carmen Lansdown writes eloquently about what the church needs in this season of resurrection, you can read it HERE. Below is just one quote from it.
I think the mainline church is Mary at the tomb. We are weeping over the body we have lost — the membership rolls, the cultural influence, the full sanctuaries of the mid-twentieth century — and we cannot see what is growing right in front of us because it does not look like the church we remember.
St. James United Church Dartmouth 