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    • Sunday service - Holy Communion June 11, 2023 at 9:30 am – 11:00 am Grace Church 215 Pleasant Street, Sheldon, VT Website: www.gracechurchsheldon.comTime:  09:30 AM Eastern Time (US and Canada)        Every week on Sun.Join Zoom Meetinghttps://us02web.zoom.us/j/83929911344?pwd=alZQTWZMN0ZkWFFPS1hmNjNkZkU2UT09Meeting ID: 839 2991 1344Password: Call for detailsOne tap mobile+13126266799,,83929911344#,,1#,816603# US (Chicago)+19294362866,,83929911344#,,1#,816603# US (New York)Dial by your location        +1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago)        +1 929 436 2866 US (New York)Meeting ID:…
    • Sunday service - Holy Communion June 18, 2023 at 9:30 am – 11:00 am Grace Church 215 Pleasant Street, Sheldon, VT Website: www.gracechurchsheldon.comTime:  09:30 AM Eastern Time (US and Canada)        Every week on Sun.Join Zoom Meetinghttps://us02web.zoom.us/j/83929911344?pwd=alZQTWZMN0ZkWFFPS1hmNjNkZkU2UT09Meeting ID: 839 2991 1344Password: Call for detailsOne tap mobile+13126266799,,83929911344#,,1#,816603# US (Chicago)+19294362866,,83929911344#,,1#,816603# US (New York)Dial by your location        +1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago)        +1 929 436 2866 US (New York)Meeting ID:…
    • Sunday service - Holy Communion June 25, 2023 at 9:30 am – 11:00 am Grace Church 215 Pleasant Street, Sheldon, VT Website: www.gracechurchsheldon.comTime:  09:30 AM Eastern Time (US and Canada)        Every week on Sun.Join Zoom Meetinghttps://us02web.zoom.us/j/83929911344?pwd=alZQTWZMN0ZkWFFPS1hmNjNkZkU2UT09Meeting ID: 839 2991 1344Password: Call for detailsOne tap mobile+13126266799,,83929911344#,,1#,816603# US (Chicago)+19294362866,,83929911344#,,1#,816603# US (New York)Dial by your location        +1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago)        +1 929 436 2866 US (New York)Meeting ID:…

Good Friday   March 30, 2018

Posted on March 30, 2018 by Beth Crane

The following are excerpts from a meditation by Martin Smith of the Society of St, John the Evangelist. The meditation is called “No More Tears.”

The suffering of God is one of the deepest mysteries of the Christian faith. Those who hear about it for the first time are often shocked, for this mystery doesn’t lie on the surface of the scriptures but deep down.

…In the agony and crucifixion of Jesus God was not hurt merely by sympathy with the latest prophet to be martyred. God suffered in Christ.  The audacious teaching of the early Christians that Jesus was the Incarnation of God’s Word and Wisdom had the staggering consequence of making the crucifixion on Golgotha God’s climactic suffering at the hands of his own creatures. God suffers.

Maybe this [Good Friday] could  be a good time for [us] to ponder this mystery. It could help [us] realize how revolutionary the doctrine of the incarnation is. If Jesus is nothing more than the greatest prophet of God, then we can leave God out of suffering in heaven. But if the Crucified is God, then God is revealed as the one who is with us in suffering. The concept of God as a remote and dispassionate observer is smashed as an idol.

What effect might is have in [our own lives] to ponder this mystery?…We may find our way of  thinking of God’s presence in the world undergoing a change. If God suffers, then God can truly be recognized by faith as present everywhere in a creation that groans in travail. We will stop praying to God to pay attention to this or that tragedy. God doesn’t need to pay attention to suffering because he is already present in and with the sufferers, and from that place of pain is moving us to contribute our caring and loving to his.

Contemplating the mystery of God’s cross will change the way we come to terms with our own pain. If we have explored the mystery beforehand we may, when sickness, death, betrayal, or disappointment befall us, be better prepared to see that God is not far from us, but keeps us company and continues to hold us up with those hands that from the beginning of time have been pierced with unimaginable nails.

But such is the mystery that all the seasons of Lent left to us in this life will not be enough to sound its depths. Only by seeing Christ in the glory of the Father with his hands, feet,  and side still pierced with wounds will we grasp that Mystery—or be grasped by it.

Martin L. Smith, SSJE, “No More Tears,” in Nativities and Passions, pp. 148-151.

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Good Friday Year A April 14, 2017

Posted on April 14, 2017 by Beth Crane

What can we say on this terrible, tragic day? We look upon the horror of the cross and we become wordless. Jesus could have called in legions of angels. He could have destroyed that hate-filled mob. But he did not. He suffered, he took in all that hate, and he answered it with one thing, the most powerful force in the world—love.

Barbara Brown Taylor writes, “Christianity is the only world religion that confesses a God who suffers. It is not that popular an idea, even among Christians. We prefer a God who prevents suffering, only that is not the God we have got. What the cross teaches us is that God’s power is not the power to force human choices and end human pain. It is, instead, the power to pick up the shattered pieces and make something holy out of them—not from a distance but from right close up.”

Taylor continues, “By entering into the experience of the cross, God took the manmade wreckage of the world inside himself and labored with it—a long labor—almost three days— and he did not let go of it until he could transform it and return it to us as life. That is the power of a suffering God, not to prevent pain, but to redeem it, by going through it with us.” (God in Pain, p. 118.)

I have shared this passage before but I wanted us to reflect upon it again. Our loving God suffers with us, takes in all that pain and suffering and makes new life out of it. When we humans suffer, God is there with us in that suffering.

God moves through our darkest times with us, not only as individuals but as the entire human race. God takes our times of greatest weakness and brokenness, and transforms them into life on a new level. May we walk the Way of the Cross, the Way that leads to life. Amen.

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Good Friday April 3, 2015

Posted on April 3, 2015 by Beth Crane

Isaiah 52:13;53:12
Psalm 22
Hebrews 4:14-16; 5:7-9
John 18:1-19:42

Jesus came among us to assure us of God’s unconditional love for every human being and for all the creation. Everything he did and everything he said breathed out the Spirit of God’s love, forgiveness, and healing. But some of us, especially those in power, could not stand to hear this good news, and it all led to a Cross.

Jesus did the best he could, and it led to a horrific instrument of torture and death reserved for criminals. There are many things he could have done, but he died on that cross.

On Palm Sunday, I said that I think we can see the cross as the ultimate example of what it means to “Let go and let God.” Jesus had done the very best job he could do. There was nothing more he could do. On the cross, he placed his complete trust in God. He took into himself all the rage and hate and evil of the world, and he and God and the Spirit transformed all of it into life and hope.

When we have been facing a situation full of darkness and brokenness and we have done our best, with God’s help, one of the most creative and loving things we can do is to Let go and let God.

We place ourselves, our will and intentions, and the entire situation in God’s loving hands, and we let go of it. Now it is in God’s care. We pray for God’s help for us and for any other people involved, and we leave it in God’s hands. And God takes the situation, with all its darkness and brokenness and transforms it into new life. We will never be able to understand this because we are frail and fallible human beings, but we do not have to understand. We know it because our Lord has lived it and done it. That is why this Cross is at the center of our faith. We can trust God in everything.

Amen.

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Good Friday–April 18, 2014

Posted on April 18, 2014 by Beth Crane

“Were you there when they crucified my Lord?” The moving hymn asks that searching question. We were not literally there all those years ago, but, walking the Way of the Cross, we are there now.

Sometimes I wonder, Would I have been so afraid of the authorities that I would have denied him as Peter did? Herod and Pilate could snuff out a life in an instant. Maybe I would have been that afraid. I hope I wouldn’t have betrayed him for thirty pieces of silver the way Judas did, but can I honestly say that I would not have denied I knew him? I don’t know.

Would I have gotten caught up in the mob psychology that makes us do things we would not ordinarily do and yelled out, “Crucify him?” I hope not, but I do not honestly know what I would have done.

Mary, his mother, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene followed him every step of the way. There they were, as close to that horrible instrument of torture as anyone could get. Jesus looked down from the cross and told Mary and John, his beloved disciple, that they were mother and son. In the midst of the horror, he created a new family, and we are part of that big family. Would we have had the courage those women had, to follow him, never to waver, and to stand at the foot of that cross? We hope and pray that we would have been faithful and would have followed him to the end, but we do not know for sure what choices we would have made.

But we know what our Lord did. He took all that hate and turned it into love. He took all that death and turned it into life.

His love is stronger than any earthly power. We are with him now. We are standing at the foot of the cross. And he is pouring out that love and filling us with that love and healing and new life. May we accept his love. May we accept the gift of his forgiveness. May we share those gifts with others. Amen.

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Good Friday 2 March 29, 2013

Posted on March 29, 2013 by Beth Crane

In his Cross, Jesus showed us another way. He could have destroyed the jeering crowd. He could have marshalled armies, launched missiles, detonated a hydrogen bomb. He could have fought hatred with hatred, violence with violence. He did not. Jesus, Immanuel, God with us, confronted the destructive religious and secular powers of his day with one thing and one thing only—love.

Barbara Brown Taylor writes, “Christianity is the only world religion that confesses a God who suffers. It is not that popular an idea, even among Christians. We prefer a God who prevents suffering, only that is not the God we have got. What the cross teaches us is that God’s power is not the power to force human choices and end human pain. It is, instead, the power to pick up the shattered pieces and make something holy out of them—not from a distance but from right close up.”

Taylor continues, “By entering into the experience of the cross, God took the manmade wreckage of the world inside himself and labored with it—a long labor—almost three days—and he did not let go of it until he could transform it and return it to us as life, That is the power of a suffering God, not to prevent pain but to redeem it, by going through it with us.” (God in Pain, p. 118)

Writing of Jesus’ word on the cross, “It is finished,” Taylor states, “There was one more thing that was finished that day, and that was the separation between Jesus and God. The distance was mostly physical, according to John, and it was only temporary, but when Jesus gave up his spirit his thirst was slaked. He dove back into the stream of living water from which he had sprung and swam all the way home.

Taylor continues, “Those who he left behind saw nothing but his corpse. He was not a teacher any more. He was a teaching—a window into the depths of God that some could see through and some could not. Those who held out for a strong God, a fierce God—they looked upon a scene where God was not, while those whose feet Jesus had washed, whose faces he had touched, whose open mouths he had fed as if they were little birds—they looked upon a scene in which God had died for love of them.”

The Cross tells us that God loves us so much that God suffers for us and with us. Our God knows what it is to feel alone and abandoned, to go through the worst thing that anyone can go through. When we are going through these things, God is with us, and God is enduring these trials with us.

God moves through our darkest times with us, our times of greatest weakness and brokenness, and transforms those experiences into life on a new level. What may appear to be weakness is the power of God at work, the self-giving surrender that ignites grace and opens the door to new life right here and now.

May we walk the way of the Cross, the way of Christ, the way of love that leads to life.

Amen.

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