(Holy Strollers is on break during the month of June. Watch here for details of the group’s resumption.) Do you like to take a walk? Walking is not only a great form of exercise, but it can also be a wonderful spiritual experience. So grab your walking shoes and come get some exercise. For now, all walks will begin at 6:30 p.m. and start and end at the front of the church. Join church friends each Sunday evening during the spring and summer for a brisk stroll through our neighborhoods. Later we will select different starting locations so that our walking is always a fresh experience. For the new locations and starting times , please call the church office (523-5132) or speak with Edith Tresner or Pastor Bryan.

You probably got this in the mail…but just in case you didn’t read the Epistle for April….

Easter always comes sooner than I expect.

That’s kinda funny, because Christmas is the opposite.  Christmas always seems to take forever to arrive.  I suppose that’s because Christmas and Easter are such different events.  Or maybe it’s just because I can’t wait to open all those presents that have been hiding under my tree.

Easter is a celebration, no doubt.  But it is a celebration that comes to us at great cost.  After the journey of Lent, we are aware that a heavy cost has been paid, and our celebration is tempered by our awareness of our complicity with the evil forces in the world.  Easter inspires in us a spirit of gratitude, more than a spirit of indulgence.  Maybe we even experience a feeling of relief.

Not only that, but Easter has somehow managed to avoid the secularization of which Christmas suffers.  Even with Easter bunnies that lay Easter eggs, Easter remains a distinctively religious event.  And for us in the church, it is an event, not just a day. Easter lasts for 50 days, to be precise, constituting a season of the church commonly called “the Great Fifty Days.”  Those 50 days take us from Easter, when Christ escapes the tomb, to Pentecost, when the church receives the gift of the Holy Spirit.

In other words, these 50 days walk us through the most significant events in our communal history – events that gave birth to our church and to our faith.  We encounter the living Christ walking the earth even after we tried to crucify him.  With wonder and awe, we experience the Holy Spirit, and feel within us the compassionate love of our God.  Through these events, we witness God’s triumph even in the face of our failures.  The emptiness of the tomb points us out of the place of death, to find God alive in the world.  The gift and power of the Holy Spirit energizes us to work for reconciliation and healing with all people.  From the cold empty tomb to the blazing flames of Pentecost, this season of Easter literally inspires us to joyfully embrace our life of discipleship.

It is the kind of joy you want to share.  As we engage the Great Fifty Days in our life of faith, I hope you experience a deep joy that comes from being truly embraced by the love of God.  I hope you feel that Holy Spirit igniting a passion within you that simply won’t burn out.   I hope you refuse to contain the energizing power of God that is welling up inside of you.

I like Christmas.  It’s a great time for us to celebrate the birth of the Son of God, the Prince of Peace.  But Easter is the season that defines our faith.  In Easter, we discover the essence of Christianity: that God’s mercy transcends the finality of death, that in Jesus we are offered new life, that God so loved the world.

Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed.

John 12: 1-11
Rev. Bryan Travis Hooper

I was once blessed with the gift of prophecy.  I don’t mean in the Biblical sense.  I mean in the popular sense.  In the Bible, prophets are people who speak truth to the powers that be.  But in the popular sense a prophet is someone who can see into the future.  I was prophet in this latter sense. (more…)

Luke 15: 1-3, 11b-32
Rev. Bryan Hooper

This time of year there are three things on people’s minds, generally.  One is March Madness, as the NCAA tournament progresses.  Sadly, there are no Connecticut teams left in the tournament.  So, the other thing on people’s minds is Spring Training – that strange baseball ritual that allows us fans a sneak preview of the upcoming season.  The third thing on people’s minds this time of year is far less pleasant.  Taxes.  All of us rather dread the annual ritual of filling out forms, filing our taxes…and of course, paying our taxes. (more…)

Luke 13: 1-9
Rev. Bryan Travis Hooper

This story from Jesus merits a little explanation. Jesus refers to two historical events that were part of the popular consciousness of his time. One event was a political execution, in which Pilate killed several Galileans. The other was a disaster, in which a tower collapsed killing eighteen Jerusalemites. We don’t have any other historical references to these two events, so we don’t really know much more about them. We do know from other sources that Pilate was a fairly ruthless governor, so the story of the executions is in keeping with his character. The popular wisdom of the day was that people who came to such violent ends were guilty of sins, and so their violent deaths, either by execution of natural tragedy, were the consequences of their own evil deeds. (more…)

Next Saturday, March 17, people will gather outside the Old State House in Downtown Hartford at 3 p.m. The 17th will be the fourth anniversary of the war in Iraq, and the people will gather there to express their opposition to the war.

At our last meeting, our Church Council voted to endorse this event. In essence, we said that we are there in spirit, and some of us will be there in person.

Why would a church be there?

Here are a few reasons:

1. An engaged church takes an activist stance in the community. If we are to be relevant, we must speak to the issues of our time. And, if we are to be effective, we must take clear, bold stances without apology. This is not to say we should be obnoxious or irritating. It is simply to say that if we are going to make a difference in our world, we have to risk making our voice heard – whatever the issue. And then we need to match our actions to our words.

2. Jesus’ taught us to be people of peace. There are many examples in our gospels where Jesus demonstrates his non-violent beliefs. As we are in the season of Lent, the passion narrative depicts Jesus resisting the authorities of his time through non-violent means. His submission to the cross was in fact an active engagement with the powers of his day. He modeled for us the way to peace as he walked along to his cross.

3. The realities of modern warfare are horrific. The victims are silenced by death, poverty, injury. Their communities are often destroyed, requiring decades to rebuild. Our soldiers suffer as well, too often receiving insufficient care once they are wounded, or insufficient equipment to protect them. The cost of 4 years of war in Iraq will be paid for decades, if not centuries.

4. The prophetic witness of our bible asks us to question the justice of our engagement in Iraq. Questions remain about the justifications our government offered us as the war began. But other questions have faded into the background. Is preemptive war ever a good idea? Is there any Biblical justification for attacking a nation that has not first attacked us? What are we to say to the world about the economic disparity between our nation and much of the Middle East? If we don’t help raise fundamental questions about fairness, who will? We are blessed with a rich resource and tradition and it is our duty to share the bounty of wisdom that has been entrusted to us.

5. Taking a few hours of one day to voice our dissent is a small thing. Peace is not simply about protest. It is part of our whole ethos of life. Peace is found in our practice of personal piety and prayer, in our pursuit of holiness and sanctification, in our communal acts of worship and eucharist. Peace is not a one day event. For us, peace is integral to all that we do. Standing with others to voice our concern for peace is a natural extension of taking the bread and drinking from the cup. It is a way for us to say: “This is my body, offered for you.”

Well, there are five reasons why I think it is important for us to participate on Saturday. I realize that not all of us will want to live our faith out in this way. I think that’s o.k. God has blessed each of us with different talents, skills, aptitudes. If you don’t feel compelled or comfortable with a peace action like this, then I encourage you to offer the talent you do have – pray for and bless those who go, work for peace in the myriad of other ways that we can work for peace, strive to live peacefully in all your relationships. Write a song or a poem. Make a financial contribution. There are so many ways to work for peace – Saturday is just one more offering.

Luke 13: 31-35
Rev. Bryan Travis Hooper

One of my favorite hallmarks of a political campaign is the ritual called the concession speech.  This is when usually late at night the losing candidate comes on television and admits defeat and congratulates his opponent.  I find this even interesting for a number of reasons – one of which is that even if the loser lost by a huge margin, even if he lost by 80% or something, when he announces his defeat the room he is in fills with boos and hisses.   If all you had was that television moment, you would think that everyone in the world wanted this guy to win.  We realize, of course, that the room is filled with supporters, and so we understand that the room at that moment does not represent the whole world.  But still, the image that is being conveyed to us is one of disappointment and regret, even if the rest of the world is filled with relief and joy at the outcome. (more…)

The New York Annual Conference has relief teams going to Biloxi, Mississippi to continue the rebuilding of this area so devastated by Hurricane Katrina.  We are looking for volunteers to join in this very rewarding work and fellowship on this important mission.  The cost to the volunteer is $ 500. This will cover your airfare, food and ground transport while in Biloxi. Most trips are 8 days in duration. For more information, please call the church office and ask to speak with Pastor Hooper, or you can click here and looking for the Volunteers’ Corner.