Holy Friday

Holy Week

HOLY WEEK
Items in purple are part of JCC’s Lenten offerings

TUE-SAT (evening)

  • WAY of the CROSS
    Ongoing • JCC Sanctuary

    • Icons and stations of cross available for personal spiritual contemplation and journey

THURS, Mar 28: MAUNDY THURSDAY

  • 6pm • WORSHIP SERVICE with Washing of Feet
    • Service hosted at Bartlett Congregational Church
    • Co-sponsored by JCC
    • During the service, the washing of the feet involves 12 representatives to represent the 12 disciples, 6 from JCC and 6 from Bartlett, and feet are washed by Rev Gail and Rev John
  • Followed by SOUP SUPPER

FRI, Mar 29: HOLY FRIDAY

  • 12-3pm • HOLY VIGIL @ JCC
    • Readings at Noon, 1pm, 2pm, 3pm for  Holy Vigil @ JCC
    • Way of the Cross with interactive stations
  • 6:30pm • SERVICE of SHADOWS
    @ Nativity Lutheran, North Conway, NH

    • Ecumenical Worship led by clergy from member churches of Clergy of the Eastern Slope

SUN, Mar 31: EASTER SUNDAY

  • 6:15am • SUNRISE SERVICE
    @ Presidential Drive Cul-de-Sac, Jackson, NH

    • Dress warmly as this is an outdoor service
    • Songs, prayers, reflection, and readings
  • 9:45am • LENTEN CHOIR PRACTICE @ JCC
    • Come to the sanctuary to practice Easter song
  • 10:30am  • EASTER WORSHIP @ JCC
    with Zoom & livestream to website and Facebook

  • 11:30am • HOSPITALITY @ JCC
  • 11am – 2pm • COMMUNITY EASTER EGG HUNT
    @ Jackson Community Church campus and surrounding village grounds

LENT & EASTER: Save these Dates

  • Thurs, Feb 8: Mardi Gras with DelleValla Trio plus Louisaina Cuisine by chef Sue Carrigan at JCC
  • Wed, Feb 14: Ash Wednesday

    • Ashes-to-Go at J-Town Deli, Glen Ledge/McSheffreys North and JCC
    • Ash Wed Service hosted at Nativity Lutheran Church at 6;30pm
  • Wed, Feb 21: Vision Board Workshop with Clare Long (RSVP) at JCC
  • Thurs, Feb 22: Lenten Book Group on zoom at 7pm: Discussion of Wild Hope

  • Sun, Feb 25: Game Day at JCC
  • Fri, Mar 1: Byzantine Art presentation with John Heropoulos, MDiv at Whitney Community Center, co-sponsored by Bartlett Congregational & Jackson Community churches
  • Wed, Mar 6:
    • XC Ski meeting at JCC
    • Soup Supper at JCC
    • Vespers Service at JCC led by Nativity Lutheran worship team
  • Thurs, Mar 7: Felting Easter Eggs with Kathy Seymour (RSVP) at JCC
  • Thurs, Mar 14: Lenten Book Group on zoom at 7pm: Discussion of Wild Hope
  • Thurs, Fri, Mar 28: Maundy Thursday

    • Mandy Thursday Foot-washing Service hosted at Bartlett Community Church & co-officiated by Rev Gail Doktor and Rev John Heropoulos
    • Soup Supper hosted at Bartlett Community Church
  • Fri, Mar 29: Holy Friday

    • Vigil at JCC
    • Via Crucis at JCC
    • Service of Shadows – ecumenical celebration hosted at Nativity Lutheran and facilitated by Clergy of the Eastern Slope with message by John Heropoulos, MDiv
  • Sun, Mar 31: Easter

    • Sunrise Service at end of Presidential Dr, Jackson
    • Easter Service with Flowering of Cross plus special music at JCC followed by
    • Easter Egg Hunt – participation in community event

 

 

Lenten Reflection Day 45 (April 6): WILL NOT BREAK (Isaiah 42:1-9).

SONG: Kevin Rudolf ft Lil Wayne: I Will Not Break: https://youtu.be/mNcSwvo007s

POEM: Mark Kirschen: Monet (excerpt): Sunlight will not break us—Rather / We move illumined / Return daily…To save what has been hammered / By the sun / Most of it unmapped, still / Uncharted…

QUOTE:  Bob Marley: …he will give you a part of him that he knows you could break.

Sabbath II, 1988 — Wendell Berry
It is the destruction of the world
in our own lives
that drives us half insane, and more than half.
To destroy that which we were given
in trust: how will we bear it?
It is our own bodies that we give
to be broken,
our bodies existing before and after us
in clod and cloud, worm and tree,
that we, driving or driven, despise
in our greed to live, our haste
to die. To have lost, wantonly,
the ancient forests, the vast grasslands
in our madness, the presence
in our very bodies of our grief.

VISUAL POEM: Stripped from BibleProject: https://youtu.be/VHUBFfEzpEU


The adjective so often coupled with mercy is the word tender, but God’s mercy is not tender; this mercy is a blunt instrument. Mercy doesn’t wrap a warm, limp blanket around offenders. God’s mercy is the kind that kills the thing that wronged it and resurrects something new in its place.— Nadia Bolz-Weber

SONGS about CRUCIFIXION & the CROSS:

In Blackwater Woods (excerpt)— Mary Oliver

To live in this world
you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones
knowing your own life
depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.


VIDEO POEM: From Tree to Cross: https://youtu.be/aQPVqcNVfM0

COMMENTARY on the GRIEF, the CROSS and HOLY FRIDAY

so it came time and
no day like that is ever
good in the coming

― Deborah Landau

To each one of us Christ is saying: If you want your life and mission to be fruitful, like mine, do as I do. Be converted into a seed that lets itself be buried. Let yourself be killed. Do not be afraid. Those who shun suffering will remain alone. No one is more alone than the selfish. But if you give your life out of love for others, as I give mine for all, you will reap a great harvest. — Oscar Romero

It was where, of course, the ultimate cry of human longing ran headlong into the silence of God, and was left, the cry was left out there like a huge, red hook trying to reach up into the heavens, but nothing received it. It’s a day of being touched by the void; it’s the day of the abyss. — John O’Donohue about Holy Friday

Good Friday is not about us trying to “get right with God.” It is about us entering the difference between God and humanity and just touching it for a moment. Touching the shimmering sadness of humanity’s insistence that we can be our own gods, that we can be pure and all-powerful. ― Nadia Bolz-Weber

And I felt like my heart had been so thoroughly and irreparably broken that there could be no real joy again, that at best there might eventually be a little contentment. Everyone wanted me to get help and rejoin life, pick up the pieces and move on, and I tried to, I wanted to, but I just had to lie in the mud with my arms wrapped around myself, eyes closed, grieving, until I didn’t have to anymore. ― Anne Lamott, Operating Instructions:
 

What happens at the cross is a “blessed exchange.” God gathers up all our sin, all our broken-ass junk, into God’s own self and transforms all that death into life. Jesus takes our crap and exchanges it for his blessedness. — Nadia Bolz-Weber

[Jesus dying on the cross] brings us face to face with the finality of defeat. Sometimes things don’t have a happy ending in life. Sometimes we fail. Sometimes we’re beaten. Sometimes we’re lost. Sometimes we’re humiliated. Sometimes we’re misunderstood. Sometimes we are abandoned by the very people we love most in life and whom we thought also loved us. At that point, without doubt, something in us dies. There’s not going back to things as they were before. Then doors close in our hearts and the old breath goes out of us and all we can do is to surrender to the dark. It is not a pretty moment. It can take all the energy we have.
Am I able to accept the daily deaths of life, both the great ones and the small, knowing that death is not the end of life, only its passing over to something new in me? Hopefully, I learn from the Jesus who gave up himself, his mission, his life in ways that all seemed totally wrong, that the deaths I die may bring new life to the world around me as well.— Sr Joan Chittister

On the Day I Die — Rumi

On the day I die,
when I’m being carried
toward the grave,
don’t weep. Don’t say,

He’s gone! He’s gone.
Death has nothing
to do with going away.
The sun sets

and the moon sets,
but they’re not gone.
Death is a coming together.
The tomb

looks like a prison,
but it’s really
release into union.
The human seed goes

down in the ground
like a bucket into
the well where Joseph is.
It grows and

comes up full of some
unimagined beauty.
Your mouth closes here,
and immediately

opens with a
shout of joy there.

It Can’t Be Carried Alone” — Fr Richard Rohr (response to the collective suffering of the people of Ukraine).

How can we not feel shock or rage at what is happening
to the people of Ukraine—
As we watch their suffering unfold in real time
from an unfair distance?
Who of us does not feel inept or powerless
before such manifest evil? In this, at least, we are united.
Our partisan divisions now appear small and trivial.

Remember what we teach: both evil and goodness are,
first of all, social phenomena.
The Body of Christ is crucified and resurrected
at the same time. May we stand faithfully
Inside both these mysteries (contemplation).

In loving solidarity, we each bear what is ours to carry,
the unjust weight of crucifixion,
in expectant hope for God’s transformation.
May we be led to do what we can on any level (action)
to create resurrection

When Death Comes —  Mary Oliver

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;

when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse
to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;

when death comes
like the measle-pox

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,

and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it’s over, I want to say all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.

Your Excellency  […]

Tonight, with the world in doubt, with this Commonwealth drawing into its lungs with every breath the difficult air of doubt, with the eyes of Europe turned westward upon Massachusetts and upon the whole United States in distress and harrowing doubt — are you still so sure? Does no faintest shadow of question gnaw at your mind? For, indeed, your spirit, however strong, is but the frail spirit of a man. Have you no need, in this hour, of a spirit greater than your own?

Think back. Think back a long time. Which way would He have turned, this Jesus of your faith? — Oh, not the way in which your feet are set!

You promise me, and I believe you truly, that you would think of what I said. I exact of you this promise now. Be for a moment alone with yourself. Look inward upon yourself. Let fall from your harassed mind all, all save this: which way would He have turned, this Jesus of your faith?

I cry to you with a million voices: answer our doubt. Exert the clemency which your high office affords.

There is need in Massachusetts of a great man tonight. It is not yet too late for you to be that man.

Edna St. Vincent Millay, letter to governor of Massachusetts

… And you are right; it is well to forget that men die. So far we have devised no way to defeat death, or to outwit him, or to buy him over. At any moment the cloud may split above us and the golden spear of death leap at the heart; at any moment the earth crack and the hand of death reach up from the abyss to grasp our ankles; at any moment the wind rise and sweep the roofs from our houses, making one dust of our ceilings and ourselves. And if not, we shall die soon, anyhow. It is well to forget that this is so.

But that man before his time, wantonly and without sorrow, is thrust from the light of the sun into the darkness of the grave by his brother’s blindness or fear it is well to remember, at least until it has been shown to the satisfaction of all that this too is beyond our power to change…

These men were castaways upon our shore, and we, an ignorant and savage tribe, have put them to death because their speech and their manners were different from our own, and because to the untutored mind that which is strange is in its infancy ludicrous, but in its prime evil, dangerous, and to be done away with.

These men were put to death because they made you nervous; and your children know it. The minds of your children are like clear pools, reflecting faithfully whatever passes on the bank; whereas in the pool of your own mind, whenever an alien image bends above, a fish of terror leaps to meet it, shattering its reflection.

— Edna St Vincent Millay, November 9, 1927, The Outlook:  “Fear”

Photograph from September 11th
—Wislawa Szymborska,
translated by Clare Cavanagh and
Stanislaw Baranczk


They jumped from the burning floors—
one, two, a few more,
higher, lower.

The photograph halted them in life,
and now keeps them
above the earth toward the earth.

Each is still complete,
with a particular face
and blood well hidden.

There’s enough time
for hair to come loose,
for keys and coins
to fall from pockets.

They’re still within the air’s reach,
within the compass of places
that have just now opened.
          I can do only two things for them—
describe this flight
and not add a last line.

HOLY WEEK: Palm Sunday, April 2  to Easter, Sunday, April 9

April 2-9: WAY of the CROSS

  • VIA CRUCIS – Way of the Cross
    Ongoing • JCC Sacntuary
    • Self-guided. 
    • Crosses used in this personal pilgrimage, most hanging in the windows, come from around the world. 
    • Front doors open and unlocked 24/7. Come whenever your schedule permits. Several written guides are available, tracing the Via Crucis journey with specific concerns in mind: healing, environmental care, recovering from addiction, surviving trauma, discerning prayer. The guides also include ones written specifically for women, children, refugees, seniors, LGBTQ+ allies, and using perspective from St Teresa,
      St Francis, Ignatians, and using Biblical versions offered by Pope John Paul II and Pope Francis.
  • 24/7: Daily during Holy Week • JCC Sanctuary

Sun, Apr 2: PALM SUNDAY  

  • INTERFAITH WORSHIP 
    8am • JCC Sanctuary & Zoom
    • Join us for poetry, conversation, and prayer.
    • Zoom link and password required.
  • PALM SUNDAY WORSHIP with Communion 
    10:30am • JCC Sanctuary & Zoom
    • Zoom link and password required.
    • Music: Sharon Novak
  • HOSPITALITY @ JCC
    11:30am • Parish Hall
  • BYZANTINE ART, ICONOGRAPHY & ARCHITECTURE Tour with John Heropoulos, MDiv. 

    2pm • Holy Resurrection Orthodox Church, Berlin, NH
    • Led by John Heropoulos, MDiv., retired Greek Orthodox priest.

Thurs, Apr 6: MAUNDY THURSDAY

  • SOUP SUPPER & MAUNDY THURSDAY WORSHIP
    6pm • Parish Hall of JCC
    • Worship at table as communion meal
    • Discussion over the meal
    • Scripture: Last Supper & Prayers in Gesthemane
    • Special song written & performed by Sharon Novak
    • Soups prepared by Sue Carrigan & Wendy McVey
    • Event hosted by the deacons
    • Close with stripping of the altar

Fri, Apr 7: HOLY FRIDAY

  • VIGIL on HOLY FRIDAY 
    Noon-3pm • JCC Sanctuary
    • Scripture readings offered aloud in the sanctuary at noon, 1pm, 2pm, 3pm.
    • Texts narrate final hours of Christ
    • Traditional day to experience Stations of Cross (also offered in sanctuary during this time and throughout Holy Week).
    • Virtual stations of the c ross will be posted to Facebook and the website.
  • ECUMENICAL WORSHIP for HOLY FRIDAY
    6pm •  Christ Church Episcopal, North Conway, NH
    • Tenebrae service
    • Last even words of Christ
    • Putting out candles
    • Scirpture and song
    • This service is offered by Clergy of the Eastern Mountain Slope in Mt Washington Valley.

Sun, Apr 9: EASTER SUNDAY

  • SUNRISE EASTER SERVICE 
    6am • Presidential Drive Cul-de-Sac, Jackson, NH
    • In-person only
    • Scripture
    • Singing
  • EASTER WORSHIP with Flowering of Cross @ JCC
    10:30am   • Jackson Community Church
    • Zoom link and password required.
    • Featuring harp with Dominique Dodge and special music by Gia Osborne
    • Flowering of Cross @ JCC
  • HOSPITALITY @ JCC
    11:30am • Parish Hall
  • COMMUNITY EGG HUNT 
    11am-2pm  JCC and around village
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