Hancock UCC Weekly Messenger for April 13, 2025

Palm branches, palm branches,

Filling the air,

Palm branches, Waving and seen everywhere

Heard the hosannas as lovely they ring

Palm branches, palm branches

 laid at the feet of the king

The choir rehearses Sunday mornings at 9:10 a.m. All are welcome.

This Sunday, April 13th is Palm Sunday. We will hold our regular worship service at 10 AM with a palm parade and palms to take home.

 Maundy Thursday Tenebrae Service with Communion – Thursday, April 17th, 7 pm       Maundy Thursday is the Thursday before Easter, when Jesus shared his final Passover with his disciples and gave them a new commandment to  “love one another.”  The service of Tenebrae, meaning “darkness” or “shadows,” has been practiced by the church since medieval times. Readings trace the story of Christ’s passion, music portrays his pathos, and the power of silence and darkness suggests the drama of this momentous day. As lights are extinguished, we ponder the depth of Christ’s suffering and death; we remember the cataclysmic nature of his sacrifice as we hear the overwhelming sound of the “strepitus” (Latin for “great noise”); and through the return of the small but persistent flame of the Christ candle at the conclusion of the service, we anticipate the joy of ultimate victory.

Join us for lightly guided meditation at 9:00 a.m. on Fridays in our Sanctuary.

All are welcome!

Easter Sunday Services

Easter Sunrise Service at Riverside Cemetery – Sunday, April 20th, 6:00 am, Hancock,

behind Hancock Grammar School (In case of rain, the service will be held in the church Fellowship Hall)

Easter Morning Breakfast in the church Fellowship Hall – Sunday April 20th, 6:45 am

Donations gratefully accepted. Everyone is welcome.

Traditional Easter Morning Worship Service – Sunday April 20th, 10 am, followed by Fellowship Time.

Sandra Libby's Celebration of Life

The family of Sandra Libby invites the community to a “Celebration of Life” gathering for her at the Sorrento Community Building on Saturday, April 19, 2025, from 1:00-3:00. We’ll start with an open time for people to share stories about Sandra, as well as Ron, and listen to some of their favorite music. This will be followed by visiting, looking at family photos, and snacking.

Sandra died during the first week of February 2025 and Ron passed that same week in 2015. They had lived on the West Side of Sorrento since 1965 and raised their four children there - Russell, Pam, Chris, and Ronda.

Those wishing to remember Sandra can make gifts to Frenchman's Bay Library, P.O. Box 215, Sullivan, ME 04664.

Our meetings are open to all. If you would like to attend a meeting, please let Vicky know and she will provide the Zoom link, or you are welcome to attend in person.

Trustees will meet on Wednesday, April 23 at 12:00 pm

Outreach will meet Thursday, April 24 at 4:15 pm

Council will meet Friday, April 25 at 11:30 am

April Birthdays and Anniversaries

13: Nancy Johnston     14: Dennis & Linda King

16: Jack & Delores Candy        19:  Linda King           19: Keith Bowie

21: Mary Beth DiMarco        21: Brian Simpson      22: Betty Johnston     

26: John & Chris Wells         27: Jeff Springer             30: Ruth Butters

The Outreach Team is providing a hot Taco dinner for the guests who utilize Healthy Acadia’s Warming Center in Ellsworth. Monetary donations can be made to Tamara and she will shop for ingredients OR you may make food donations to be dropped off at the church by Sunday

morning, April 13th. If you have any questions, please call or text Tamara at 207-460-4148 or email at Crowley_tamara@yahoo.com.

2025 Hancock County Food Drive.

The Hancock Grammar School BackPack program has benefited from this effort for several years.

Please keep the following people in your prayers this week:

Prayers for Pat Shannon’s daughter, Mary Riley. Prayers for Alex, Andrew and Tamara; and for Tyler Crabtree. Prayers for Donald B.; Kenny V.; Orrick; Brian; and Jane of Golden Acres. Prayers for the Livio Family who lost everything including their beloved dog in a house fire recently. Prayers for Cynthia W.; Judith C.; Eleanor A.; Ira and Ginny; Don and Heather; Bruce’s sister Lynn; Sally’s friend, Sue Barger; Herbie Lounder; Ruth; Marie; Jim Snyder; Jonathan Holmes; John Wood; Sue Davies; Sue Davenport; Liz & Jim; Kenny Stratton & Joy & David & Lori & Melissa; Debbie & Lincoln & son-in-law Aaron, daughter Ashley, and granddaughter Brielle; Sandy Phippen; Amy Nickerson; Kevin and Vanessa & family. Prayers of strength and healing for all awaiting diagnoses and for all recovering from surgeries & procedures. Prayers for all that are unsafe, unhoused, hungry & in need of care & compassion. Prayers for all caregivers; those who are grieving; and prayers for all that is in your heart…

From the Maine Conference, United Church of Christ

          United in Love under Christ as our Head

Committed to the Gospel to be the voices, hands, and feet of Jesus’ life and teaching

From time to time, I find myself renewed by a reminder that I confess faith with Christ as head and the Gospel as guide for my daily life. It is even more renewing to know that I am not alone in that confession as I serve as your Conference Minister. We of the Maine Conference, clergy and laity, are united together in our confession of faith and our commitment to following Jesus’ example and teachings. That’s what makes us Christian. That’s what makes us members and friends of the United Church of Christ.

I think most of the time we don’t think much about our confession or commitment. We take it for granted...until...our confession and commitment are challenged. It is during the challenging times that we must wonder deeply and fully:

What does it mean to be united in the love of God?

What does it mean to confess Christ as our Head?

What does it mean to follow in the ways and teachings of Jesus?

This year, beloved, we are in a challenging time to wonder. In the midst of the turmoil in our country that has certainly infiltrated Maine, it is a time to wonder—deeply and fully. I have no desire or intention to speak politically or to promote one political stance over another. My desire here is to encourage us, each of us, to wonder these questions.

United in the love of God:

 Above all, we must embrace that God’s love is unconditional. We cannot push it away and we cannot bring it near. God’s love is within us and surrounds us on all sides. And each one, whoever they are, is surrounded by God’s love. This is the first “aha” overwhelming moment that can knock us sideways if we are to fully embrace what God’s love means for us and everyone around us. And the love doesn’t just stop with us receiving it. We are called to offer such love to everyone—especially those with whom we disagree or who make us uncomfortable.

Confess Christ as our Head

As members and friends of churches in the United Church of Christ, we see Christ and Christ alone as our Head. In Christ we embrace that we are a resurrection people, bathed in life even when death surrounds us. In Christ we know the immanent and eternal existence of the moral universe that bends toward justice—not through gravity or pure existence, but through sheer effort through our moral and just choices.

Follow the ways and teachings of Jesus

This is the biggest rub in our earthly lives right now in this moment of where our country is leaning. If we are to follow Jesus, we need to know what Jesus did and taught, especially during the times when the arc of the moral universe is bending away from justice. We need to discern—together—what Jesus bids us to do today. Jesus, first and foremost, was a champion of the downtrodden, the poor, the shunned, the marginalized, the children, the widows, the stranger. Jesus is not the first to show God’s people this way of living. The prophets cried out for the powers that be to embrace such justice. Jesus lived such justice—and those powers killed him for it. Does this mean we need to be willing to die? Maybe not literally, but maybe we need to be willing to die to our desires for security that is fleeting in favor of security that is rooted in God’s love and justice for those who are most in need. Such actions could range from participating in protests against Medicaid reductions to setting up food banks in our local communities; from writing to our congress people about the reduction of USAID to the poor throughout the world to making sure unprivileged children at home are fed and clothed; from lobbying for the rights of transgender folks to donating money to organizations such as Church World Service. I know I haven’t exhausted the possibilities.

The biggest concern I have as your Conference Minister is this: How do we, united under God’s love, with the Headship of Christ, committed to being the voice, hands, and feet of Jesus for justice; respect and love one another, even when we do not express our confession of faith in the same way? How do we reach across political persuasions and find common ground under Christ and for the sake of the Gospel? How do we respect one another with love? How do we talk with one another from places of deep faith that guide our Jesus-inspired actions?

In June, I am inviting all of you to a “Virtual Faith Forum” that spans the geography and cultures of our conference. I will offer two; one in the daytime and one in the evening, hopefully to accommodate scheduling needs. In these forums, we will meet together as God’s people united in God’s love; to listen carefully, to speak with love, to confess our faith and our commitments to serving those Jesus calls us to serve. And we will pray for one another. Stay tuned. You will hear of the dates early in May.

Until then, let’s consider a hymn of hope that helps us to know the loving arms of God surrounding us; and a scripture that speaks to the fruits of our faith as people of the Gospel message.

Let Us Hope (HYFRYDOL)

Let us hope when hope seems hopeless, when the dreams we dreamed have died. When the

morning breaks in brightness, hunger shall be satisfied. One who sows the fields with weeping shall retrace the sorrowing way and rejoice in harvest bounty at the breaking of the day. Faith and hope in love’s compassion will survive though knowledge cease, though the tongues of joy fall silent, dull the words of prophecies. Faith shall see and trust its object; hope shall set the anchor sure; love shall bloom in Love eternal. Faith and hope and love endure. Like a child outgrowing childhood, setting childhood things away, we will learn to live in freedom, in the life of God’s new day. Now we see as in a mirror. Then we shall see face to face, understand how love’s compassion blossoms through amazing Grace. --lyrics by E.L.Diemer

Matthew 25:35-40

35 for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, 36 I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’ 37 Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food or thirsty and gave you something to drink? 38 And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you or naked and gave you clothing? 39 And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’ 40 AndTenebrae is a prolonged meditation on Christ’s suffering. Readings trace the story of Christ’s passion, music portrays his pathos, and the power of silence and darkness suggests the drama of this momentous day. As lights are extinguished, we ponder the depth of Christ’s suffering and death; we remember the cataclysmic nature of his sacrifice as we hear the overwhelming sound of the “strepitus”; and through the return of the small but persistent flame of the Christ candle at the conclusion of the service, we anticipate the joy of ultimate victory.

 the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it to me.’

My prayers of hope and comfort, love and purpose, surround each of you,

Marisa

From the Maine Council of Churches

A Way in the Wilderness

Lent 5 2025

We started Lent in the wilderness, and here we are, 40 days later, in the wilderness again.

And we’ve come to the final W’s of our Lent of Wellbeing and Witness: Way and Wilderness.*

Biblical “wilderness” is a dry, desolate, and uninhabitable wasteland between Egypt and Canaan, an empty space between the borders of peopled places, where the Hebrew people wandered for forty years after their Exodus from Egypt and before their arrival in the Promised Land. This wilderness offered no protection or safety from potential enemies. There, you could die of thirst or wind up as lunch for jackals. Or both.

After the Israelites left Egypt, they crossed into the wilderness—a frightening, uncertain, and dry land, without food, with little water. It wasn’t even as survivable as their meager existence had been back in Egypt. In the wilderness, they won’t drown under the weight of empire. But starving or dying from thirst doesn’t exactly seem appealing either.

And God’s word sounds:

Thus says the Lord, who makes a way in the sea, a path in the mighty waters, who brings out [Egyptian] chariot and horse, army and warrior; they lie down, they cannot rise, they are extinguished, quenched like a wick.

Do not remember the former things or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.                                                                                                               Isaiah 43: 16-19

A new thing. In the wilderness? In the desert? Something can spring forth from this desolation?

The oppressed, once dependent on their enslavers for food and their very existence, were now freed from servitude to the Empire, and set out on a journey through the wilderness where they discover their own courage, resourcefulness, and calling. Of course, they made mistakes. It is hard to live beyond empire. Entering the wilderness disorients even the most steady of us. But by wandering, they learn. They learn the law. They learn sabbath. They learn interdependence on God and one another. They are transformed — in both vision and vocation.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks describes it this way:

The way to the Holy Land lies through the wilderness. It is there that the Israelites learned what it is to build a society that will be the anti-type of Egypt, not an empire built on power, but a society of individuals of equal dignity under the sovereignty of God.

The Christian season of Lent draws inspiration from this Jewish experience — forty years of wilderness translates into our 40 days. The Exodus and its distant descendant, Christian Lent, are journeys through desolation and survival in the wilderness made possible through the power, sustenance, and protection offered by God.

God’s word in the wilderness, then and now, is: “I will make a way.”

Today, thousands of years later, we find ourselves in the wilderness—and not just the metaphorical wilderness of Lent. Today, in the United States, we are in a dry and desolate place that’s frightening and uncertain. And there’s not a Promised Land in sight.

But maybe the wilderness is where we need to be. Between the old and new. Between a drowning army and springs in the desert. Maybe this is where we can finally hear the good news of God’s new thing.

Or, as the Apostle Paul wrote from a Roman prison, “This one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal: the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.”

That’s good advice for surviving in the wilderness — when you find yourself between Empire and Promised Land. Keep your eyes on the prize, as African Americans have long reminded us. Eyes on the prize.

There is a way out of this wilderness we’re in, friends. It just isn’t entirely clear yet. Luckily, we do not make that way on our own.

But rest assured, there is a way. So hold on. Hold on to God.  Hold on to each other.  Hold on.

As that old folk song, “Keep Your Eyes On the Prize,” goes:

Now only thing I did was wrong stayin' in the wilderness too long Keep your eyes on the prize, hold on

The only thing we did was right was the day we started to fight Keep your eyes on the prize, hold on

Hold on, hold on, keep your eyes on the prize, hold on

Keep that song in your heart as you find your way through the last Lenten week in the wilderness, as you set your face to Jerusalem and journey through Holy Week. And even though after Easter we’ll still find ourselves in a frightening and uncertain landscape of chaos, terror, and oppression, keep your eyes on the prize and hold on.  Do what’s right and start to fight. And trust the prophet’s assurance that God is doing a new thing and it is springing forth.

*A reminder to subscribe to “The Cottage” by Diana Butler Bass for her Lenten series, A Lent of Wellbeing and Witness on which our Lenten series has been based: https://dianabutlerbass.com/the-cottage/