Good Friday Tenebrae Service

Our Good Friday Tenebrae worship service is available on video through Facebook. You may view it without being a member of Facebook, but it is a little tricky.

Click picture to view video

After you click on the picture above, you may get a screen asking you to join Facebook. Click the small link that reads, “Not Now” or on a small “X” on the upper right of that message to continue.

Click on the triangle icon or photo of the church to play. After the video starts, click on the “outward facing arrows” video icon to make the video larger on desktop screens. You may have to click on the speaker icon in the video to enable sound. Sermon text is shown below.

The Easter Sunday 8 am service on April 12 is scheduled to be streamed live on the DeSoto Redeemer Facebook page. We will post a direct link to the recording here as soon as it is possible after the service.



April 2016

“This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.” Psalm 118:24

 

Are you full? Have you had enough? After the devotion of Lent; the intensity of Maundy Thursday; Good Friday; and by the time that you read this, Easter morning? And yet there is more, much more to our Easter. Herb Brokering wrote an added verse for Easter to his hymn “Earth and All Stars,” number 558 in the green hymnal. The words are:

“City of God, Easter forever,

Golden Jerusalem, Jesus the Lamb,

River of life, saints and archangels,

Sing with creation to God the I AM!

Jesus is risen and we shall arise.

Give God the Glory! Alleluia!”

His hymn with its buffet of images invites us into the Season of Easter, a season of abundance.

 

This year, during the Season of Easter, our Epistle lessons will come from the Book of Revelation, a most misunderstood book. But, as biblical scholar Barbara Rossing tells us, “Revelation’s gift to us is a story of a God who loves us and comes to live with us.” Revelation, like Easter, is not ultimately about absence, about Jesus’ or our going away, but about presence and fullness.

 

On might be struck by the fullness of images and descriptors in the readings from Revelation: myriads (that’s 10,000 – officially), thousands, blessings, honor, glory, multitudes, nations, and more and more. The tree in the city that we hear about in Revelation 21 bears not one but twelve kinds of fruit for the healing of the nations.

 

Easter, not just the Day, but the whole Season, is a time of abundance. Outside, during the week, we can even receive a hint of this as creation itself is now awakening and beginning to bloom with abundance. Our God comes to us with abundance in creation, in His Church, and especially in His Eternal Kingdom. God lives with us in them all, and with God, there is always more than enough. His cup overflows.

 

In Christ,
Pastor Rose