Easter 2026

Finish It is a difficult story to end when the end is not an end but a closing that opens a big door where the big stopper used to be jammed in and the something is really nothing or rather the nothing that is not there is what is the something that even though you didn’t know it can not name it still is the it the I the living you have been wanting ~ Cynthia Briggs Kittredge

Dear Friends, Dear Friends, On the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and Mary went to the tomb. They went to attend to death—to feel its weight, to sit with it, to face what was left behind (themselves included). Sometimes, in such moments, that is nearly all we can muster: to sit, to face the thing, and to feel it. Maybe. In that moment of despair and hopelessness, new life appeared in the place of death.  I still don’t understand how, and neither do you.  But what I do know is in my bones—everything I believe and hope for depends on the promise of new, full, and lasting life.  Those faithful women—attentive, alert, painfully aware—became the first witnesses and preachers of the something that was there in place of the nothing they expected to find. Jesus, very much alive to a degree and quality they had never before seen, sent them out to tell the others with a promise: They will see me. As we draw near to the days of Holy Week and look more intently for Easter light, I am praying for us to be filled with this hope—enough that we might live like it’s true. We can stir up this hope in walking together. And we can join Mary Magdalene and Mary in their ministry, telling others about the possibility of new light and new life in the darkest places of despair. Christ is risen indeed. Scott + The Rev. R. Scott Painter, Rector

Renouncing Anti-Judaism during Holy Week

Dear Friends,

On Sunday, we turn toward Holy Week. At 9:00, 11:00 and 1:00, we’ll enact the special liturgy for Palm Sunday that begins with the Liturgy of the Palms, recalling Jesus’ humble entry into Jerusalem to cries of “Hosanna” from the people who lined the way. At 9 & 1, the service will also include a reading of the Passion narrative in the Gospel of Matthew.

The days of Holy Week lead us through excruciating details of the love, betrayal, trial, crucifixion, and burial of Jesus Christ, leading up the climactic celebration of the resurrection in the Christian story. As challenging as these details can be, contemplation upon them, together, invites a profound devotion and faith in the promise of new life.

Holy Week has also been historically problematic, for the ways in which details of the narrative have been turned against Jewish people and the faith of Judaism through centuries, and served as pretext for supersessionism (an idea that the Church has replaced Israel in God’s covenant, rendering Judaism no longer part of God’s saving purposes), persecution, and antisemitic violence.

Our friend and former professor, Dan Joslyn-Semiatkoski, an Episcopal priest, is the Director of the Center for Jewish-Christian Learning at Boston College. He has written extensively on this matter, in addition to working to develop alternative liturgies that seek to correct and repair the damage done by harmful language, slant, and perpetuation of stereotypes in the traditional rites.

Dan has argued in many places that anti-Judaism in Holy Week emerged from a long theological habit of defining Christianity over against Judaism—portraying “the Jews” as rejecters of Christ, as mis-readers of their own tradition, or even as collectively responsible for Jesus’ death. This dynamic becomes especially potent in the Passion narratives and Good Friday liturgy, where historically distorted portrayals have not only misrepresented Judaism but have also contributed to centuries of violence against Jewish communities, particularly during Holy Week itself.

The problem is both explicitly hostile and also subtle: embedded patterns in liturgy and language—what Dan calls “pressure points”—where texts, prayers, and dramatic readings can imply Jewish culpability, divine rejection, or a contrast between a gracious Christianity and a deficient Judaism. Even when unintended, these patterns perpetuate a theological imagination in which Judaism functions as a negative foil rather than as the living tradition from which Jesus and the earliest Christians emerged.

To every extent possible, we invite us to heed these warnings and embrace the good work available to correct and repair.

For the last three years, our Good Friday liturgy has been the alternate service approved for trial use by General Convention. It offers a new collect (prayer) for the Jewish people that honors their place in the story of salvation and acknowledges the harm done to Jews in the name of Christian faith, along with alternative readings from the Epistles. We also hear a sung translation of the Passion in John’s Gospel.

This year, our 11:00 Liturgy of the Palms will incorporate alternate language from a new rite developed and offered in some dioceses.

In the Anglican tradition of The Episcopal Church, we claim the axiom that our praying shapes our believing. It is our intention to guide the community in liturgical movements that might form and reform our ways of faithfully praying, thinking, believing, and living.

We pray that now, as we turn again toward the Way of the Cross, that God’s presence will be made known to us in love and fellowship with one another and all our siblings in the human family.

Together with you,

Scott+

The Rev. R. Scott Painter, Rector

Padre Toni

The Rev. J. Antonio Alvarez

Note: Remember that at 11:00, worship will center on the Liturgy of the Palms, waiting for the Passion to be contemplated on Good Friday. We will begin in the Courtyard, processing in witness with our neighbors from Rose City Park Presbyterian Church around our block, carrying palm branches and values-/faith-forward signs. (Be sure to bring your signs from home!)