Easter

Join us as we celebrate Lent and Easter in 2024

Holy Week and Easter

March 28 Maundy Thursday Home Meals (sign up at church or from link in church email)

March 29 Good Friday Tenebrae service (Orchard Ridge UCC joint with Madison Mennonite church)

TENEBRAE takes its name from the “Darkness (tenebrae) which covered the whole earth when they crucified Jesus” (Matthew 27:45). This candlelight service of scripture, music, and silent prayer includes the gradual extinguishing of candles and a loud, sustained noise—reminiscent of the earthquake when Jesus died on the Cross (Matthew 27:51). This year, as the Passion (John 18:1 to 19:43) is proclaimed, the Cross will be turned to each of the Four Directions.

We are invited to enter more deeply into the mystery of the cross on which Jesus stretched out his arms in all-inclusive love and breathed forth his indomitable Spirit into a world gasping for life. With the cross, we join him in proclaiming freedom, flourishing and fullness of life to the whole world.

Lenten Sermons. Fear Not! Becoming Death Doulas

Lenten Schedule of Sermons

Welcome to Lent at ORUCC! Our theme this year for Lent, inspired by one of the most popular and loved topic of Wayfinding: Soul Tasks of Aging, last year, is “‘Fear not!’ Becoming Death Doulas”

March 10th will lead us into the Biblical mantra of “fear not!” repeated by angels and psalmists and prophets throughout scripture.

On March 17th we will visit with the death doula women in the Bible who anointed the body of Jesus and think together about end of life rituals.

On March 24th we follow Jesus into Palm Sunday, with the triumphant waving of palm branches, and we will think about Jesus’ call to justice, and how death work can be justice work- and learn about green burials.

On Easter March 31st we will gather both at sunrise with brunch following and at 10am for a joyous celebration of the resurrection, the mystery at the heart of Christianity, that even in the face of death, God dreams and births new life. Perhaps the call of a death doula is to become midwives to the resurrection.