Easter-Tide 2021
The Great Feast - 5/2/2021
May 2, 2021 • Matt Atkins
Easter Tide or the Time of Easter, is the fifty days following Easter. It is also known as The Great Feast of Easter. It runs from Resurrection Sunday to Pentecost Sunday, both of which are celebrated with great feasts. If you remember, it was during the passover celebration that the crucifixion and subsequent resurrection of Jesus happened, so this period of celebration also coincides with the Jewish feast of weeks, which ran for 7 weeks or 50 days, from Passover to Pentecost. In the Christian tradition, it is meant to be a time of celebrating the resurrection, believing that one day is simply not enough to actually capture and celebrate the significance of Jesus rising from the dead. Which as I said a couple of weeks back, is not just about being dead and then being alive again, it is about the whole work of God that is reflected over and over again in the Old and New Testaments.
The Paschal Mystery
April 11, 2021 • Matt Atkins
There are many things in Protestant traditions that can be said to have left gaping holes for many of us that grew up in them. Not all protestants are as detached from Christian history as others, but in my American evangelical upbringing, we were super detached from historic Christianity.... There was a huge emphasis on the crucifixion and of course, Easter, but very little emphasis on the daily reality of the mystery of birth, death, rebirth and the daily celebration of the beautiful reality known as the Paschal Mystery.
Leave Your Politics at the Door - May 23, 2021
May 23, 2021 • Matt Atkins
I’d like to begin with a brief exercise this morning. I am going to show you a sentence, but only for a few seconds. I am going to ask you to do something, but I want you to keep it to yourself. Don’t shout it out or make a comment, just figure it out in your head. Ok, when you read this sentence, I want you to count how many times the letter F is used. That’s it. “Finished files are the result of years of scientific study combined with the experience of many years.“