Fries Memorial Moravian Church

The Rev. Chaz Snider, Chair of the Salem Congregation Board of Elders has sent along some helpful information for those who wish to follow the Salem Congregation services on Great Sabbath and Easter Morning.

The Great Sabbath Service will not be held on Saturday April 11th. There will be a rebroadcast of the 2019 service at 7:00 p.m. on April 11th at http://www.homemoravian.org.

The 248th Easter Sunrise Service will be live-streamed in its entirety from the Home Church sanctuary. The service begins at 6:00 a.m. Find it online at http://www.moraviansunrise.org, or tune in via WSJS radio at 600 AM on your radio dial.

The Rev. Snider also notes that churches and youth groups are not responsible for cleaning and flowering graves they were assigned this year, and that Salem Congregation will not be providing pots, flowers, cleaner, or supplies on Saturday, April 11th. He says that if you want to clean family gravestones you must bring all your own supplies, and observe all guidance on remaining six feet apart from one another.

Home Moravian will stream all the Reading Services here.

All streaming starts 15 minutes before the actual service:

Steaming: April 5-12

April 5, Palm Sunday Morning Worship, 10 AM.
April 5-8,Palm Sunday through Wednesday: reading service, 7 PM.
April 9, Maundy Thursday: reading service and Holy Communion, 7 PM.
April 10, Good Friday crucifixion reading service, 2:15 PM. And Good Friday lovefeast: A rebroadcast last year’s lovefeast with a new sermon, at 7:30 PM.
April 11, Great Sabbath Service of Music: A rebroadcast of last year’s service, at 7 PM.
April 12, Easter Sunrise: 6 AM, also available at moraviansunrise.org Easter worship at Home Church: 10 AM.

The Interprovincial Board of Communication (IBOC) has put out an on-line version of Readings for Holy Week. It includes the Bible verses and the hymn texts found in the printed 2000 editions of both the regular and music versions. It also includes disc and track number references to the Readings for Holy Week Audio CD introduced last year. You can download the 68 page PDF here.

Follow this link to watch a video featuring the hymn, “Jesus Keep Me Near the Cross,” by Br. Franklin Nifong. The pictures of the flowers and plants in the video remind us of the beauty of God’s world. May the peace of Christ keep you in these challenging times. God Is Good! God Is Love! Christ Is Risen! His Holy Spirit Comforts His People! God Is Able to Do Far More Abundantly than All We Ask, Think or Imagine. Love Is Stronger than Death!

As we go deeper into the Corona Virus pandemic, we begin to put more and more faces on the suffering. I take Spanish using Dulingo.Com, and have studied about twenty minutes a day for almost two years. In all that time a young lady named “Lisa K” has kept pace with me. However, over the last several months, her activity on the site has dropped to zero. I finally noticed this, and clicked on her information link. She lives in China and I did not know. China is where the pandemic began. Her picture is small, but she appears to be relatively young. I hope and pray that, if her inactivity on Dulingo.Com has been due to the Corona Virus, it will not be permanent. Though I have never met her, it is easy for me to pray, “O Lord, please, let her live, not just before you, but in our world, too.”

It was John Donne who wrote:

No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as any manner of thy friends or of thine own were; any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

Yes, the loss of anyone diminishes us all, and the loss of every individual represents a dramatic change in the composition of our world, and the wonderful possibilities of our lives are reduced. And so we pray, “Kyrie Eleison,” “Lord have mercy!” Not just for our families, close friends, church members and neighbors, but for all God’s children scattered wherever they may be.

The Pastor