Rethink Easter

new light, new life, new love

Sunday, April 4th
at Hope.Gate.Way. (185 High Street, Portland)

9:30am -- Easter Worship Celebration

5:30pm -- Community Potluck and Worship Celebration

Grab your friends and neighbors and your favorite food item, and join us for a rockin' good time on Easter evening! We'll get together at Hope.Gate.Way. at 5:30, share food and laughter around the tables, and then head right into worship, with good music and a great message of life and hope and love.

Easter Potluck and Worship Pictures

A Prayer for Easter Day

We thank you, God, for this amazing day
when our hearts dance like the shining sun,
when all the world leaps with life
and the great, infinite wonders of the earth shout their "yes!" to you.

We who have seen death,
who have heard the story of the cross and sorrow deep at the sharp agony of the world's pain,
We have come to life again
in the life of your Son.

With Christ we have been lifted from the nothing of death into your new and unimagined life,
where tasting, touching, hearing, seeing and breathing
are more sweet than we had known before
and where you are in beauty and in truth.

How could we ever doubt you,
when today your spirit makes us dance and shout, in the praise of the Risen One,
the one who has defeated death and all evil powers?
How could we doubt you,
now that our ears are awake and our eyes are opened?

We thank you, God, for this amazing day,
when the evil in us lies down dead
and the good in us is born again.
This is the birth day of life and love and goodness.
This is the amazing day
when our savior rose...
when the earth released him...
when the heavens echoed the praise of the earth,
on this great day.

Alleluia to our leaping, rising, lively, infinite God.

Easter Potluck and Worship

Easter Potluck Dinner & Worship Celebration

Sunday, April 12

5:30 pm at Hope.Gate.Way.

Grab your friends and neighbors and your favorite food item, and join us for a rockin' good time on Easter evening! We'll get together at Hope.Gate.Way. at 5:30, share food and laughter around the tables, and then head right into worship, with good music and a great message of life and hope and love. Rumor has it we may repeat last year's popular feature: The Great Easter Egg Challenge!

This year's Easter Potluck Dinner & Worship Celebration is not to be missed!

Christ is Risen! Risen indeed!

Jesus Christ, we greet you!

Your hands still have holes in them,

your feet are wet from the dew;

and with the memory of our names

undimmed by three days of death

you meet us,

risen from the grave.

We fail to undersand how;

we puzzle at the reason why.

But you have come:

not to answer our questions,

but to show us your face.

You are alive

and the world can rejoice again.

Hallelujah!

Amen!

from Stages on the Way,
Iona Community

(Chicago: GIA Publications, Inc., 2000)