Holy Week Schedule
April 1 – Palm/Passion Sunday Service @11AM
April 6 – Good Friday Service @7PM
April 8 – Resurrection Sunday Service @11AM
WHAT IS RESURRECTION?
We see death and darkness all around us. Internationally, one has only to consider the increasing threats posed by the ecological crisis, the financial collapse, the complex issue of terrorism, the AIDS epidemic, child starvation and the lack of clean drinking water in the Third World. Here at home we face issues of homelessness, unemployment, refugee resettlement, ongoing racial tension in our neighborhoods, divorce, depression, addiction and the dark reality of child sex trafficking in our city. One mustn’t look far to acknowledge the reality that death and darkness is indeed all around us. But the beauty and reality of the Gospel is that God empowers followers of Jesus Christ to be agents of life and light in this broken, fragmented and confusing world.
As Christians, we believe God empowers humanity to be agents of change, renovation and transformation wherever they might be. In the scriptures we learn that the Christian faith is rooted in the reality that, through Jesus Christ on the cross, God defeated sin; and through the resurrection defeated death. The empty tomb tells us that death and darkness do not get the last laugh. Tomorrow doesn’t have to be the same as today. New life is possible. Redemption and healing are possible. We believe It is God’s vision to bring heaven crashing to earth in order to enact real, tangible change in our lives and in our world. We believe it is God’s vision and mission to rebuild, renew, and renovate the world with the ultimate purpose of transforming all of creation. The scriptures tell us that God seeks to “make all things new”. Given the reality of darkness and death we continue to see around us, this is good news indeed.
At Eastside Church we believe that the same power by which God raised Jesus from the dead is accessible today to all those who practice the way of Jesus Christ in their daily lives. We believe that God is working towards the redemption of the whole world. By God’s power, resurrection life can enter into all dark, dead, and dying places. In Jesus Christ, God has written God’s self into the story of the world in a new a surprising way. In Jesus Christ, God has sought to set the world to rights. God wants to use God’s followers to heal the environment, to bring virtue back into the financial market and to provide affordable antiviral drugs to victims of AIDS. We believe God wants to see resurrection happen in our city through the liberation of children caught in the evil ring of child slavery. We believe that God wants to see resurrection happen in your life, in your heart, in your marriage and in your relationship with your neighbor or your child.
Eastside Church seeks to be a visible sign of God’s redemptive resurrecting power today, here, now, in our world, in our community, in our homes and in our lives. We work daily to practice resurrection by pattering our lives after the example of Jesus so that we might live into God’s plan to restore all of creation. From the international, to the national, from our city to our homes, from our places of work to our hearts – God wants to see redemption, healing, and restoration take place. God has not given up on us – in fact, God is with us indeed!