Join us for worship on Sunday, May 21, at 10:15 a.m.

WE LIVE STREAM OUR WORSHIP SERVICES AT 10:15 ON SUNDAY MORNING. You can join us online in real time at https://vimeo.com/event/1424751. This streaming address is the same each week.

The video of Sunday’s worship service will be posted after worship at https://vimeo.com/channels/1547852.

You can view and download the bulletin here.

On this last Sunday in the season of Easter, we listen as the followers of Jesus gather and he is “lifted up”—taken out of their sight.

This Sunday is called “Ascension Sunday” by those people in churches who care about these kind of things. Actually, Ascension Day is a minor day on the Christian calendar. Following the chronology of the Book of Acts, Ascension Day is observed forty days after Easter, so it always falls on a Thursday. And, let’s face it, you’re not going to get a bunch of Congregationalists to come out on a Thursday to mark something like this.

Still, it’s important for us to hear those accounts of Jesus leaving his followers. They speak to our daily concern of trying to follow a Jesus who is nowhere to be seen. And yet the label “Ascension Day” skews how and where we look. We start looking up just when we should be looking around.

If we can set aside the secondary concerns of “up” and “down” we find that those stories of the “ascension” of Jesus that we heard this morning do address our concern about God’s presence and God’s care.

Scripture Lessons: Acts 1:1-11; Matthew 28:16-20

Sermon:          “With Us Always”

The Rev. Bill Lovin preaching

Anthem           “God Is Gone Up with a Shout”         Healey Willans

No matter who you are or where you are on life’s journey, you are welcome here.