You are invited to the in-person Easter Sunday Service on March 31 at 10 am. The bulletin for this Sunday is available for viewing HERE.
You can worship live on ZOOM by clicking the link below:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/9658816441 or Meeting ID: 965 881 6441
You can also watch Sunday services at your convenience by going to our website “watsonville1stumc.org” and click YouTube or Facebook. Each Sunday worship will be uploaded on Sunday afternoon for your viewing.
Easter Celebration
Sunday, March 31, 2024, 10 am
Easter Family Potluck @ 11:10 am
Easter Egg Hunt, Front Lawn @ 11:45 am
Children’s Time: “Easter Story” by Pastor John
Choir Anthem: The Glory of Easter
Words & Music by John W. Peterson
Message: Kenotic Path of Jesus: Part 2) “The Paradox of Kenosis” by Rev. John Song
On Easter Sunday, we’ll conclude the 2-part series on Kenotic Path of Jesuswith “The Paradox of Kenosis.”We will explore the spiritual paradox of kenosis that Jesus took as a pathway to God. It is a reckless path and extravagant path which is attained through giving it all away. Everything Jesus did, he did by self-emptying. He emptied himself and descended into human form. And he emptied himself still further (“even unto death on the cross”) and fell through the bottom to return to the realms of dominion and glory.
Love is recklessness, not reason.
Reason seeks a profit.
Loves comes on strong, consuming herself, unabashed.
Yet in the midst of suffering,
Love proceeds like a millstone,
hard-surfaced and straight forward.
Having died to self-interest,
she risks everything and asks for nothing.
Love gambles away every gift God bestows.
~ Rumi, a 13th-century Persian poet and a Sufi mystic
Philippians 2:9-16
Though his state was that of God,
yet he did not deem equality with God
something he should cling to.
Rather, he emptied himself,
and assuming the state of a slave,
he was born in human likeness.
He, being known as one of us,
humbled himself, obedient unto death,
even death on the cross.
For this, God raised him on high
and bestowed on him the name
which is above every other name.
So that at the name of Jesus,
every knee should bend
in heaven and on earth and under the earth.
And so every tongue should proclaim
“Jesus Christ is Lord!”
to God the Father’s glory.
The Trinitarian formula of outpouring oneself for the other in love.
