April 2023 Newsletter
Minister’s Message
Welcome to Holy Week and the Season of Easter,
Threats to your being can be the ‘rocket fuel’ for your courage to be. Threats to your life and being come in three forms: the physical end of your life, your mortality; the threat and use of violence and intimidation to rob you of your personhood; and a state of being in which you are never emotionally present, you never enter the here and now.
Looking at Christ we see a man in whom the drive toward separation and non-being never overcame his union; his unity between himself and God, between himself and humankind and nature, and between himself and his True Self, his Spirit.
Easter is not about dead bodies rising from the grave. That was a Jewish and then Christian way of telling a story in times of persecution and anguish. It was a story about how love is stronger than death, God’s Being in us and beyond us is mightier than the grave. A physical resurrection was spoken of by the ancients as symbol- a symbol of God’s final triumph over earth’s dictators; and the persecuted, tortured heroes would return to their mothers and fathers with their bodies intact and whole- finally reunited by God’s mercy.
Resurrection and Easter tell us that no event in life, however destructive or traumatic, not even death on a cross, can contain all that God has to say to us about life. Life has within it an infinite possibility, a growing edge, the courage to be. When all seems lost look well to that growing edge.
Easter represents the power of God’s Being and Life moving in defiance of desolation and despair in the disciples, and in us. In that power we leave behind our enslavement to destructive habits of the mind. We live in union with the Christ of crucifixion and Easter, and in that inspiration and courage we leave behind an inauthentic and cramped life; we find our True Self; and we heal the wastelands of our society.
Christ mediates the Power of Being that comes from God’s Spirit, the power of an undisrupted union. When this union happens you are united with the ground and meaning of your existence. You know that you are eternally important, loved and accepted. Happy Easter!
Rev Ron Rosinsky
This newsletter is also available on the Coburg Uniting website and Facebook page.
Worship Topic for April and May:
Religion and psychology in service to the soul
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First Sunday: Celebration of Communion, featuring music by Josh Cake and the Coburg band
Second Sunday: Featuring music by Keith Hoffmann
Third Sunday: Featuring music by Ruth Sandy and the singing group
Fourth Sunday: Featuring music by Josh Cake and the Coburg band
Special Services
Holy Week Services
- 6 April: Maundy Thursday Service; Service of the Shadows: 7:30pm
Join us in remembering the last meal Jesus had with his disciples. The service begins In the church hall. Supper provided: soup and bread, cheese and olives. - 7 April: 9:30am Good Friday Service; bring some hot cross buns to share after the service.
- Sunday, 9 April: 10am Easter Celebration and last service in the sanctuary.
- Sunday, 16 April: First service in the church hall (Where we will meet while the sanctuary is renovated)
Spiritual Growth Programs
Fr. Richard Rohr
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- Men’s Group Dinner and discussion: First Saturday monthly, 6-9pm at church. Next meeting is Saturday 6th May.
Topic: ‘Amnesia and the Big Picture’ (Ch. 8), from Richard Rohr’s, ‘Falling Upward, A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life’
And studying chapters 8-13 from Rohr’s book in the first half of 2023.
- Men’s Group Dinner and discussion: First Saturday monthly, 6-9pm at church. Next meeting is Saturday 6th May.
- Guided Meditation: Third Sunday monthly, 11:45am- 12:30 in front room at church. The next meeting is Sunday 16 April.
Belonging Programs
On Palm Sunday 2 April, we formally welcomed Ross as our newest member of Coburg Uniting Church. During the ceremony, Ross read a compelling statement of faith, community, and solidarity.
Click here to read Ross’s speech.
- Social Board Games Night: 2nd and 4th Thursdays, 7:30-10pm, 13th and 27th April in the front room at church;
- ‘Coffee, Chat & Play’ Playgroup, 10:30am-12noon, every Friday during school term. Recommences Friday 28th April.
- ‘Coburg Common’ The ‘Gardening Mob’ and Coburg Uniting garden located behind the church. Have a cuppa and a chat surrounded by natural beauty.
Special Events
‘A ‘Telling’ Tale: Celebrating Women Storytellers’
Coburg Uniting Church held its 2023 Heather Pover International Women’s Day Lunch with riveting speeches from four professional migrant women. They shared their life experiences through their writing and artwork.
Perspectives on the Voice
Coburg Uniting Church encourages our members to make their own minds up after exploring all possibilities. Here are three perspectives.
- An article supporting the Voice by our Minister-in-Association Rev Mark J Dunn:
WHY I’LL VOTE YES IN THE VOICE REFERENDUM - An article by Tom Tanuki on opposition to the Voice among Indigenous Australians.
Indigenous arguments against the Voice exist — but the media is hiding them - An article by Kelly Menzel, an Indigenous Australian woman and academic, on some of the complexities of the issue.
For a lot of First Nations peoples, debates around the Voice to Parliament are not about a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’