Trinity Lower East Side Lutheran Parish

Join us sunday mornings at 11, in-person or online

As we continue to overcome the COVID-19 pandemic, we gather for worship each Sunday morning at 11:00 both in-person and online and you are very welcome to join us! With the spring weather growing warmer, we will worship outdoors in our beautiful garden weather-permitting. In the event of inclement weather we will gather for worship indoors with all necessary safeguards in place, which you can read about below.

For those unable to attend in-person, Sunday worship will continue to be livestreamed on Facebook Live. Scroll down to find worship resources for each Sunday, including the complete bulletin and a children's page.

Plans are in place to ensure that our gatherings indoors are as safe as possible:

A maximum of eighteen worshipers will be permitted at each service, with seats safely spaced out in the sanctuary.
In order to limit attendance and facilitate COVID contact tracing, please register below if you plan to attend worship. Those who are unable to register online will be asked to provide their contact information before entering the sanctuary.
Face coverings must be worn at all times while on Trinity’s property. Both mouth and nose must be fully covered.
Because communal singing has been shown to increase the risk of spreading COVID through airborne particles, all singing will be done by our cantors when worshiping indoors. Please refrain from singing, even if it’s your favorite hymn, and allow the text and music of the hymns and liturgical music to speak to you in your heart and mind.
At the distribution of Holy Communion, only the bread will be offered in order to reduce contact with the chalice. Rest assured that receiving Holy Communion “in one kind” is a fully effective and valid means of receiving the promise of Christ’s presence and forgiveness in the sacrament.
In order to avoid passing the offering plates from hand to hand, an offering basket is available at the entrance to the sanctuary. As always, contributions may also be made online at www.trinitylowereastside.org/give. We are grateful for your generosity!

may 16, 2021 | the seventh sunday of easter

The gospel for Easter’s seventh Sunday is always taken from the long prayer Jesus prays for his followers in John’s gospel on the night before his death, and always includes Jesus’ desire that his followers will be one as he and the Father are one. This oneness is not mere doctrinal agreement or institutional unity, but mutual abiding, interpenetrating life, mutual love, and joy. This oneness is the work of the Spirit whom we have received but also await. Come, Holy Spirit!

Download the bulletin HERE
Download a children's page HERE
May 9, 2021 | the sixth sunday of easter

This Sunday’s image of the life the risen Christ shares with us is the image of friendship. We are called to serve others as Jesus came to serve; but for John’s gospel, the image of servanthood is too hierarchical, too distant, to capture the essence of life with Christ. Friendship captures the love, the joy, the deep mutuality of the relationship into which Christ invites us. The Greeks believed that true friends are willing to die for each other. This is the mutual love of Christian community commanded by Christ and enabled by the Spirit.

Download the bulletin HERE
Download a children's page HERE
may 2, 2021 | the fifth sunday of easter

This Sunday’s image of how the risen Christ shares his life with us is the image of the vine. Christ the vine and we the branches are alive in each other, in the mystery of mutual abiding described in the gospel and the first letter of John. Baptism makes us a part of Christ’s living and life-giving self and makes us alive with Christ’s life. As the vine brings food to the branches, Christ feeds us at his table. We are sent out to bear fruit for the life of the world.

Download the bulletin HERE
Download a children'd page HERE
april 25, 2021 | the fourth sunday of easter

The image of the good shepherd shows us how the risen Christ brings us to life. It is the relationship between the shepherd and the sheep, one of mutual knowledge and love, that gives the shepherd authority. The shepherd’s willingness to lay down his life for the sheep shows his love. First John illustrates what it means to lay down our lives for one another by the example of sharing our wealth with any sibling in need.

Download the bulletin HERE
Download a children's page HERE
april 18, 2021 | the third sunday of easter

The gospel for the third Sunday of Easter is always one in which the risen Christ shares food with the disciples, meals that are the Easter template for the meal we share each Sunday. In today’s gospel, Jesus both shares the disciples’ food and shows them the meaning of his suffering, death, and resurrection through the scriptures, the two main elements of our Sunday worship.

Download the bulletin HERE
Download a children's page HERE
APRIL 11, 2021 | THE SECOND SUNDAY OF EASTER

The Easter season is a week of weeks, seven Sundays when we play in the mystery of Christ’s presence, mostly through the glorious Gospel of John. Today we gather with the disciples on the first Easter, and Jesus breathes the Spirit on us. With Thomas we ask for a sign, and Jesus offers us his wounded self in the broken bread. From frightened individuals we are transformed into a community of open doors, peace, forgiveness, and material sharing such that no one among us is in need.

Download the bulletin HERE
Download a children's page HERE
APRIL 4, 2021 | EASTER SUNDAY

Christ is risen! Jesus is alive, and God has swallowed up death forever. With Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome, we may feel astonished and confused, unsure of what to make of the empty tomb. But this is why we gather: to proclaim, witness, praise, and affirm the liberating reality of Christ’s death and resurrection. In word and feast, we celebrate God’s unending love, and depart to share this good news with all the world. Alleluia!

Download the bulletin HERE
Download a children's page HERE
APRIL 2, 2021 | GOOD FRIDAY

Life and death stand side by side as we enter into Good Friday. In John’s passion account, Jesus reveals the power and glory of God, even as he is put on trial and sentenced to death. Standing with the disciples at the foot of the cross, we pray for the whole world in the ancient bidding prayer, as Christ’s death offers life to all. We gather in solemn devotion, but always with the promise that the tree around which we assemble is indeed a tree of life.

Download the bulletin HERE
APRIL 1, 2021 | MAUNDY THURSDAY

This evening our Lenten observance comes to an end, and we gather with Christians around the world to celebrate the Three Days of Jesus’ death and resurrection. Tonight we remember Christ’s last meal with his disciples, but the central focus is his commandment that we live out the promise embodied in this meal. As Jesus washed his disciples’ feet, so we are called to give and receive love in humble service to one another. Formed into a new body in Christ through this holy meal, we are transformed by the mercy we have received and carry it into the world. Departing worship in solemn silence, we anticipate the coming days.

Download the bulletin HERE
MARCH 28, 2021 | PALM SUNDAY

This week, the center of the church’s year, is one of striking contrasts: Jesus rides into Jerusalem surrounded by shouts of glory, only to be left alone to die on the cross, abandoned by even his closest friends. Mark’s gospel presents Jesus in his complete human vulnerability: agitated, grieved, scared, forsaken. Though we lament Christ’s suffering and all human suffering, we also expect God’s salvation: in the wine and bread, Jesus promises that his death will mark a new covenant with all people. We enter this holy week thirsty for the completion of God’s astonishing work.

Download the bulletin HERE
Download a children's page HERE
march 21, 2021 | the fifth sunday in lent

God promises Jeremiah that a “new covenant” will be made in the future: a covenant that will allow all the people to know God by heart. The church sees this promise fulfilled in Christ, who draws all people to himself when he is lifted up on the cross. Our baptismal covenant draws us to God’s heart through Christ and draws God’s love and truth into our hearts. We join together in worship, sharing in word, song, and meal, and leave strengthened to share God’s love with all the world.

Download the bulletin HERE
Download a children's page HERE
march 14, 2021 | the fourth sunday in lent

The fourth of the Old Testament promises providing a baptismal lens this Lent is the promise God makes to Moses: those who look on the bronze serpent will live. In today’s gospel Jesus says he will be lifted up on the cross like the serpent, so that those who look to him in faith will live. When we receive the sign of the cross in baptism, that cross becomes the sign we can look to in faith for healing, for restored relationship to God, for hope when we are dying.

Download the bulletin HERE
Download a children's page HERE
MARCH 7, 2021 | THE THIRD SUNDAY IN LENT

The third covenant in this year’s Lenten readings is the central one of Israel’s history: the gift of the law to those God freed from slavery. The commandments begin with the statement that because God alone has freed us from the powers that oppressed us, we are to let nothing else claim first place in our lives. When Jesus throws the merchants out of the temple, he is defending the worship of God alone and rejecting the ways commerce and profit-making can become our gods. The Ten Commandments are essential to our baptismal call: centered first in God’s liberating love, we strive to live out justice and mercy in our communities and the world.

Download the bulletin HERE
Download a children's page HERE
february 28, 2021 | The second sunday in lent

The second covenant in this year’s Lenten readings is the one made with Abraham and Sarah: God’s promise to make them the ancestors of many, with whom God will remain in everlasting covenant. Paul says this promise comes to all who share Abraham’s faith in the God who brings life into being where there was no life. We receive this baptismal promise of resurrection life in faith. Sarah and Abraham receive new names as a sign of the covenant, and we too get new identities in baptism, as we put on Christ.

Download the bulletin HERE
Download a children's page HERE
february 21, 2021 | the first sunday in lent

On Ash Wednesday the church began its journey toward baptismal immersion in the death and resurrection of Christ. This year, the Sundays in Lent lead us to focus on five covenants God makes in the Hebrew Scriptures and to use them as lenses through which to view baptism. The baptismal covenant is made with us individually, but the new life we are given in baptism is for the sake of the whole world.

Download the bulletin HERE
Download a children's page HERE
february 17, 2021 | Ash Wednesday

On Ash Wednesday we begin our forty-day journey toward Easter with a day of fasting and repentance. Marking our foreheads with dust, we acknowledge that we die and return to the earth. At the same time, the dust traces the life-giving cross indelibly marked on our foreheads at baptism. While we journey through Lent to return to God, we have already been reconciled to God through Christ. We humbly pray for God to make our hearts clean while we rejoice that “now is the day of salvation.” Returning to our baptismal call, we more intentionally bear the fruits of mercy and justice in the world.

Download the bulletin HERE