April 6, 2022
Holy Week. It is a familiar, but unusual, pairing of words. What makes one week more holy than another, after all? The Hebrew scriptures are consistent insisting that some times are more holy than others. They proclaimed that the Sabbath, from sunset Friday until sunset Saturday, was a holy space in time. God’s peace, or Shalom, was present on that day in ways that God’s peace was not present on other days. Therefore, people were to live differently that day, to keep the day holy. Christians, who were all initially Jewish, preserved this understanding of sacred time, but shifted it from the Sabbath to the day after the Sabbath, celebrating a holy day of resurrection each Lord’s Day (or Sunday).
After many years, Christians assigned one particular Sunday as the resurrection Sunday, what they called the Pasch (or Passover), and we call in English, Easter. The celebration of this Sunday in Jerusalem in the early centuries was quite unique, as this was where the death and resurrection of our Lord took place. It was both a Jewish and Christian practice to prepare for a holy day with prayer and fasting, but in Jerusalem they prayed and fasted in the very places where Jesus was that week according to the gospels.
Holy Week is an “octave” that is a period of eight days, from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday. In this octave we follow Jerusalem’s ancient practice of preparing for Easter by participating in telling the story. Though we are not there in the places where the events of the first holy week took place, we continue tell the week’s story sequentially, from the hosannas of Palm Sunday, through the betrayal of Maundy Thursday, to the crucifixion on Good Friday. All this as part of our holy week of preparation for our most holy day, Easter.
This is my first year of being with you physically during Holy Week, and so this will be new to us both. We will celebrate Palm Sunday this Sunday complete with a procession with palm branches by our children. Maundy Thursday we will gather in our Fellowship Hall at 6:30 pm for a simple meal as a prelude to our service in the Fellowship Hall. Donation baskets will be on the tables to offset the cost of the meal. We will celebrate communion at our tables, and offer an opportunity for you to have your feet washed in the service. Our Good Friday service will be in our worship space at 7pm. It will include the oldest known continuing practice in Christian worship, the reading of our Lord’s Passion from John’s Gospel, with the congregation voicing the words of the crowd.
On Easter Sunday, all heaven will break loose. We begin with a light breakfast in our Fellowship Hall, serving from 8:30 to 9:30 am. Our Easter celebration will have two very common practices, but maybe not common at First Covenant. The first is we will celebrate the baptism of Honour Elizabeth Steele, on the most traditional day of baptism for western churches. We will also celebrate “the joyful feast of the people of God.” Meaning, we will gather around the Table to celebrate our on-going communion with the living God through our risen Lord. And as a finale, will have cake to celebrate Honour’s baptism—and the gift of new life that we all share—at coffee afterwards.
I ask that you join me in prayer for each one of the four services of these eight days. I especially ask that you pray for those visitors who might be joining us on for these services. I further encourage you to invite people you know who might enjoy, or even need, to spend some of this Holy Week with us.
We have been blessed on our Lenten journey by the generous efforts of so many who have contributed to our reading of the Psalms. Thank you to you all. May God continue to bless us in the week that is before us, through our meditations on the psalms, prayers, and contributions to the services of this Holy Week. And might we be the blessing to the world God has called us to be.
A blessed and holy week to you all.
Pastor Todd