April 2009
Every year, worship planners must figure out what the itinerary for Holy Week, those days between Palm Sunday and Easter, will look like in the church. The task is to bring folks from the excitement of Palm Sunday’s “Hallelujah!” when Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey, through the throes of his pain and passion of his last week on earth, to the glorious wonder of Christ’s resurrection on Easter morning.
Anticipating that people’s lives are too busy to come back to church mid-week for another service, many churches try to divide the pre-Easter Sunday between the palm welcome and the agonizing crucifixion, all in 60 minutes. What you end up with is emotional whiplash.
Too much really important stuff happened during that week, and the theological and emotional significance takes time to soak in to really become part of our spiritual journey. Other churches have been known to skip the midweek destinations all together, believing that they’re too depressing. Better, in our already anxious times, to keep the worship celebrations cheerful and positive. So they leapfrog from happy Sunday to happy Sunday, with just a footnote about the intensity of emotion and raw passion that Jesus experienced in those days in between.
Well, friends, here’s the deal. There just isn’t any way to get to the joyous destination of Easter, if you don’t stop and experience Good Friday, dwelling in the how and why of Jesus’ arrest, trial, and death. You have to travel with the disciples and his mother to the foot of the cross and hear the agony of his whispered prayers. You have to sit with the sin that kept Jesus on that cross in order to feel the giddy rush of freedom offered by the empty tomb.
Oh sure, if you travel directly to Easter morning, you can still enjoy the flowers, sing the old traditional hymns, and wear your new bonnet. But the goose-bumpity glory and power of the empty Easter tomb in rooted in that wretched Friday cross. If you don’t hang out there first, it will be like watching somebody else’s travel slides instead of experiencing the texture and tastes of the journey for yourself.
I’ll see you at the cross,
Pastor Sharon
Every year, worship planners must figure out what the itinerary for Holy Week, those days between Palm Sunday and Easter, will look like in the church. The task is to bring folks from the excitement of Palm Sunday’s “Hallelujah!” when Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey, through the throes of his pain and passion of his last week on earth, to the glorious wonder of Christ’s resurrection on Easter morning.
Anticipating that people’s lives are too busy to come back to church mid-week for another service, many churches try to divide the pre-Easter Sunday between the palm welcome and the agonizing crucifixion, all in 60 minutes. What you end up with is emotional whiplash.
Too much really important stuff happened during that week, and the theological and emotional significance takes time to soak in to really become part of our spiritual journey. Other churches have been known to skip the midweek destinations all together, believing that they’re too depressing. Better, in our already anxious times, to keep the worship celebrations cheerful and positive. So they leapfrog from happy Sunday to happy Sunday, with just a footnote about the intensity of emotion and raw passion that Jesus experienced in those days in between.
Well, friends, here’s the deal. There just isn’t any way to get to the joyous destination of Easter, if you don’t stop and experience Good Friday, dwelling in the how and why of Jesus’ arrest, trial, and death. You have to travel with the disciples and his mother to the foot of the cross and hear the agony of his whispered prayers. You have to sit with the sin that kept Jesus on that cross in order to feel the giddy rush of freedom offered by the empty tomb.
Oh sure, if you travel directly to Easter morning, you can still enjoy the flowers, sing the old traditional hymns, and wear your new bonnet. But the goose-bumpity glory and power of the empty Easter tomb in rooted in that wretched Friday cross. If you don’t hang out there first, it will be like watching somebody else’s travel slides instead of experiencing the texture and tastes of the journey for yourself.
I’ll see you at the cross,
Pastor Sharon
