A Pilgrimage through Holy Week

 Holy Week, the final week of Lent, is our journey to the Cross with Jesus.  Holy Week allows us to participate in the unfolding drama of our Redemption and New Life brought to us in Christ.  The journey is marked with special days of devotion and fasting that point us forward to the great Resurrection celebration on Easter Sunday.  Our Holy Week journey begins on Palm Sunday.

 Palm Sunday

Through our liturgy, we join the crowd celebrating Jesus’ Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem, waving our palm branches and crying, “Hosanna!”  But quickly the celebratory atmosphere changes as we, along with the crowd, turn against Jesus and reject Him because we realize He is not the Messiah we are wanting or expecting.  The service goes on to prepare us for what lies ahead on Good Friday by our first recitation for the week of The Passion, the “Old, Old Story” of the suffering and crucifixion of Jesus read from one of the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark or Luke).

 Scripture records that Jesus went on from the Triumphal Entry on Palm Sunday to spend the early days of Holy Week teaching in the Temple.  His teachings fuel the growing enmity between Him and the religious authorities who secretly plot ways to eliminate this itinerant rabbi.

 Maundy Thursday

This is Jesus’ last evening before His arrest and crucifixion.  On this night we gather to celebrate the Passover Meal with Jesus and His disciples in an upper room of a home in Jerusalem.  During this time with His disciples, Jesus commands both them and us to do two things.  First, He commands that we love others as He has loved us (John 13:34).  To love is to serve, and Jesus demonstrates this by washing His disciples’ feet.  We, like Peter, are uncomfortable with our Lord washing our feet, but perhaps we feel even more uncomfortable when He commands us to do the same thing for each other.

Secondly, as Jesus celebrates the Passover Meal with His disciples, He infuses this sacred observance with new meaning by indicating that He Himself will be the Passover Lamb who is to be sacrificed for us all.  The Passover becomes not only what it has always been, a remembrance of the saving acts of God in delivering Israel from the bondage in Egypt, but it becomes a memorial to Jesus and His work on the Cross, which is the culmination and pinnacle of Salvation History.  Through Jesus’ “Real Presence” in the consecrated bread and wine, Jesus promises to be with us always. 

Maundy Thursday comes from the Latin word “mandatum” which means “command.”  At the Maundy Thursday service, we are obedient in following both of our Lord’s commands to serve each other, signified by the washing of each other’s feet, and to participate in the wonderful mystery we know as the Lord’s Supper.

 Good Friday

We are there as Jesus stumbles along the road through Jerusalem to Golgotha carrying His Cross.  Crowds jeering!  Whips cracking!  Calvary looming ahead!  We cannot help but remember the old spiritual hymn, “Were You There When They Crucified My Lord?”

It is the tradition of many Christians on this day to walk “The Way of the Cross” with Jesus, also known as “The Stations of the Cross.”  Early Christians who made their pilgrimage to Jerusalem would walk along the route Jesus took as He bore His Cross to Calvary.  When access to the Holy Land became limited following the Muslim conquest of the Middle East, churches in Europe would place “Stations” along the walls of their parish church commemorating the events of Jesus’ journey to the Cross. This became an alternate way the people could walk The Way of the Cross.

Here at Holy Trinity on Good Friday, we walk to The Way of the Cross with Jesus.    We gather at noon in the church and, using the paintings on the walls of the nave, move from prayer station to prayer station, event to event, until we come to Calvary with Jesus. 

 At our Good Friday Liturgy in the evening, we once again read The Passion Story, as we did on Palm Sunday, except this time from St. John’s Gospel.  After special prayers, known as the Solemn Collects, a wooden cross is brought into the sanctuary of the church.  We will then have the opportunity to symbolically take our sins, burdens and worries to the Cross of Christ. We have in the past done this by writing them on a slip of paper and nailing them to the wooden cross that has been brought into the Sanctuary.

Holy Saturday

1 Peter 3:19 tells us that on Holy Saturday Jesus "went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison.” This is known as the “Harrowing of Hell” when the proclamation of the Gospel is made to those who had not and will not otherwise hear the saving message of the Gospel.  But for you who walked with Jesus through the events of this week, watching as He was crucified on Friday, Saturday is a day of prayer and contemplation of what God in Christ has done for us.  Knowing the rest of the story, we wait expectantly for its fruition on Easter morning.

 The Great Vigil of Easter

In the 2000 years since these events of Holy Week, we have learned what it means to wait for the Day of the Resurrection with joyful expectation.  After sundown we gather to participate in what has become known as The Great Vigil of Easter.  In the early centuries of the Church, this was done with prayers, Scripture readings, singing, baptisms, and holding vigil throughout the night until dawn, at which time the first Eucharist of Easter would be celebrated.  The Scriptures read and expounded upon through the night would recall the mighty saving acts of God that culminate in the glorious event of Easter Morning. 

 On this night we also hold vigil, but in a more abbreviated manner.  We begin by commemorating the “Light of Christ” that has come into the world with the lighting of the Paschal Candle.  We read Scripture, say and renew our baptismal covenant with God, and then conclude by celebrating the first Eucharist of Easter. Following the Eucharist, many churches process into the parish hall for an “Agape Feast,” a celebration of the Risen Christ who has secured for us a place at the “Great Banquet Feast of the Lamb.”

 Easter Sunday

 This is the Feast Day of the Lord’s Resurrection, the single greatest celebration of the Christian year and the event to which all of Lent and Holy Week has been pointing.  Easter is a celebration of the wonders of the Paschal Mystery, which is that Jesus has overcome death and opened the gates of Heaven for all who choose to walk through.  

Alleluia! Alleluia!
 

The Reverend Rob Hartley, Anglican Church of the Holy Trinity, North Augusta, Lent, 2012