Making Connections
Moving through the ritualized events of Holy Week can, at times, feel silly. Although central to our identity as Christians, stepping outside of time in order to shout “Hosanna!” during the triumphal entry or “Crucify him!” during the trial while, back in the real world, we grapple with news of mass shootings and racially-motivated murders can be disorienting. What are we doing when we gather for or participate online in liturgies that seem to have no connection with our day to day lives?
In a sense, however, the rituals associated with the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus are even more real than what takes place all around us every day because they help us make sense of who we are in deep and timeless ways. When we experience Holy Week again this year, we are not reenacting what took place in Jerusalem so long ago. You will see no stand-in for Jesus. Our procession on Palm Sunday, our gathering on Maundy Thursday, our commemoration on Good Friday—at no point will we pretend that we are doing again what has already been accomplished.
Instead, our liturgies help us confront and remember those moments from the past that are most responsible for shaping who we are as people of faith. More precisely, this annual pilgrimage through Holy Week forms us again as a faith-oriented community—a people who can best find their own place in the universe by seeing their place in salvation history. This holiest of weeks helps us orient ourselves to the world through the lens of faith as we take from it another encounter with our truest selves and God’s fullest love.
The evil that led to the death of God’s Son still infects the world, yet God’s saving love has triumphed over it once and for all in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Both of those things are true for us in ways that today’s headlines alone cannot convey. We cannot weigh in the balance of secular history all of the good and all of the bad in the world and have confidence that the good will win out, yet, in the Paschal mystery, we encounter again that truth which transcends a purely human history. God’s abiding presence in our lives means that love will win and, indeed, has already won. Again this year, as much as ever in our lives, we seek an experience of that deepest truth.
In every generation, in every year, in every moment, we experience the consequences of sin and the reality of God’s love. The challenges we face can be global or specific to our context. They can be gut-wrenching or merely unpleasant. Inevitably, they distract us from our conviction that God’s love is bigger, more powerful, and more significant than the internal and external forces that seek to distort that love. In this time of human history, when we are largely isolated from our networks of support and our community of faith, it feels especially easy to let those distractions drown out the constant yet gentle message of hope that God has offered God’s people throughout history. That is why, for me, our shared journey through Holy Week is particularly important this year.
Join us on that journey. I invite you to think of this not as an opportunity to leave behind the challenges of the world but to bring them fully with you into this timeless practice. Allow this spiritual pilgrimage to be a reminder to you that the victory God has won on our behalf is transforming all that is broken in the world into the wholeness that God intends and that that transformation is accomplished not without struggle but through the very cross of Christ, which we bear in his name.
Yours Faithfully,
Evan
Holy Week Schedule & Reservation Links
PALM SUNDAY
Palm Sunday
March 28, 2021
7:30 a.m.
Eucharist in Church
8:30 a.m.
Procession & Eucharist starting outside Welcome Center
11:00 a.m.
Procession and Eucharist starting outside Welcome Center
5:30 p.m.
Evensong
No Reservation Needed
MAUNDY THURSDAY
Maundy Thursday
April 1, 2021
7:00 p.m.
Eucharist & Stripping of Altar in Church
GOOD FRIDAY
Good Friday
April 2, 2021
12:00 p.m.
Good Friday Liturgy in Church
7:00 p.m.
Virtual Choral Performance - Stabat Mater
All Day
Church open all day for people to walk Stations of the Cross
No Reservation Needed
