Easter, Holy Week and especially the Great Three Days (Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and the Easter Vigil) form the pivot around which the Christian year turns. As long as I can remember, Easter has meant new clothes and flowers and eggs and candy. As I grew, it came also to include a deeper understanding of the narrative that underlay the festivities. The more I understood, the more I lost myself and found myself in that narrative. Take a moment to recall with me your memories of Holy Week services.

Palm Sunday in my memory was all joyous parade, waving palms and shouting hosanna. Only later did I come to see it as a symbol of human shallowness and misunderstanding. As I became able to appreciate irony, I could better appreciate Palm Sunday.

As I got older, I began to attend the other observances during Holy Week. In part, I attended more services because I was in the choir. This is a good reason for young people to be in the choir – they become exposed to the full range of Christian worship and liturgy. I could never figure out what was “good” about Good Friday when I attended the service as a child. The service seemed so bleak and so sad. Again, as I grew I came to understand my own sin and brokenness as part of the “sin-sick world” that crucified our Lord. Now I could participate in the fear and the waiting – what had we done and what would God do? And so the layers of meaning for the Good Friday worship grew and deepened.

I didn’t begin attending Maundy Thursday services until I was an adult. At first I was put off by the intimacy of footwashing, the bleakness of the stripping of the altar. Now I see the Maundy Thursday service as a kind of a response to Palm Sunday. Palm Sunday tells us the Messiah the people had in mind -- a hero, a warrior king who would kick out the Romans. The Messiah of Maundy Thursday is the Messiah God had in mind, a servant, humble and loving. The contrast illustrates the gulf between us and the Kingdom of Heaven.

It was only when I began seminary that I came to see the Easter Vigil as the crown jewel of the Great Three Days. More than any other observance, for me, the Vigil captures the experience of the early church. It traces the despair and the hope of the disciples that Holy Saturday. Robbed of their Messiah, hunted by Rome, left to their own devices, they sat in the dark, recounting the promises of God and praying for deliverance. Then relying on those promises, they baptized, trusting God to fulfill God’s part. In a blaze of light, God seizes the Victory, conquering death and offering Resurrection life to those Christ has claimed as his own.

I hope that as you’ve read this you have been thinking about your own Holy Week experiences – I’d love to hear them! My point is that like a beautiful and complex artistic creation, the observances of Holy Week offer something to every age. When we are young, Palm Sunday and Easter are feasts for the senses, with music and flowers, candy and new clothes. As we grow and mature, the days unfold and reveal more of themselves and the narrative of divine initiative and human response, from Palm Sunday to Maundy Thursday, from Good Friday to Easter Sunday. As we grow, Holy Week grows with us – we come to see that Easter is not complete without Good Friday and moving directly from Palm/Passion Sunday to Easter cuts short a personal and community journey.

Come to the observances of Holy Week and bring your children, so that by participating in the worship the Great Three Days, they can grow in their faith and find a place in the Story that is the narrative of Christ’s Victory and our hope.

Pastor Greg