It
is Tuesday in Holy Week, toward the destination of Good Friday and
Easter Sunday. Sadly, for most Lutherans, it is just another week. We have
services every evening and a morning and afternoon through this week but
the pews will hardly be full. This year we compete not only against
work and school but against school break and the line of cars headed out
of town for recreational venues or visits with family. Perhaps it is
foolish to think that people are thinking of the events of this week of
weeks or that they should be keeping time with the sacred time of the
church year and its calendar of services. If they would, they would
hear the Passion from all the Gospels as well as the familiar events of
the Upper Room and Calvary. But Holy Week has become holy weak, a
shadow of its former self.
When I was in public school in a small town in Nebraska, the school
teachers shepherded the school children across the street to the
Augustana Lutheran Church building and each day during Holy Week one of
the pastors in town preached to the students. Illegal now and probably
not necessarily the best of ideas but it showed the devotion in this
week that extended past denominational barriers to unite a Christian
people in recalling and being renewed in the story of Jesus and His love
expressed in the events spanning from Palm Sunday to Easter.
We have a few faithful folks who try to get to as many services as they
can but most of our folks tend to pick one or perhaps two services of
Holy Week. I guess that some think I have become rather cranky and
sound like an old man trying to recreate his youth. That is really not
it at all. I wish only that at least once in their lives, Christians
might find the time for the full complement of services and experience
the riches of the liturgical offerings by which we make our way slowly
and deliberately to the cross and empty tomb.
Everywhere I have gone the full schedule of Holy Week services has been
added and that includes the Easter Vigil. In the 44 years I have been a
pastor, only a couple of times have there been no baptisms at the Vigil
and it has often been the occasion for adult baptisms. So, if you have
not spent much time in church during Holy Week, here is the
encouragement to make time, at least once, to be there for all the
services and to experience the riches of the church's liturgical
offerings as Holy Week makes its way from Hosannas to Alleluias.
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