March 31, 2021 – Click here to listen
We are fast approaching the most important day of the year and it’s not about Easter bunnies laying brightly colored chicken eggs and having little rug rats running around everywhere to look for them, (as fun as that might be.)
While Easter Sunday remains the most celebrated Christian holiday worldwide, the week leading up to it sits as a highly important time as well. With the arrival of Palm Sunday last Sunday, Holy Week officially began. Palm Sunday is the day where Christians celebrate the arrival of Jesus Christ in Jerusalem prior to his crucifixion.
In addition to Palm Sunday, Holy Week also includes Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Sunday; these are vitally important dates in the Christian calendar since each hold unique patterns of celebration and worship. Maundy Thursday – also referred to as Holy Thursday – helps Christians honor the Last Supper before Jesus’ crucifixion. The Thursday before Easter is known as either
Maundy Thursday, or Holy Thursday. (Maundy is derived from the Latin word for “command,” and refers to Jesus’ commandment to the disciples to “Love one another as I have loved you.) Various churches celebrating Holy Thursday offer special communion services on Holy Thursday for those interested.
A day of mourning and penance, Good Friday comes two days before Easter and is celebrated as the day Jesus died on the cross. In Matthew 27:32-61, the accounts of Jesus’ crucifixion, death and burial are laid out in scripture and this week would be a good time to review them. A sample:
As they were going out, they met a man from Cyrene, named Simon, and they forced him to carry the cross. They came to a place called Golgotha (which means “the place of the skull”). There they offered Jesus wine to drink, mixed with gall; but after tasting it, he refused to drink it. When they had crucified him, they divided up his clothes by casting lots. And sitting down, they kept watching over him there. Above his head they placed the written charge against him: this is Jesus, the king of the Jews . . .
And of course after His death, Jesus laid in the tomb and then was gloriously resurrected on Easter Sunday. And with that my good friends, eternal life is now assured for those who love Him and follow Him. I urge you to think of the crucifixion of Christ and His resurrection this week. Death was defeated and reunification with God in heaven was made possible. All of our sins were atoned for by the suffering of Jesus on the cross.
This beautiful description seemed apt for this post. I hope you enjoy it, because it puts simply what I struggle to say. This is why we celebrate this week,
“We give glory to you, Lord, who raised up your cross to span the jaws of death like a bridge by which souls might pass from the region of the dead to the land of the living . . . You are incontestably alive. Your murderers sowed your living body in the earth as farmers sow grain, but it sprang up and yielded an abundant harvest of men raised from the dead.” – Saint Ephrem the Syrian
Ephesians 2:8
“For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God.”