Holy Week is soon upon us. It begins this coming Sunday, also known as Palm or Passion Sunday. When the worship service focuses on Jesus’ procession into Jerusalem when the crowds waved branches and shouted, “Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna!” When worship focuses on Passion Sunday the scriptures that are usually read on Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday and Good Friday are read. This has become the practice in some churches so that the institution of the Eucharist (Last Supper) and the crucifixion are not missed and we simply jump from one triumphal entry to another: the triumph of the resurrection.
Just as our celebration of Christmas affirms that God took on human flesh in the birth of Jesus, so our celebration of Holy Week affirms that God has defeated sin and death through the crucifixion and resurrection. Paul writes so eloquently in his letter to the Romans, chapter 8:
“What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? God who did not withhold God’s own Son but gave him up for all of us, how will God not with him also give us everything else? … Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will affliction or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword? No, in all these things we are more than victorious through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
As difficult as it may seem and as hard as we often avoid looking at the cross, it is there that we see God’s love for us most clearly. And at Easter we can see how nothing in this life is beyond repair, restoration and even resurrection.
My prayer for us is that we truly celebrate a Holy week. That we live into the story that is the foundation of our faith and that we strive to make that story come alive once more in our own lives and life together. May it be so. Amen.
(Rev. Dr.) Candace R. Shultis
Gap Pastor
Read Full Newsletter HERE: https://conta.cc/4lUWaXB