Sister Sara Says

In my professional life I have worked in three fields, bill collection (gross), ELL education, and church work. I love church work. It is the most rewarding, challenging, inspiring, and fulfilling profession I can imagine. As with any profession we have busy seasons, collectors have the end of the month, educators have testing periods and end of terms, and church workers have…

Holy week is the time we celebrate what makes us Christians from Palm Sunday to Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, to Easter. I’m not going into an explanation of what Holy Week is here but if you need further definition google Holy Week Explanation, and you’ll find plenty of information from all kinds of denominations.

Here is what our Holy Week schedule looks like in my town.

Sunday: Palm Sunday Celebration – Children sing in church, Choir Cantata, Potluck luncheon after Church followed by an Easter egg hunt.

Monday: 12pm Service and lunch at the Baptist Church

Tuesday: 12pm Service and lunch at the Presbyterian Church

Wednesday: 12pm Service and lunch at the Methodist Church

Thursday: 12pm Service and lunch at the Assembly of God Church followed by the Maundy Thursday Service at 6pm

Friday: 12pm Service only at the Independent Christian Church (because many fast on Good Friday so we don’t eat lunch together).

Sunday: Easter Sunrise service at 6:30 am followed by Breakfast, 8:30 service, Sunday school and 11am service.

Needless to say the week is jam packed and full of community activities and the emotional roller coaster of celebrating Jesus’ triumphant entrance into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, to his betrayal on Thursday, death on Friday, and Resurrection on Sunday. Sometimes though, it can be a long way down from that euphoric sensation back to our regular lives.

It seems a long way from Easter Sunday to Monday morning. We clean up the residue of easter goodies, take the lilies off the altar, and eat leftovers for days. But we quickly come off that high and back to the real world. We stop celebrating the Risen Christ, the one who claims victory over death and offers us grace we can never earn. We become content to occasionally remember that Jesus died for us, so we should be grateful, but we pack away our Alleluia voices for another year.

What if we celebrated the Risen Christ every day? What if we recognized that the Risen Lord is part of God’s plan to begin to put the pieces of brokenness back together, and that we are a continuous part of that redemptive work in the world? If we shared not only the good news that Jesus died for our neighbor but he also conquered death because God is bigger than even death itself.

So this year, rejoice with me in the knowledge that we serve not only the Jesus on the cross, but the Risen Christ. He is Risen Indeed! ALLELUIA!