Why Go to Holy Week?

by Nancy Higgins

We have been challenged to identify where we see or feel God at work in our lives, and I feel that presence most closely during Holy Week.

I'll admit that my first time to attend the Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Vigil services came as a result of being in a choir. However, I discovered how easy it was to really understand what Jesus went through, and His sacrifice for me in these 3 days. 

On Maundy Thursday we hear that Jesus washed His disciples feet. What an amazing act of love. I can feel that love when someone else washes my feet. Even if I have my hands washed, the love of one Christian for another comes through. 

Later in the service, when the altar is stripped, the nakedness of the altar is shocking. It make me even more aware that the next day Christ will die for my sins. We follow the Light of Christ to the memorial garden, and then go home to think about what will happen on Friday.

Good Friday is solemn, as those of us who have experienced death of a loved one know. But as Christians, we know that the next night will be a celebration. And that is what Easter VIgil is. We start in the Memorial Garden where we left Christ, but now we know the tomb is empty. Joy abounds.

I invite you to come and share with fellow Christian the love and sacrifice of our Lord. And please join with me on Easter shouting Alleluia Jesus is Alive.

Have you ever felt that you were walking with Jesus through this time?

Where is God When You Feel Helpless?

by Betsy Veneziano, as told to Leanne Shawler

My Dad was on home hospice this past summer. He lives in Maine. I had already seen him a couple of times in 2011 but I was waiting for the call that the end was near so I could go back to Maine.

The night my Mom called me and said that the hospice nurses had noticed some change and they thought that the end was near -- that was the exact same day Hurricane Irene kicked up and all flights to the east coast were canceled.

I couldn’t get a flight for five days. 

It had always been in the back of my mind to wonder how long it would take to get back if there was an emergency. If it happened in the winter, there is always the snow and getting back to Maine then is horrible. If he passes away in the summer, no problem.

Who would’ve thought that a hurricane would affect Maine?

I couldn’t get a flight. I felt extremely frustrated and helpless because there was not a darn thing I could do to get there.

I also had this nagging in my head. I was really bothered by the fact that no clergy person had been to visit Dad. My Mom was an every Sunday type of person, but he didn’t go to church. He was always willing to help out, especially with carpentry. If the old rundown church needed work he was there to work on projects.

It’s a small town, so the clergy person at the Congregational church knows my family and everyone knows everybody. 

But nobody had visited him, which bothered me very much, because when I’m on my death bed, somebody better be praying over me!

I couldn’t go in person, but this was one thing I could do. So I called the minister of the Congregational church and asked her why she hadn’t been to see him and if she would go and see him.

She was so nice.  The reason she hadn’t been was because she’d been waiting to be asked, knowing that my Mom was a very private person.  So, a miscommunication. 

I said to her, “I know my Dad never went to church,” and she interrupted me. “Oh, he went to church. He just went when no one else was there.” 

She went to see him, read him some scriptures and prayed with him. I think she gave him what he needed to let go. She thanked him for all his work and how much the church had appreciated his time and talents ... and he died that night.

I felt so good that she was able to make that visit for me, just in time. Maybe the nagging to contact her was God letting me know that Dad needed something.

How has God answered your prayer when you’ve felt frustrated and helpless?

How Do You See Our Sunday Liturgy?

by Leanne Shawler

"The gifts of God for the people of God" is said right before we receive communion in at Good Sam. It's an Episcopal Church tradition that I'm sure is not unique to my church.

Communion, or Eucharist.

It's not a big leap to eucharisteo, especially when the liturgy leading to the actual distribution of communion is called "the Great Thanksgiving." Jesus's Last Supper is one of the key images that Ann Voskamp uses in her book to illustrate eucharisteo.

The whole service is a thanksgiving: preparing ourselves to be present with God ("cleanse the thoughts of our hearts..."), remembering how God has always been a part of our story (the readings from the Old and New Testaments) and giving thanks, giving thanks.

Giving thanks for a God who became incarnate, a God who took our sufferings, our wrong-doings onto Himself, out of all time and in all times, and died to give us salvation.

How could we not give thanks?

Thinking back, I'm astonished that I ever thought my church's liturgy was dull. That's the hazard of growing up in the church, I guess. You never think through to the power of what's happening -- and are surprised when you feel the uplifting Holy Spirit.

It should be like that from beginning to end, not just when I'm transported by singing a hymn, or by an isolated moment...

Every word. Is thanks.

How do you see our liturgy, our Sunday service?

(reprinted, slightly edited, from Leanne's personal blog, Provoking Beauty, with permission.)