The Rhythm of the Passion

It is another blessed Holy Week. It was not until I was a teenager and getting serious about playing piano and organ for church and directing choirs that I came to appreciate the rhythm of the liturgical year.

Each year the congregation was led through the days of Holy Week to experience the events and emotions of Jesus, the disciples, and the people of the day. It was this experiential element, not just a remembering of the days or a retelling of the events through Scripture -- the actual experiencing of the emotions of Holy Week -- that was so powerful and engaging.

Each year we experienced the great arc of those days -- the joy, pomp, and celebration of Palm Sunday; the solemn mystery of Maundy Thursday Holy Communion and the humble service that accompanied it through Jesus' act of washing the disciples' feet; the loss of hope and utter sense of failure as well as fear for our safety that came on Good Friday; the quiet reflection of Holy Saturday; and then the explosive celebration of Easter. We did it every year with music, drama, decoration. We taught it to the children. We invited the world outside the church to experience it with us.

Perhaps most important of all, we did it by giving each day its own integrity. We did not offer Easter musicals on Palm Sunday. We did not include the crucifixion on Maundy Thursday. We did not have Communion on Good Friday. And we did not have Easter egg hunts for the kids on Holy Saturday. To do those things was to confuse the message, to distort the biblical story. It was important to commemorate the entire Passion story and to experience all the emotions that came with it, but to do so in their proper sequence and time.

May it be so once again this Holy Week in all our congregations.