Dear Church Family,
Holy Week, the week that marks Jesus’ final days leading to the cross, begins this Sunday with Palm Sunday when we celebrate Jesus triumphal entry to Jerusalem. We will sing our own hosannahs and our children will bring palm fronds to the front of the church as we remember those who joyfully shouted “Hosannah in the highest! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!” and laid their cloaks and palm branches along Jesus’ path.
On Thursday night, we will gather at 6:30 to remember Jesus’ final supper with his disciples where he instituted the Lord’s Supper, washed his disciples’ feet, and commanded all of us who follow him to love one another just as he has loved us.
Then, on Friday night, we will gather at 7:00 pm for our yearly Good Friday Tenebrae service. This service is marked by music and scripture and the growing darkness of nightfall as we remember Jesus’ death upon the cross.
All of these services help us to remember the entire path that Jesus walked and the depth of his love and sacrifice. Walking through each of these moments of Holy Week helps to prepare our hearts for the great joy of Easter Sunday when we remember that Jesus was raised and death was overcome.
I do hope that you will be able to join us for these services. However, whether you can join us in person or not, I do want to encourage you to take time this week to journey with Jesus. One way to do that would be to read scripture’s account of Jesus’ final days. You can find this account in any gospel, but below you will find appropriate passages to read each day from Matthew’s Gospel.
Sunday: Matthew 21-22
Monday: Matthew 23
Tuesday: Matthew 24
Wednesday: Matthew 25
Thursday: Matthew 26
Friday: Matthew 27:1-56
Saturday: Matthew 27:57-66
Sunday: Matthew 28
Another way to journey with Jesus would be to focus your prayers on some of the things that Jesus did, experienced, or endured in his final week. Those prayers could look something like the following:
Sunday: Pray for a spirit of genuine and unfettered worship, just like those who shouted hosannah before Jesus, their Lord.
Monday: Just as Jesus turned over the tables of the money changers so that it might be a house of prayer for all people again, pray for Jesus to reveal if there are any places in your life or our common life together that we need his holy disruption to clear barriers out of the way.
Tuesday: Pray for the heart of a disciple who is ready to listen to and live out Jesus’ teachings, many of which were given in his final days and hours.
Wednesday: Search your own heart and life for the places that you need Jesus’ strength so that you don’t succumb to the temptations of betrayal or denial to which Judas and Peter succumbed.
Thursday: Pray for a renewed and deepened communion with God, for the willingness to make space and time to abide with God, and for the eyes to see that God is already abiding with you.
Friday: As hard as it is to behold, ponder the pain and the agony of the cross, giving thanks for the depths of God’s love, giving thanks for the forgiveness of sins, and giving thanks for the grace of life eternal given so freely.
Saturday: Ponder the bewilderment of the disciples who had just lost everything and didn’t know where anything would land for them. Pray for anyone who is in a liminal space where life has been disrupted but has not yet landed back to any sense of normal again. Pray for all of those who bear the heavy grief of loss.
Sunday: Rejoice and give thanks that the grave could not hold Jesus, that the life of God conquered death, and that this power of new life lives in us.
I pray that we all have a transformational Holy Week and joyful Easter!
Peace,
John
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