Archive for April, 2012

Χριστός ἀνέστη! Ἀληθῶς ἀνέστη! Christ is risen! Truly, He is Risen!

Χριστὸς ἀνέστη ἐκ νεκρῶν,
θανάτῳ θάνατον πατήσας,
καὶ τοῖς ἐν τοῖς μνήμασι,
ζωὴν χαρισάμενος!
 
‎”Christ is risen from the dead,
Trampling down death by death,
And upon those in the tombs,
Bestowing life!”

The above words are the Paschal Troparion from the liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, first in Greek and then in English. This is sung every Easter in the Eastern Orthodox Church. My brothers in Christ have done an excellent job discussing the meaning of Easter in the past few weeks, and most of the things said apply also to Eastern Christians. So let us then focus on the differences between Eastern and Western Christians in regard to this feast, and let us begin by dispelling a common objection to the holiday: that of its pagan origins.

Isn’t Easter a pagan holiday?

This is a common objection to the celebration of Easter (and Christmas), even among some fundamental Western Christians. While there is somewhat of a valid argument as to the pagan origins of Christmas, there really isn’t one concerning Easter. The confusion lies in a heavily disputed comment made in 730 A.D. by St. Bede, an English monk and Christian historian. The comment concerns the origins of the name Easter, which St. Bede attributes to feasts dedicated to a fertility goddess named Eostre in the month of April that were celebrated in Nordic/Germanic culture. The problem with using this as justification for the pagan origins of Easter is that the Nordic/Germanic people were late converts to the Christian faith (late 6th century), and it is clear from history that the celebration of Easter was practiced by Christians as early as the second century. Christianity Today wrote a detailed historical analysis of Easter’s supposed pagan origins that is highly recommended for further information. The article goes to great lengths to demonstrate that it is highly unlikely that Easter comes from a pagan holiday.

But what about the Easter bunny and colored eggs? The Easter bunny comes from German legends, but the practice of coloring eggs is actually from Eastern Christianity, not from paganism. There are several legends about why Eastern Christians began coloring eggs, but what is clear is that Eastern Christians came to color eggs red in remembrance of Christ’s blood which was shed for us. Eastern Christians do not mingle cultural pagan customs such as the Easter bunny into their celebration of the liturgical feast.

Is the feast called Easter or Pascha?

For Eastern Christians, the title “Easter” has only recently begun to be used, and that only for convenience and ease of understanding as Eastern Christianity has spread to Western English-speaking countries. Since the times of the apostles and their direct disciples, Christians have called this holiday “Pascha,” from the Greek word Πάσχα meaning “Passover.” In the East, this holiday is clearly connected to the Jewish Passover. The Eucharist was instituted by our Lord on the Last Supper which was the Passover Seder meal. Scripture makes it clear that Jesus is our Paschal Lamb who takes away the sin of the world, defeating death and giving us life. The preferred and official title for the feast is Pascha in Eastern Christianity, as this has been the title of this feast in Christianity since the time of the apostles. In scripture we learn:

“I will pass through the land of Egypt in the same night, and I will attack all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both of humans and of animals, and on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment. I am the Lord. The blood [of the slain lamb] will be a sign for you on the houses where you are, so that when I see the blood I will pass over you, and this plague will not fall on you to destroy you when I attack the land of Egypt” (Exodus 12:12-13, NET, emphasis mine).
 
“God publicly displayed him at his death as the mercy seat accessible through faith. This was to demonstrate his righteousness, because God in his forbearance had passed over the sins previously committed. This was also to demonstrate his righteousness in the present time, so that he would be just and the justifier of the one who lives because of Jesus’ faithfulness” (Romans 3:25-26, NET, emphasis mine).

Just as God passed over the Israelites, sparing their firstborn sons when He saw the blood of the lambs on their doorposts in Egypt, God passed over our sins and did not spare the Paschal Lamb, His firstborn Son Jesus Christ. Hence we celebrate Pascha in remembrance of Passover and its fulfillment in Christ. Jesus demonstrated His victory over death by His resurrection three days later on Sunday morning. This is why the day of worship for Christians was changed from Saturday (the Jewish Sabbath) to Sunday.

Why do most Eastern Christians celebrate on a different day than Western Christians?

The simple answer is that the Eastern Orthodox Church uses the Julian calendar while the Western Church uses the Gregorian calendar. In any given year it can be celebrated one to five weeks after Western Easter (or sometimes on the same day, such as in 2011). But a little elaboration is in order. The Roman calendar was being exploited by priests in order to control politics, so Julius Caesar instituted the Julian calendar in 45 B.C. to put an end to this. The Julian calendar was still the dominant civic calendar when the dating of Pascha was decided at the first Ecumenical Council of Nicaea, and since the Eastern Orthodox do not believe that anything can be changed without the approval of the entire Church at an Ecumenical Council, the Julian calendar continued to be used as the liturgical calendar even after many Eastern nations adopted the Gregorian reform to their respective civic calendars. The Roman Catholic Church began using the Gregorian calendar for liturgical feasts in 1582 and Western Christianity followed suit.

In 1923, an Eastern Orthodox synod was held in Constantinople that proposed a revised Julian calendar which would account for some of the discrepancies between the dating of Eastern and Western Christian holidays. But this decision is not accepted by all Eastern Orthodox Christians and is not without controversy:

The synod, chaired by controversial Patriarch Meletius IV of Constantinople, and called Pan-Orthodox by its defenders, did not have representatives from the remaining Orthodox members of the original Pentarchy (the Patriarchate of Jerusalem, Antioch, and Alexandria) or from the largest Orthodox Church, the Russian Orthodox Church, then under persecution from the Bolsheviks, but only effective representation from the Patriarch of Constantinople and the Serbian Patriarch….
 
While the new calendar has been adopted by many of the smaller national churches, a majority of Orthodox Christians continue to adhere to the traditional Julian calendar, and there has been much acrimony between the two parties over the decades since the change, leading sometimes even to violence, especially in Greece.
 
Critics see the change in calendar as an unwarranted innovation, influenced by Western society. They say that no sound theological reason has been given for changing the calendar, that the only reasons advanced are social. The proposal for change was introduced by a Patriarch whose canonical status has been disputed and who was a Freemason.
 
The argument is also made that since the use of the Julian calendar was implicit in the decision of the First Ecumenical Council at Nicaea (325) which standardized the calculation of the date of Pascha (Easter), no authority less than an Ecumenical Council may change it. The adoption of a new calendar has broken the unity of the church, undoing the whole purpose of the council of Nicaea, so once again, “on the same day some should be fasting whilst others are seated at a banquet….”
 
Proponents also argue that the new calendar is somehow more “scientific”, but opponents argue that science is not the primary concern of the Church; rather, the Church is concerned with other-worldliness, with being “in the world, but not of it”, fixing the attention of the faithful on eternity. Scientifically speaking, neither the Gregorian calendar nor the new calendar is absolutely precise. This is because the solar year cannot be evenly divided into 24 hour segments. So any public calendar is imprecise; it is simply an agreed-upon designation of days.

Many English-speaking Eastern Orthodox churches in North America use the revised Julian calendar, but many who still retain the language and culture of their homeland (many Eastern Europeans) still use the old Julian calendar (they are called new calendarists and old calendarists, respectively – often used derogatorily by those who are of the opposite persuasion). It is the position of most new calendarists that the First Council of Nicaea did not actually specify that the Julian calendar had to be used, it was simply used since it was the dominant civic calendar at the time, thus strict adherence to the original Julian calendar is not necessary for Eastern Orthodox Christian unity. Some Eastern Christians have even switched to using the Gregorian calendar and follow the dates of Western liturgical feasts.

How do Eastern Orthodox Christians celebrate Pascha?

Detailed accounts and videos of the Pascha celebration exist, so this will only be a brief (and thus incomplete) summary. Eastern Orthodox Christians gather slightly before midnight on Great and Holy Saturday; the priest will remove the burial sheet (winding sheet) from the “tomb” and place it on the altar table where it will remain for 40 days until the Ascension (leave-taking) of Christ. The congregation will leave the building at midnight singing and process around the building. Then before the closed doors of the sanctuary the priest will announce the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, often by reading the Gospel concerning the empty tomb. At this point the Paschal Troparion quoted earlier will be sung. There is then continual singing and proclamation of “Christ is risen!” To which the people of God reply, “Truly, He is Risen!” (as was stated in the opening line of this post). This is often done in English, Greek, and/or any native languages of the congregation. The Paschal Homily of St. John Chrysostom is then read, inviting the people of God to forget their sins and fully join in the feast of the celebration of Christ’s resurrection. The Eucharist may be celebrated at this time, where God’s people partake of the Paschal Lamb. The Paschal Troparion is sung numerous times, then the beginning verses of Acts are read, followed by the beginning of St. John’s Gospel. The Divine Liturgy then follows, with the Paschal Troparion being sung continually throughout.

“The celebration of Easter in the Orthodox Church, therefore, is once again not merely an historical reenactment of the event of Christ’s Resurrection as narrated in the gospels. It is not a dramatic representation of the first Easter morning. There is no ‘sunrise service’ since the Easter Matins and the Divine Liturgy are celebrated together in the first dark hours of the first day of the week in order to give men the experience of the ‘new creation’ of the world, and to allow them to enter mystically into the New Jerusalem which shines eternally with the glorious light of Christ, overcoming the perpetual night of evil and destroying the darkness of this mortal and sinful world” (OCA website).

After Divine Liturgy, a large meal is celebrated as the family of God. Food is brought to be blessed by the priest, and the faithful break their fasting together. Not all Eastern Orthodox practice all of this the exact same way – this is a general outline of how the feast of Pascha is observed. It is a long night, beginning before midnight and extending into the early morning hours. Sometimes people leave and return later in the morning or afternoon for various aspects of the feast.

Every Sunday is Pascha

The final point that I’d like to share is that every Sunday is Pascha (Easter). The resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is the center of the Christian faith. St. Paul says that if Christ is not raised from the dead, then our preaching and faith are in vain (1 Corinthians 15:14). Jon did a great job establishing the centrality and reliability of the resurrection a few weeks ago. Because of Christ’s resurrection from the dead, Sunday came to be known as “the Lord’s Day,” which is symbolic of the first day of creation and the last day – or as it is called in Holy Tradition, the eighth day of the Kingdom of God. Every time we gather we proclaim that “Christ is risen!”

Χριστός ἀνέστη! Ἀληθῶς ἀνέστη! Christ is risen! Truly, He is Risen!

When I was in seminary, I took a class on Christian worship. I didn’t take it at the Baptist seminary I was attending. Instead, I got permission to take Worship with a personal friend who was far, far more liturgical than I was. I knew that my Baptist class would dig deep on the theological foundations of worship, I wanted something more. I wanted something deeper. I wanted to experience the historical worship of the church at my core. I wanted know what it means to feel worship.

Don’t get me wrong. I love Baptists. I still believe we are the most cerebral, most thoughtful group of scholars out there. But what I fear we miss is the heart and soul of what we study.

That class was my first exposure to the Church calendar – the cycle of birth, suffering, death, and life that played itself out every year. There was a time to feel the anticipation of Christmas. There was a time to put away at Lent. There was the burst of excitement that is Easter, and there was the humdrum of Ordinary Time. And then, there was Good Friday. The one day that encompassed it all.

Wendy, of course, knew that I was a Baptist, and so when I would submit worship service plans, she’d encourage me to make them in a way that my church would be able to use them. But then she assigned the final project. The assignment was to write up plans for five worship services. One for Palm Sunday, One for Easter, and three for Holy Week.

I had to call Wendy. “Wendy, you realize that my little Baptist church probably couldn’t even name three Holy Week services that weren’t Easter or Palm Sunday?”

“You don’t do the Great Vigil? That’s an amazingly Scripture-filled service!”

“I agree. More Scripture is read there than a lot of churches I know will preach in a month!”

“How about Maunday Thursday?”

“Well, I suppose I could do a Christian sedar. I could use that as a teaching about the Passover that Jesus was celebrating. My church will like that.”

“Ok. Do that. And then, I guess all you need is Good Friday.”

“Problem, Wendy. My church wouldn’t ever do Good Friday. Its just not their custom!”

“What do you mean they don’t do Good Friday? How can you possibly do Easter without Good Friday?”

How did I ever do Easter without Good Friday? That question haunted me for quite a while. Indeed, I probably didn’t get over that question until I, like Wendy, became an Episcopalian.

Oh, to be sure, I still love Easter. What Christian doesn’t feel a little stir when they gather in the church parking lot just before Sunrise, pulling out the hard, uncomfortable sitting chairs, waiting for the organist on the little portable piano to start tapping out “Up from the Grave He Arose!” (With a mighty triumph o’er his foes!) If you’re a Christian, you know that feeling of hope meeting reality on Resurrection morning. The Christ was was crucified is alive! We celebrate know that the victory is won – O grave, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting? It is a happy rebirth of all that we hold dear.

But without Good Friday, can we really say that?

You see, before you can celebrate the Resurrection, you must first mourn the death.

When I became an Episcopalian, I started seeing how we would have a simple reflection period on Good Friday. From noon until 3 – as Jesus was hanging on the cross. We put aside our busy schedules and simply sit in silence. Our rector will, every half hour, read a small meditation on what Christ did for us, but mostly, it is corporate silence. We are free to focus on just one thing – the depth of Jesus’ love.

That feeling, that experience, speaks to my heart in ways that are deeper than those thoughts which might fill my head. Sitting on that worn bench, the cerebrial thoughts can percolate down to my cardiac core. Realizing that the Messiah wasn’t engaged in some theological sophistry as the thorns pierced his brow or the whip lashed his back. Good Friday beckons me to contemplate not the theology but the physicality that he endured.

Before the Resurrection, there was death. His, mine, and ours.

As Christians we want to skip to the end so fast. Jesus is back! Jesus is Alive! Jesus is going to be our friend and be with us in heaven! What glorious news!

But how can we really appreciate how good that news is until we appreciate what our fate should have been.

We were the ones supposed to be on that cross. We were the ones who should have died. But Jesus took our place. He was mocked. He was beaten. He was stripped. He was forced to wear a crown of thorns. He was violated and crushed and bruised. All for us. All for me.

It was the ultimate act of love. There was no good feeling on the cross, but it was the ultimate act of love. As Johnny Hart, the late writer of the comic strip B.C. once wrote: “Why do we call Good Friday good? A term too oft misunderstood. You who were bought by the blood of his cross. You alone can call Good Friday Good.”

When we realize what was lost. When we realize what was bought. When we realize that the bleakness of Good Friday is all we had – only when we have internalized that everything truly was dead – only then can we truly celebrate Easter.

I’m writing this in the middle of March, so Alleluia’s and Gloria’s and Resurrections and Ascensions are the just pie in the sky nonsense and me and my billion strong Catholic cohort are lumbering through the lonely days of Lent, eagerly awaiting the promise of new life that comes at Easter.

What is Easter to a Catholic?

• It is a relief from the self-imposed and ecclesiastically imposed mandates of Lent.
• It is the end of the intensity of Holy Week
• It is the celebration commemorating Christ’s glorified walk with us.
• It is the time to mark the coming of the Holy Spirit on Our Lady and the Apostles and the beginning of the Church.

Moreover, it is a time to rejoice in the fact that even though Jesus rose into Heaven, He has left us a Helper, built us a Church and given us His mother.

If you’re not a Christian or not one of us who uses a fancy liturgical calendar then you may think that

Easter Bunny

is the holiday after

Not St. Patrick

which happened a few weeks ago and is gone until next year.  But, just as Christmas day is the beginning of the Christmas season, Easter Sunday is the beginning of the Easter Season. Likewise, both events are the ends of their respective seasons of preparation (Advent and Lent); seasons of joy after seasons of penitence.

After being on Christianity.SE for a while (only the robots signed up for the beta before me) I know I’m writing mainly to my Christian brothers who haven’t given much thought or may even be disdainful of marking times and seasons.  So, since I know I’m not writing to many Catholics who would find this extremely boring.  I’ll give the short version of the Lent/Easter season and you can tell me how boring it is, seen through a new pair of eyes.

As the calculation for Easter Sunday changes every year, I’ll just use this year’s calendar to highlight the principle feasts, solemnities and other observances.

So that’s how Catholics warm up to celebrate Easter. We all have our own traditions; our own cuts of meat we prefer. But as a whole, it’s the liturgical celebrations that bind us all together. Unfortunately, in this American’s experience, we don’t properly know how to celebrate Easter. The priest wears his white duds, the Easter flowers wilt and are composted, the decor of the physical church remains pretty paschal (or was it pastel). But the body that compromises the church, well, we don’t whoop it up as much as we ought.

We get our Alleluia’s and our Gloria’s back at Mass. We can order burritos without worrying about what day it is. If we pray the Angelus, now we pray the Regina Coelli. But unless one is somehow attuned to a wavelength coming straight from the Source of Unending Joy. There’s really not a whole lot else to do, or is there…

Thus passeth the 7 Sundays of Easter and the various moveable feasts affected thereof. So, get out there and celebrate or, at the very least, know what to expect when you go in to a Catholic Church!

¹ A bane to timeclock programmers like me.

^+J+M+J+ Shameless plug for Marian Consecration

Next week the Affable Geek is going to take us back and remind us Why we need Good Friday. While Catholics have moved on to Easter and baseball, we all remember that

“As much as we love the Brewers, unlike Jesus, they didn’t die for your sins.” – Archbishop Jerome Listecki

Last month, I gave a definition of Evangelicalism that mentioned one of our four core values: “crucicentrism”. We believe (along with most Christians) that the cross of Christ represents the turning point in human history and the start of God’s victory over evil. That the early Christians interpreted the death of their Messiah as a victory and not the defeat of a failed revolutionary rabbi stands testimony to their belief that Jesus stepped out of the tomb alive.

Here’s how Paul of Tarsus put it in a letter to the church in the Roman colony city of Corinth:

For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. For I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.—1^st Corinthians 15:3-9 (ESV)

Scholars agree that the letter was written by Paul sometime between 53 and 57 AD, which places it, at most, 27 years after the events surrounding Jesus’ crucifixion. Interestingly, the Corinthians were skeptical that Jesus could have risen bodily from the tomb and Paul gives this passage as evidence. A portion of the passage (“that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures”) was most likely a creed or statement of belief that scholars have dated to within 5 years of the crucifixion. So it’s not so much evidence of the resurrection per se as evidence of the belief of the Jerusalem church.

The creed lists witnesses to the events in chronological order of when they saw the risen Jesus. Most intriguing is the mention of more than 500 brothers (and possibly sisters—the Greek is ambiguous on the point). We have independent accounts of when Jesus appeared to all the other witnesses (including Paul) but we don’t know for sure who the 500 plus were. However, Paul did and almost challenges his readers to contact them: “most of whom are still alive”.

It wasn’t an idle challenge either. We look back on ancient travel and communication as dangerous and unreliable. There’s truth to that, but in the ancient context, the Roman system of roads and sea routes was vital to the operation of empire. Corinth (or Corinthus) was a critical waypoint between the Eastern and Western provinces. Acts 4:33 talks about apostles “giving their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus” and Paul mentions apostles traveling to Rome before he got there, so the Corinthians likely had direct access to witnesses of the resurrection.

Paul also refers to a problem that was fast approaching: “Some have fallen asleep” is a euphemism meaning “some have died”. How would the church continue to bear witness to its creed when the eyewitnesses had gone? Sometime between 65 and 80 AD somebody wrote down the first Gospel (or biography of Jesus). The book includes an account of the resurrection:

When the Sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. And they were saying to one another, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance of the tomb?” And looking up, they saw that the stone had been rolled back—it was very large. And entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, dressed in a white robe, and they were alarmed. And he said to them, “Do not be alarmed. You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen; he is not here. See the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.” And they went out and fled from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment had seized them, and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.—Mark 16:1-8 (ESV)

Believe it or not, that’s how the story ends; Mark 16:9-20 is marked as a later insertion in most modern editions. There are several theories about why Mark ended there, but it’s possible the author intended the reader to seek out a Christian to answer the burning question: “What happened next?” In any case, Mark began a transition from a largely oral tradition to written history. In the decades to follow, Christianity produced a remarkable corpus of four written accounts of the life of Jesus.

To understand why our written history of Jesus is so remarkable, let me turn our attention to one of the biggest stories of the early Roman Empire: the Great Fire of Rome. That event had roughly a million eyewitnesses. In terms of significance, it was in the same league as 9/11. We have three surviving accounts, all of which are secondary and at least 50 years removed from the event. In turn, those sources draw on three primary sources which are now lost. None of the accounts, however, agree on the central facts: who set the fire and why, and where Nero was at the time. Even so, with a great deal of detective work, historians feel confident in claiming the fire was an accident that Nero blamed on the Christians.

Considering there were at most a few hundred witnesses to the risen Jesus, it’s remarkable that we have four written histories. Occasionally skeptics point to the various contradictions between the gospels as evidence that the story is made up. But the truth is that multiple historical accounts increase our certainty that the event happened. Historians usually extrapolate from meager evidence in ancient text (a passing reference or an incomplete narrative), so four secondary sources that reflect at least as many primary sources is highly unusual. We have orders of magnitude more biographical data about Jesus than we do about, for instance, Shakespeare who we know mostly from scraps of business and legal documents outside of his plays and poetry.

As it turns out, all four accounts agree with the three points of the creed Paul repeated:

1. Christ died
2. he was buried
3. he was raised on the third day

They agree that third day was the first day of the week: Sunday. They also agree on several details that seem to have no theological significance: the first witnesses were women who worried about how to move the stone door of the tomb, which was donated by Joseph of Arimathea. Quite likely Paul left out the women in his list of people who saw Jesus alive after the cross because, in the ancient world, they would not be seen as reliable witnesses. But without the women, the gospel writers would be left without a narrative.

When it comes to disagreements among the gospels, probably the most famous concerns the messengers who were already at the tomb when the women arrived. Were they angels or men? Did they sit on the stone or were they inside the tomb? How many were there: one, two, more? What, if anything was their message? These stories are difficult, even impossible, to harmonize. But these are exactly the sort of oddities we should expect from several, independent memories of the same event.

There is no solid archaeological evidence for the empty tomb. Most likely, the site was destroyed by the city of Jerusalem remaking herself. At any rate, the tomb might have looked like this one, which was uncovered in 1874:

Early Christianity showed little interest in the site of the tomb, or even in travel to Palestine before the 4^th century, which isn’t surprising since the New Testament asserts that there was no body to be found there. For the gospel writers, the important thing to establish was that Jesus had, in fact, risen.

There is so much more to tell, but I need to stop somewhere. If you would like to explore more, I suggest N. T. Wright’s article “Jesus’ Resurrection and Christian Origins” or, for the ambitious, his book The Resurrection of the Son of God. Don’t worry if the material above made you question presuppositions; as I was writing the post I had many doubts. But doubt is the sign of self-honesty, so it’s a good thing.

Tune in next week when Peter Turner writes about something many Evangelicals wouldn’t expect.

When the Reformers of the 16^th century looked at the Christianity of their day, they saw a church that (in their view) had gotten away from its Scriptural roots. With sola scriptura as their watchword, they overturned centuries of Holy Tradition and placed Scripture at the center of not only their theology, but also their worship. Protestant worship services centered not around the Eucharist, but the sermon. Many of the rites that had been designed through the centuries to help connect people with God were dismissed as “Romish rituals” and eliminated from Protestant worship.

But in recent decades many Protestant churches have begun to recognize the value in the rich liturgical heritage they once abandoned, and have found ways to re-integrate ancient traditions back into their worship, sometimes infusing new life into the old customs by celebrating them in creative new ways.

The richness of the liturgy can be seen most clearly in the week preceding Easter Sunday. Just as the four Gospels devote a large percentage of text to the last week of Jesus’ earthly ministry (the Gospel of John, for example, spends 9 of its 21 chapters detailing the events of this one week) the worship services of Holy Week give Christians an opportunity to spend extra time focusing on Jesus’ sacrifice and its significance for our lives.

Holy Week begins on Palm Sunday, the final Sunday of the Lenten season. Palm Sunday is named for the palm branches waved by Jesus’ followers as Jesus rode a donkey into Jerusalem. Today many churches try to work palm fronds or branches into Palm Sunday worship, either carrying the branches in a procession or cutting them into strips and tying them into the shape of crosses to be handed out to the worshipers. Any leftover palms are later burned to ashes and saved for the following year’s Ash Wednesday service.

Following Palm Sunday, the first half of Holy Week is relatively quiet. But as the sun sets on Thursday, we begin the three-day period known as the Triduum, in which we remember Jesus’ death and resurrection.

On the evening of Maundy Thursday (the word “maundy” comes from the Latin mandatus meaning commandment, from Jesus’ words in John 13:34: “A new commandment I give you, that you love one another as I have loved you.”) we remember Jesus’ last meal with his disciples. This may take the form of either Holy Communion or a Seder meal. The Seder meal is a Jewish feast celebrated on the first day of Passover. Although the meal Jesus shared with his disciples was not as formal or elaborate as the modern-day Seder, this meal reminds us of Christianity’s roots in Judaism. Some churches share this meal with a local Jewish congregation, to celebrate our common heritage.

The Seder or Communion may be combined with a footwashing service. Just as Jesus washed his disciples’ feet at the Last Supper, the pastor washes the feet of the congregation. In some churches, members take turns washing each others’ feet.

Worship on Good Friday might be a Tenebrae service. Tenebrae is the Latin word for “shadows” or “darkness”. This service begins with a set of lit candles (traditionally 15) arranged on a triangular stand. The Scripture readings for Tenebrae may focus on the events beginning with the Garden of Gethsemene and leading to the crucifixion, or they may focus on Jesus’ words spoken from the cross. As Scriptures are read and hymns are sung, the candles are extinguished one by one until they are all out. The growing darkness represents Jesus’ abandonment by his disciples, the hopelessness of the world without God, and ultimately Jesus’ death on the cross. In some services, the final candle is not extinguished but is either hidden behind the alter or carried out of the sanctuary to represent Jesus’ body being laid in the tomb. With the church in darkness, a slamming door or other loud noise is heard, representing the stone sealing the entrance to the tomb. The congregation then leaves in silence.

Saturday worship may involve the Stations of the Cross. This is an ancient practice started by Christians taking pilgrimages to Jerusalem where they retraced Jesus’ footsteps on his journey to the crucifixion. Returning home, they sought a way to share the experience with members of their congregations. Using wood carvings, sculptures, or paintings, artists reproduced scenes from Jesus’ crucifixion. There are a couple versions of the Stations; one draws its scenes from both Scripture and Tradition, and the other is based solely on Scripture. Protestants usually favor the latter, which begins in Gethsemene and ends with Jesus’ body being laid in the tomb.

Saturday night is the end of the Lenten fast and the beginning of the season of Easter. Since ancient times, this has been a day for new members to join the church. Some congregations have picked up on this ancient practice and scheduled confirmation classes to end this week so the confimands can join the church on Easter.

For other churches, the term Easter Vigil means a prayer vigil, based on Jesus’ desire for his apostles to stay awake and pray with him for an hour in Gethsemene. Members of the congregation take turns coming to the sanctuary to pray for an hour each, beginning Friday evening and continuing until sunrise on Sunday.

Sunrise on Sunday is, according to the gospels, the time Mary and her companions went to the tomb with burial spices but found that Jesus’ body was no longer there. Many churches, therefore, begin this Sunday’s worship at sunrise, when we can proclaim, along with Mary, “Jesus is risen!”

The liturgies of Holy Week can help lift the Gospel stories out of the pages of the Bible and into our lives as we experience something of what Jesus’ first disciples must have faced, both highs and lows, in the first Holy Week.

Next week, Jon Ericson will take a look back at the first Easter as a historical event.

Welcome to another month on Eschewmenical. This month’s topic is Easter. Culturally associated with eggs decorated lavishly in pastels, bunnies, chicks and delicious sugar coated marshmallows shaped like the aforementioned bunnies and chicks, Easter is the time we as Christians remember the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Easter is an odd holiday as the date that it is celebrated varies widely from year to year. The decision to move Easter was made out of an attempt to line the day up with the Jewish celebration of Passover. According to Wikipedia, it is celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full moon following the vernal equinox in the Northern Hemisphere Source.

Celebrations of Easter range from the 50 day celebration of the Catholics to the almost complete ignoring of the day by people who consider it to be a continuation of a tradition of paganism.

We’ve handled several Easter questions on Christianity.StackExchange and covered a range of issues from how long Jesus was in the tomb to how we determine the date it’s celebrated.

This month’s authors and topics are:

• 4/2: Bruce Alderman (United Methodist—Holy Week: From Palm Sunday to Easter)
• 4/9: Jon Ericson (Evangelical—Easter as a historical event)
• 4/16 Peter Turner (Catholic—pro-Easter (as a 50 day celebration))
• 4/23: Michael Hollinger (aka Affable Geek) (Episcopalian — Why we need Good Friday)
• 4/30: Dan O’Day (The Eastern Perspective)

Please keep in mind that we are here in the spirit of Eschewmenism; we’ve agreed to disagree.