Holy Week: The Drama & the Journey

Welcome to the great drama of Holy Week! This Sunday we embark upon a journey with Jesus. It is a dramatic journey from His triumphal entry…to His cross…to His empty tomb.

Practically, for us, it is 5 services in 8 days—the most concentrated season of worship on the church calendar.

I can recall earlier days in my Anglican journey, where I thought this was way too much. I tended to opt out of this or that service. Selectively attend. Certainly did not immerse myself in the drama. Felt like worship overkill coming from a more minimalist tradition.

It took time, and a deeper sense of how powerfully interconnected Jesus’s journey during Holy Week is. And how much Holy Spirit work in my own life I was missing, if I opted out. I now look forward to this week with so much joy and hope. I love the journey we are embarking upon, for it is the journey of our salvation!

You might recall the image from our 2025 Advent devotional The Christian Year by JD Walt. His “Awakening Calendar” shows how the Christian year is marked by certain downward and upward cycle of movements. That cycle is a rhythm within God’s saving work.

I mention it here because we can detect that same cycle within the very drama of Holy Week. The triumphal entry is a moment of exaltation—an ‘up’ or ‘pinnacle’ moment, if you will. We then mark the descent with Maundy Thursday, with Jesus serving His disciples in anticipation of His passion. His being laid in the grave on Good Friday marks the ‘low point,’ the bottom of the descent. But we begin the new ascent with the hopeful remembrances of the Easter Vigil. And we reach a new pinnacle on Resurrection Sunday morning!

Each of these services advances the action of God’s saving work in dramatic and significant ways. Like I said, it took me awhile in my Anglican journey to realize this. So my encouragement to you now is: Do not miss out!

Last year was the first year in the church’s life where we celebrated all 5 services. Here is some feedback on the experience:

“The experience of four days of continuous worship was powerful!”

“Each service had its unique message and character. I wouldn’t want to miss any.”

“We weren’t able to attend every day this year. I look forward to next year to see how ALL of Holy Week sets the tone leading up to Easter.”

Finally: “Loved every second of it!”

In what remains, I offer you here a more detailed preview of each service:

Palm Sunday

On Palm Sunday, Jesus triumphantly enters Jerusalem. So we begin by reading the Gospel narrative of the triumphal entry from the baptismal font in the back. We all are invited now to join in the exuberant celebration waving palm fronds, processing behind the cross and led by our children. The rest of the service proceeds as normal: readings, sermon, and communion.

Side Note: Why Red?

When you come in to worship on Palm Sunday, you might notice the purple for Lent is now gone! Everything is red. Red is (predominantly) the color of Holy Week. (I say, predominantly because Good Friday is black and Easter Sunday is white.)

Why red? Red is the color symbolizing the work of the Holy Spirit, like on Pentecost. Just as the Spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness to tempt Him, He now drives Him back to Jerusalem to the cross. But just like the Spirit sustained Jesus for 40 days, now too the Spirit sustains the Son along the (otherwise) lonesome road to Calvary—and even in death.

It is as if the Father is receiving in heaven of all the action on earth—the sacrifice conducted by the Son and the Holy Spirit, full of the Father’s grace and glory. I love how in this very color choice, we recognize the work of the Holy Trinity.

And we are invited into the dramatic work of the Holy Trinity this week!

Now back to Jesus’s path—and ours—through Holy Week!

Maundy Thursday

From the triumphal entry, Jesus’s path leads to the Upper Room, where on Maundy Thursday, He washes His disciples’ feet and institutes the LORD’s Supper. Looming over the entire Last Supper is His coming passion. And it looms over our service, too. We follow Jesus’s lead.

So we wash feet. That servant gesture to His disciples. Fr Steve will wash folks’ feet (no touching, just pouring water over a bare foot over a basin). No pressure. You are not required to come forward for this symbolic gesture. But it can be a significant moment to enter more deeply into the reality of our servant LORD. That is the hope!

We also celebrate Eucharist! This is, in effect, the Last Supper before the Cross (and there is no Communion on Good Friday). Like those original disciples, we gather around the LORD’s Table to be fed by Him spiritually, with His body broken and blood shed for us.

On Maundy Thursday, there is, however, a great turning. Yes, in joy, we wash feet and celebrate the Eucharist…but then, in darkness and silence, the altar is cleared. All linens removed. Then washed by hand by members of our Altar Guild, as if preparing His body to be laid in the tomb. The altar is the weekly place of Christ’s presence, as we celebrate the Great Thanksgiving…now it is a place of abandonment, desolation, as He alone is able to walk the path from Gethsemane and satisfy the very sacrifice we celebrate there. The cross is also now draped in black.

All of this is, you might say, ‘visual theology.’ The imagery symbolically conveys a powerful but unspoken message. We exit in silence, and folks are welcome to stay in the silence, to keep watch and pray for awhile, as we symbolically enter Gethsemane, making the turn towards Christ’s passion.

Good Friday

We enter in silence on Good Friday and, again, exit in silence. This year, we as a church are trying something new: In lieu of a sermon, the body of our service will be the historic Stations of the Cross—the dramatic 14 stages marking Jesus’s progress from His arrest and trial to the Cross and His death.

On Good Friday, we do not celebrate Eucharist, but rather we have a time of devotion at the Cross itself. Laid on the floor at the foot of the barren altar, with the cross on the wall draped in black, we invite folks to come forward and nail their sins, their anxieties, their sacrifices—whatever it is—to Christ’s cross. Those written confessions will be not be read by me or anyone, but rather burnt after the service—signifying how our sins are blotted out, our lives now hidden together with Christ in God, thanks to His cross.

We also have prayer ministers (myself included) available to pray with folks at the sides. Good Friday is a heavy, dark day, where we are called by the church to contemplate our role in Christ’s cross—how Christ died for our sin and how Christ still bears our sin even now. This time of devotion might be especially heavy for you. If so, please come receive prayer.

Easter Vigil

If Good Friday marks the bottom of our descent, the Great Easter Vigil marks the ascent. Low in the grave Christ lays...but in the silence is a flicker of light––and of hope. With the Easter Vigil, we hopefully, expectantly await the greatest of God’s saving deeds—the Resurrection.

The service begins with a great knock upon the sanctuary door as the congregation sits in darkness. Behold, He the Light of the World stands at the door and knocks! We process in with a newly lit Pascal candle. The candle light is symbol of hope. The Light of the World cannot be quenched by the darkness! The procession moves forward, stopping three times to proclaim: The Light of Christ! And the congregation responds, Thanks be to God! (We will chant this, too!) At each stop, expectant worshippers light their candles off of the Pascal candle.

As we conclude the procession, the leader (usually a deacon, but in our case Fr Steve) leads us in an ancient hymn of the church called the Exultet (often chanted or sung). The Exultet proclaims: “This is the night when God brought our forebears, the children of Israel, out of bondage in Egypt and led through the Red Sea on dry land.”  Notice: the historic present. This is the night! That alone is very significant. The past in God’s eyes is never truly past but a part of an eternal present, in His unchanging knowledge of all things. So, too, our worship fuses our present with our past. They are intertwined: our present worship with God’s great work in the past! We are bonded together with our forebears as participants—even now—in God’s great saving work!

Those saving works of the past tell a dramatic story of God’s grace and goodness…and the Vigil carries the story forward, right up to the cusp of the Resurrection—God’s greatest saving deed of all! Yes, the church knows the end of the story! So we cannot but help to gather in hope at Christ’s tomb in vigil.

How do we gather in hope? We do so professing God’s great saving deeds throughout history as recorded in Scripture, as a means of hopeful reassurance, a rekindling of our faith even as we kindled the new light: that even as He has acted in the past to save His people, we still participate in His saving work! He shall indeed act to raise His only Son from the dead and save His people forever more from their sins! That is, ultimately, the culmination of the Vigil, but our service will not—you might be glad to know!—go all night for an Easter midnight or sunrise acclamation. No, our service concludes Sunday morning at 10AM.

Resurrection Sunday

We come full circle: from triumphal entry, to the heaviness of the Last Supper and darkness of Good Friday, to the kindling of the new light in the Easter Vigil and now the splendor of the greatest event in human history: the Son of God rising triumphant from the dead! Resurrection: that is the name of our church, this is our great feast day! So we celebrate especially loudly and joyfully: with bells tolling from the instant the resurrection is initially proclaimed: “______ (that forbidden A-word, which we banished during Lent, now returns), the LORD is risen!” And then every time thereafter in this service when we say that A-word—which we will say and sing it A LOT—we ring those bells again!

Fr Steve's Holy Cow Bell

Bring bells with you to Easter Sunday morning!

Traditionally, Easter is a baptismal Sunday. And how appropriate! Baptism symbolizes our descent with Christ into His grave and our rising with Him to new life through His resurrection! Sin and death we leave behind as we are united with Him in baptism: Descent. New and unending life and love through Him are ours, thanks to the resurrection: Ascent. There is it again, that descending and ascending pattern. Now within the very drama of baptism.

We have come full circle, my friends: from the descent of Lent to the ascent of Resurrection Sunday.

Resurrection Sunday at a church named after the Resurrection is especially significant! Churches have their named feast days. Like if you are Church of the Holy Spirit, Pentecost would be your named feast day. Or if you were St. Stephen’s Anglican Church (a name I am particularly fond of!), you would celebrate on December 26^th, which is the day on the church calendar commemorating him. Well, we get to celebrate our church’s named feast on, literally, the greatest day in human history: Resurrection Sunday!

So let’s really celebrate, folks! Joy unbridled and unbound is ours through our LORD’s resurrection. So let’s worship that way!

Don’t ever let anyone tell you the lie that God or Christianity is boring. It is full of drama. He is a God of drama. He loves to work in great ways and small. He wants to do new work in your life, in mine and in our church this coming week. Holy Week is His invitation to us to participate in His Great Drama. Do not miss it!

Final Note

With Maundy Thursday we begin the first of three services over three days which the church has historically called the Triduum (literally, in Latin, three days): Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and the Great Easter Vigil on Holy Saturday. It is also traditionally held that these services not merely three distinct events in the drama of Holy Week, but rather, they are one continuous service. So you will note that there is no dismissal from these services (the ‘Go in peace…’ part at the very end). Rather, we exit in silence, in reverence of the fact that the service continues on to the next—until it concludes with the great Easter Acclamation on Resurrection Sunday.