How can I make the most of Holy Week?
by Robert Krumrey
Next week Christians remember and celebrate the most important week for the Christian faith. It’s the week of Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection. This important observance is what we (along with many other Christian traditions) call Holy Week. The events being remembered make up the very foundation of what it means to be a Christ follower. In the Gospels of the New Testament, Jesus tells his disciples over and over that his primary reason for coming to earth is to die and rise. He says to them for the third time in Matthew’s gospel:
“See, we are going up to Jerusalem. And the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and scribes, and they will condemn him to death and deliver him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified, and he will be raised on the third day.”
In just a few verses later Jesus says this:
“even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
Jesus is very clear that his primary mission was not to feed people and heal all of their diseases, but instead to die to save sinners and rise to rule and reign as their king forever. Even the gospel writers themselves report on the life and teaching of Jesus at a pretty fast clip and then go into super slow mo when they get to Jesus’ last week leading up to and including his death and resurrection. This is the “main thing” in the Christian faith and consequently Christians throughout the ages have made a big deal out of remembering and celebrating these events.
Celebrate
We at MERCYhouse hope you will join us in remembering and celebrating the significance of the events that make up this very important week. We’ll be meeting on Zoom every day at noon (M-Th) to read, reflect, and pray. We’ll walk through downtown Amherst (in person and on FB live) at noon on Good Friday (4/2/21) with a large wooden cross to further reflect on the events of that day. There will be a Good Friday Tenebrae service at 7pm with readings, songs, and a sermon that will help us further consider the significance of Jesus’ death on the cross. We’ll celebrate Easter Sunday with a sunrise service (6:30am) on top of Bare Mountain (everyone is welcome to hike up and participate) and in our regularly scheduled services (9:15am & 11:15am). All of these are opportunities to remember and celebrate these monumental events.
Share
We also hope you will use some of these events as opportunities to engage friends and family who are not yet Christians with the good news that is contained within this week. Easter is still a time when people are more open to attending a worship service or special event. Our prayer and reflection during Mission Week was geared toward this kind of thinking. We live in a mission field where the majority of people in our communities and on our campuses are not Christians. Lets prayerfully engage those in our spheres of influence this week and next with an invite to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ.
To help with this, we are also hosting a 7pm Zoom event on the Monday after Easter (4/5/21) about the resurrection of Jesus. Two PhD candidates in philosophy and an undergrad in philosophy, who are also members of our church, will be sharing both about the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus as reported in the New Testament Gospels and how this event has personally changed their lives. This will be especially helpful for those who are wrestling with intellectual questions regarding the Christian faith. The presentation will be followed by a time for question and answer and an opportunity to have a one on one conversation after the event.
So let’s have a life changing Holy Week that includes both celebrating and sharing!