Grace Notes: Holy Week

Dear faithful people of Christ the King Lutheran Church,

This is Holy Week, and we Christians have one task this whole week: to immerse ourselves in the drama of Jesus’ passion, death, and resurrection for us. Emblematic of this, there will be only two emails from us this week, todays and Wednesday’s, and they will only be about worship. There will be no email from Christ the King Church on Good Friday.

We have been celebrating the Great Three Days (Triduum) and Easter in substantially the same way for over fifty years, I want to take this opportunity to refresh our understanding and enhance our participation because what we are celebrating is the most important in human history.

The evening liturgy of the Great Three Days (Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday are one liturgy spread over three days. Each has four sections and each flow into the next.

The Great Three Days begins at 7:00 pm, Maundy Thursday, April 2. “Maundy” means “Command” because on this night Jesus commanded the disciples to “love one another as I have loved you.” In its four parts:

•    We conclude Lent’s Forty Days by confessing our sin and receiving and hearing God’s promise of forgiveness individually as the ministers lay their hands on our heads. This rite invites us to fully participate in the events of Christ’s Passion. “Full participation” is what “remembrance” means;

•    We join Jesus’ first disciples and celebrate Passover with them, taking our place as Jesus washes our feet and sharing this sign of serving love with one another;

•    We give thanks as God declares this Passover meal to be a sacrament; God’s Promise to us strengthen and renew our faith; Jesus’ command to us, “do this in remembrance of me;” and this actual, physical meal of bread and wine which Jesus declares is “my Body and Blood.”

•    We follow Jesus from his arrest to his humiliation by Pilate and the Empire’s soldiers; watching as our Altar Guild strips the Table, the nave, and the ministers just as the soldiers stripped Jesus of his clothing in Pilate’s court.

We leave as the disciples did with the church in darkness, the Table and Font barren and empty, and the light of Christ’s Presence snuffed out; awaiting the events of the next day.

At 7:00 pm on Good Friday, April 3, our participation continues, this time gathering at Christ’s cross.

•    We gather as Christ’s “family for whom our Lord was content to die,” and participate in Jesus’ Passion according to John (as arranged with chant and hymns by Rick Erickson).

•    We pray for virtually everything using the ancient “Bidding Prayer.”

•    We greet, as a community, the cross as it is carried into the nave.

•    We “adore” the cross as individuals in whatever way we find meaningful to us, thanking God for the work Christ has done on the cross for us.

Again, we leave in darkness, awaiting the events of the final day.

At 8:00 pm on Saturday, April 4, we gather in the courtyard to participate in the story of Christ’s resurrection for us. Our bishop, Tracey Beshear Schultz, joins us to preside at this part of our Three-Day liturgy.

•    As if it were “early in the morning,” and the first ray of light is dawning, we light a new fire and a new Paschal Candle, marked with the sign of the cross, and this year 2026 when Christ, the Beginning and the End, is present with us. That Candle leads us around the block and into the still dark nave; and we hear another ancient chant, the Exultet, and share the Pascal light by lighting our own candles as Christ’s new dawn brightens.

•    We hear the story of God keeping Promises from creation until now.

•    We gather at the font to celebrate our receipt of God’s Promises given to us in the water of Baptism.

•    Finally, in the full light of Christ’s new day, we shout our first “alleluias,” and eat the Meal of the crucified and risen Christ. We are blessed and leave with songs of boundless joy!

You are also invited on Thursday, Friday, and early Saturday, to walk and pray the Stations of the Cross on the walls of the nave. By Saturday evening, Stations of the Resurrection will replace these so that for the Fifty Days of Easter, we can meditate joyfully on all God has accomplished for us.

There is no better time to experience and celebrate all God has done and is doing for us and all people then these Three Days. I urge us all to participate fully (“in remembrance”) and to invite others to join this celebration of life.

Peace and Joy,

Mandy

Amandus J. Derr

Interim Senior Pastor