Friends,
I’m going to use this installment of the “Pastor’s Pen” to remind you that Holy Week begins on Sunday, as we celebrate Palm/Passion Sunday. The observations of Holy Week will continue with a Maundy Thursday service at seven PM on Thursday and a Good Friday service at seven PM on Friday. All of these services will be hybrid, meaning you can join us in person or from home on Zoom.
I hope you will join us. Historically, during Holy Week many Presbyterians have tended to observe Palm Sunday with all of its celebration, and then have gone straight to Easter with all of its celebration without stopping to explore the pathos and pain of what lies between the Hosannas of Palm Sunday and the Alleluias of Easter.
The Gospels do the opposite. If anything, they spend too much time on Holy Week. There are 89 chapters in the four gospels, and all or part of 29 of those chapters take place during the eight days that begin on Palm Sunday and end on Easter. This means that nearly a third of the recorded history of Jesus’ life is dedicated to a week most Presbyterians overlook (or, to be more accurate and a little more charitable, we read the stories and teachings from that week, but when we read them we take them out of their context in the larger narrative).
Anyway, I hope the Montclair Presbyterian Church Family can continue its practice of being extraordinary Presbyterians by showing up for our Maundy Thursday and Good Friday observances and journeying together along the spiritual path that is Holy Week.
God’s Peace,
Ben