Sundays at Harvard-Epworth

Communion Service at 9:00 AM In-Person &
Worship AT 11:00 AM IN-PERSON AND on Youtube  

A Message from Rev. Barbara Lemmel

We’re approaching the aptly named Holy Week, the holiest series of days in the Christian calendar.  While Christmas makes a bigger splash, culturally, than Easter, I believe that if it were not for Jesus’ resurrection, we’d not bother to celebrate his birth at all.  He would have just been another Jewish reformer killed by Rome, whose name would have been lost with all the others we don’t know.  

The resurrection, with its message of Life and Love even in the face of death, changes everything.  That’s why we shout “Christ is risen!” on Easter morning.

But let’s not get there too quickly.  It can be awfully easy to hop from this Sunday’s songs of “Hosanna” to next Sunday’s “Alleluias” and gloss quickly over the painful parts in between.  For us to really make the spiritual journey through betrayal and death that emerges in the empty tomb, we have to take some time for worship, for reading, for reflection.

These words from SALT (the authors of “The Poetry of Lent” that we’ve been using this year) describe Holy Week well: 
Holy Week is a kind of choreography or symphony, with distinct emotional movements unfolding over time: from “Hosanna in the highest!” to “Surely not I, Lord?” to “Take, eat; this is my body” to “Let this cup pass from me” to “I do not know the man!” to “Let him be crucified!” to “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” to “He is not here; for he has been raised.” One way or another, these movements require time and space to be felt and understood, and so letting the symphony play out over the course of a week is ideal.

This year, especially, it feels to me like we need to rest a bit in Maundy Thursday, remembering Jesus’ last meal with his followers, and his final commandment to love as he loved.  This year, especially, I feel that we need to pause on Good Friday, as the betrayal and the anguish of the cross resonate with the horrors of war and of pending famine in Ukraine, Gaza, and Sudan.  We can recognize, in the shouts of “Cruicify”, an echo of the hatred and discrimination that haunt our society and our world, often with deadly effects.

So I urge you — no, I implore you — to really journey into the confusion and pain of Holy Week before you make your way to Easter.  Take part in the Service of Healing and Communion on Thursday, March 28.  Share in the gathering gloom of the Tenebrae Service of Shadows on Friday, March 29.  (both services will be at 7:00 pm, and live streamed) Take time on Saturday, March 30, to wait in the silence of the tomb.  

If you can’t attend a service, take time in the Poetry of Lent resource, which offers scripture, poems and reflection for both Maundy Thursday and Good Friday.  You can find them here:   https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1AsTCMOva4ss7vWrxIDZ2DFaDJvR1O5yy

Then, be ready for the joy of Easter.  But not yet.  Not quite yet.  The symphony’s movements are just now beginning.