Holy Week was a joyful blur. We celebrated Maundy Thursday together with communion and a footwashing service in the chapel. In John’s Gospel, Jesus gets up from the table, washes feet, and then returns to the table. We imitated some of that by folding the footwashing into the communion liturgy. There are few things that will solidify the community more than washing feet–it’s one of my favorite things about Holy Week.

On Friday, several students went to First Presbyterian for their noon service while others went to Friendship Presbyterian for the community Good Friday service. Sunday found us at Oconee Presbyterian Church for the sunrise service. Two of our students, Hayley and Caroline, were readers at that service. It was a beautiful setting. The sun rose behind the table as we celebrated communion. Afterwards, we had breakfast together.

On Sunday evening, we had dinner and worship at the PSC. We shared the Emmaus story and sang lots of songs. All in all, it was a great Holy Week/Easter Sunday.  [posted by Andy]

I had a great Holy Week at the PSC. We did a footwashing service on Maundy Thursday. We held the service in the dining hall and used John 13 as an outline for our service (sans the betrayal). It was a very meaningful service for me. On Good Friday, we had the community service at First Pres. After Good Friday service, I like to go home and pretend that the church doesn’t exist anymore–at least until Sunday. I went home on Friday afternoon and worked on a fence around my garden. I found myself cutting off the top of the green vinyl welded wire fence and rolling it up into little coils. I soon realized that I was making little crowns of thorns. Even though I left the church for the weekend, I still could not get away from the sin that put Christ on the cross. Like Peter, I wasn’t even aware of what I was doing. It all seemed oddly appropriate.

On Sunday morning, I worshipped away from the PSC since we don’t have a Sunday morning service. On Sunday evening, we all gathered informally, reaffirmed that “Christ is Risen Indeed!,” and we read the Emmaus story together.

All in all, it was a very meaningful week for me.

I did some research and found out that this Easter (on March 23) will be the earliest Easter in my lifetime. It won’t be on March 23 again until 2160. The earliest date on which Easter ever occurs is March 22. This happened in 1818 and won’t happen again until 2285.

One byproduct of an early Easter is that St. Patrick’s Day occurs during Holy Week. St. Patrick’s Day is not really much of a religious holiday anymore as much as it is an excuse to have a party and pretend that you’re Irish.

Some might see this as a blemish on Holy Week this year. I prefer to say “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.” When you think about it, everyone was celebrating when Jesus came to Jerusalem at the beginning of Holy Week. Why not join in and do the same today? In one way, St. Patrick’s Day celebrations give us a better opportunity to be in a happy and joyous mindset early in Holy Week just like those people were 2000 years ago.

This brings up a big soapbox of mine. I am a big advocate of making Holy Week have some of the same rhythms for Christians today that it did the first time it occurred. I am not a fan of bundling the Passion into Palm Sunday. I can’t stand the designation “Passion/Palm Sunday.” I think that enables Christians to not participate in a Holy Week and not feel the rhythms of that week as it actually happened.

As such, I don’t like to make reference to the crucifixion on Palm Sunday and I don’t like to celebrate Communion on Palm Sunday. I prefer to celebrate Communion on Maundy Thursday and talk about the crucifixion on Good Friday. I like to wash feet on Maundy Thursday after the supper just as Christ did. I like to pretend that Christ is dead on Saturday and be surprised on Sunday when he is risen.

Because of this, I think that Christians should take one week out of the year and really live according to the rhythms of Holy Week. I think that we should all be in worship on Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Sunday–and not just the two Sundays on either end of Holy Week. If you miss the week in between, then you may have missed the impact of Easter.

This week, we will have communion and foot/handwashing on Thursday at the PSC at 5:30p and a community Good Friday service at First Presbyterian at noon. Hope to see you there!