A Word from Pastor Nathan

Holy Week is here, and by the time you open this Spire newsletter in your email inbox, it will be Holy Thursday. If you receive The Spire by snail mail, it will be Good Friday. Regardless of when it arrives (or when it’s read), we’re reaching a climactic point in our shared Lenten journey.

Earlier this week, an acquaintance wished me a happy Resurrection Day. An elder mentioned on Tuesday that some churches have already changed their marquees with the Easter proclamation. Easter is true no matter if we read this article on Holy Thursday or Good Friday. However, I think we lose part of our Lenten journey if we don’t acknowledge the agony of Friday through Sunday. Before we can make our Easter proclamation that “Christ is risen. Christ is risen indeed!” Christ must be crucified. We cannot gloss over this tumultuous event.

On Maundy Thursday, we will read—in its entirety—the passion narrative from Mark’s gospel. We’re not leaving anything out. When the service concludes, we’ll depart the sanctuary into the night with all the lights and candles having been extinguished. The experience will be haunting yet holy. How will we mark the span between Thursday and Sunday in which time seemingly stands still?

On Saturday, we will gather for an Easter vigil at 11:45pm (that pm is an important designation). To my knowledge, we haven’t held an Easter vigil at Washington Avenue, so this year will be a first. We’ll return to the shadowed sanctuary that we left on Thursday and wait for several minutes until the light enters the room, just as it entered the tomb.

There are no written testimonies of the specific Easter moment. Soldiers were there, but we’re only told third hand that they were startled within an inch of their lives. I wonder what we’ll experience at midnight of Easter day when we see the light slowly but surely process into the room? Perhaps we, too, will be startled just as the guards were.

After this brief gathering, we’ll again depart into the night but with the light of the resurrected Christ. Like the women who were the first to proclaim the resurrection, we’ll have about nine hours to gather everyone to the sanctuary to make our Easter proclamation: “Christ is risen. Christ is risen, indeed!”