Holy Week at Home

By Pastor Paula Lund Burchill

                Holy Week will be a totally new experience for us this year.  As the week begins this Sunday April 5, we will watch Palm Sunday worship from the comfort of our homes.  I’m already sad about it!  I love coming to worship this week.  Good Friday is my kids’ favorite service of the year.  I love how each day has a different feel in how the sanctuary is decorated, in the music, in the way we enter and leave the services—so somberly on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, so joyfully on Easter.

                But I’m also finding that one of the good things about this time is the reminder it gives of how central the home has always been for faith.  When the Jews were in exile and had no temple, their homes became where they practiced Sabbath.  To this day, Jews begin their Sabbath by lighting candles and sharing a Shabbat meal on Friday nights. 

                This year, I want to encourage you to find some ways to bring Holy Week to your home.  Get creative.  Have fun.  Involve the kids in your planning.  If you are living alone, call a friend and share ways you can enter into this holiest of weeks in the life of our Christian faith.  Here are a few ideas.  Hopefully some might work for you.

Palm Sunday:  Go out into your yard and gather some branches.  Wave them along with worship on Sunday.  You are actually doing something very similar to what happened in Matthew’s gospel.  It doesn’t say anyone waved palms [that’s in John].  It says people grabbed branches and threw them into the road to cover it as Jesus came through.  So cover the sidewalk up to your door with some branches.  Maybe hang a couple on your door.  Make a bouquet of branches for your table.  Remember that day that everyone was so excited about Jesus coming into town!

Maundy Thursday:  Today is the day Jesus washed the feet of his disciples and gave them the meal we now celebrate at Holy Communion.  Wash the feet of the people in your family.  If you are on your own, fill a basin and soak your own feet!  Maybe even add a little essential oils to remember the woman who anointed Jesus.  At dinner, take some time to imagine and to talk about what that last meal must have been like.  How did the disciples feel, do you think? 

The word Maundy means commandment and the commandment Jesus gave is that we love one another just as he loves us.  Do something loving for someone who doesn’t live with you.  Make a donation to the food bank, send a card of encouragement.  Call a friend and say “I love you.”

On Maundy Thursday we strip the altar at the end of worship. This is to remember how Jesus’ life was stripped from him.  When the altar is stripped of all beauty, we are led to think of how bare life would be without Christ in it.  Go through your house and take town any religious art or artifacts you may have up and place them on a table and cover them.  Put them away and leave the table bare until Easter Sunday when you hang them all up again.

Good Friday:  The most somber of days, when all the windows in the sanctuary are hung with black cloth and we focus on the cross.  Can you close the curtains or pull the shades when you watch worship?  If you have any black cloth, use it to drape your table, or hang it over a cross you might have in your home.  Read the story of the Passion of Jesus.  This year we are reading through Matthew, and his Passion is in chapters 26 and 27.  Light some candles and as you read the story, extinguish them, one by one.  Spend 10 minutes in silence.  Pray for the hurts of the world.

Consider unplugging from noon on Friday until noon on Saturday.  Put away ALL devices.  Think and talk about how dis-connected you feel and how that might be so much like what the disciples felt as they watched Jesus die on the cross. 

Easter:  Before you go to bed on Saturday, shut all the shades and when you wake up, fling them open and say, “Alleluia!  Christ is risen!”  Text or call your friends and family and say “Alleluia!  Christ is risen!”    As you greet your family, say, “Alleluia!  Christ is risen!”  Answer back with “He is risen indeed!  Allelluia!”  Pick flowers from your yard as you prepare your worship space—tulips, daffodils, dandelions!  Put them in glasses or vases to decorate your worship space as you worship online with your SLC family.  Wear your Sunday best—just because.  Blast “Jesus Christ is Risen Today” on your stereo and sing along at the top of your lungs! 

In worship, we light the big Christ candle next to the baptism font on Easter and through the whole Easter season, and then only on Sundays where there is a baptism and a few other special services.  Make a Christ candle for your home.  Decorate a candle in some “Easter-y” way and light it on Easter.  Then light it during meals or prayer time through the season of Easter in your home.

                We will miss seeing you so much this week.  But we are together through the Spirit.  May God bless you as you worship in your homes.  And please share in the comments if you have other ideas for Holy Week at Home!