OBSERVING AND 2020 – VIRTUALLY Online Offerings for the Parish Community & Friends www.gracestlukes.org/news/holy-week-at-home

Former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams writes: “In this week, the holy is redefined and recreated for us. The temple is rebuilt as the body of the crucified Christ, not a place of exclusions, a house of merchandise where we must barter to be allowed in, trading our daily lives, our secular joys and pains for the sacred currency of ritual and acceptable pure gifts that will placate God, but the cross by the roadside, unfenced, unadorned, the public and defenseless place where God gives us room. Holy Week, with all its intensity of ritual and imaginative elaboration, comes paradoxically to break down the walls of self-contained religion and morality and to gather us around the one true holy place of the Christian religion, himself, displayed to the world as the public language of our God, placarded on the history of human suffering that stretches along the roadside. This is a week for learning – not management, bargaining, and rule-keeping, but naked trust in that naked gift.”

During the coronavirus pandemic that has changed our common life in 2020, the human family is finding its way through this wilderness. Grace-St. Luke’s Church has designed virtual offerings that hopefully are unique meaningful experiences for individuals and households, including ways to create sacred spaces at home to observe , the Triduum (, , Great Vigil of Easter), and Easter Day. Access your copy of “Holy Week at Home 2020 – Creating A Sacred Space” at www.gracestlukes.org/news/holy-week-at-home. Sunday of the Passion: Palm Sunday, April 5 10:30 a.m. Liturgy of the Palms, Reading of the Passion, Homily, Music via Facebook Live. The service leaflet will direct worshippers to a video of the GSL Schola Cantorum singing “All glory, laud and honor.”

Holy Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, , April 6-10 Daily Meditation posted at 7:30 a.m. online (Facebook and www.gracestlukes.org/news/holy-week-at-home)

Maundy Thursday, April 9 7:00 p.m. Release of prerecorded video featuring the GSL clergy and musicians highlighting traditional aspects of the liturgy: Christ’s new commandment to express love for one another through service, institution of the Holy Eucharist, and the Stripping, Washing, and Anointing of the Altar. After watching the video, engage a conversation with others about what was experienced in the signs and symbols depicted. Consider setting aside time to “watch and pray” with our Lord between 8 p.m. and 8 a.m. on Good Friday.

Good Friday, April 10 Noon, Service of Meditations by the Clergy & Improvisational Organ Music via Facebook Live, includes prayers, readings, communion from the Reserved Sacrament, and improvised pieces on hymns. At 1 p.m., join the clergy for a Virtual Walking of the Stations of the Cross depicted on the walls of the nave at GSL.

Holy Saturday, April 11 7:00 p.m. Release of prerecorded video featuring the GSL clergy and musicians highlighting traditional aspects of the liturgy: First Fire of Easter, Holy Baptism, and Holy Eucharist. The Eucharist will not be consumed by the clergy and musicians but will be via live stream on Easter Day.

The Sunday of the Resurrection: Easter Day, April 12 10:30 a.m. The Holy Eucharist including sermon and music via Facebook Live. The Eucharist will be consumed by the clergy and musicians on behalf of the congregation and a prayer will be provided in the service leaflet regarding this custom for when communicants are unable to physically gather.

Holy Week – Easter 2020 What will we do at Grace-St. Luke’s? There are five primary liturgies of Holy Week-Easter, each portrayed with different emphases and perspectives in all four : Palm/; The Triduum (Maundy Thursday/Good Friday/), and Easter Day. In each one, we are invited to journey alongside Jesus prayerfully as we participate liturgically in the final days of his life – the days leading up to the great Paschal Mystery celebrated in the death and . Visit www.gracestlukes.org/news/holy-week-at-home for a listing of what to expect on each day of the week.

Why do we do this? As baptized Christians, we are adult, youth, and child members of Christ’s body. In some way beyond rational concepts, we experience the death and resurrection of Christ particularly in our baptism but also throughout our Christian life. In our baptismal liturgy we pray, “Grant, O Lord, that all who are baptized into the death of Jesus Christ your Son may live in the power of his resurrection and look for him to come again in glory; who lives and reigns for ever and ever.” When we welcome a new person into the “household of God” after baptism, we tell them: “We receive you into the household of God. Confess the faith of Christ crucified, proclaim his resurrection, and share with us in his eternal priesthood.” While we are not able to gather for baptisms at the Great Vigil of Easter, this year, we look forward to when such time will come.

Holy Week-Easter is a time to fully experience what we proclaim each week when we come together for the Eucharist. We experience the truth of the Christian Way, not only through studying it or hearing about it, but by participating in it. Through this sharing, we are able to live our lives in light of Christ’s resurrection, even as we await “his coming in glory.” We discover our story in God’s story.

Further, through Holy Week (Passion Week), services and other offerings are available more than normal to participate in the divine economy of giving/sacrifice as well as receiving/renewal. As comes to an end, we have been working toward removing those obstacles that prohibit us from receiving God’s grace by repenting of our sins, amending our lives, and cultivating our desire for the Holy. In this way, we open ourselves to “putting on Christ” (Galatians 3:27) and living the “life that is really life.” (1 Timothy 6:19).

What is the origin of these rituals? In addition to being rooted in the narratives, the idea of “walking the way of Christ” emerged among the first disciples of Jesus. Some scholars speculate that the Gospel of Mark, and particularly Mark’s Passion, emerged from the prayerful and devotional practice of walking around and pausing at different places of significance to pray and connect Hebrew Scriptures with Jesus’ last days. Different parts of our liturgies allow us to focus, generate, and conclude spiritual meaning from specific incidents and geographical locations in the Passion narratives.

Palm/Passion Sunday recreates Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem. The Maundy Thursday liturgy with Foot- washing invites us to consider the “” in the upper room when Jesus commands us to love one another and when Judas leaves to betray Jesus. On Good Friday, we commemorate Jesus’ last hours – the fixed “trial” before Jewish and Roman authorities, his being mocked, his compassion on the crowd and the criminals who died alongside him, and the intense of bystanders, soldiers and a few women followers who witness Jesus’ suffering either right under the cross or at a distance.

The Great Vigil of Easter actually is the culmination of Lent through Holy Week and the initiation of . Beginning with the lighting of the first fire of Easter, this liturgy unites many opposites and binaries that inform daily life: the struggle between dark and light; the old person (Adam) and new person (Jesus); cross and resurrection; death and eternal life; beginnings and endings. It helps us grasp God as a liberator and savior: for the people of Israel with the Exodus; for Jesus through resurrection; and for ourselves as we are united with Christ and adopted as God’s sons and daughters in baptism. In the early Church, new Christians were baptized at this service and permitted to participate in the Eucharist for the first time. It is the high point in our when our salvation history comes alive through ritual, scripture, and sacrament.

The Sunday of the Resurrection: Easter Day continues the festival when the “Alleluias” returned, the sacrament of Holy Baptism was administered, and the people of God were reminded that death is not the final answer. Life is the final answer, and Jesus is our Hope.

Holy Week – Easter 2020