Holy Week: What A Difference One Year Makes!
We were overjoyed that many of us were able to gather in-person for this year’s Easter Sunday celebration!
Looking back on life and worship before the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s easy to realize how much we took for granted the blessing of being incarnational—of standing alongside one another in the sanctuary, seeing our neighbors’ whole faces and hearing their voices ring out clear as we worship together, and one-by-one joyfully receiving the Eucharist from our priests’ hands. Last year’s Easter Sunday was perhaps the strangest and most quiet celebration of the Paschal mystery any of us had experienced to date, because we weren’t able to celebrate it altogether.
By the time Holy Week came around last year, we had all been in lock-down for about 2-3 weeks. We’d been doing our services online temporarily, but began realizing along with the rest of the world that it didn’t seem like the virus would be going away anytime soon—unless the Lord decided to work a miracle in that. The probable reality of our situation began to set in: We weren’t going to be able to walk through Holy Week memorials and celebration together, and we weren’t sure when we’d be able to gather or worship in-person again at all. Yet Christ was and still is risen, and so even in the midst of grieving, we were determined to do our best to celebrate as His body.
Here are a few of the ways that looked last year:
We created a whole new webpage with COVID-19 resources.
We began figuring out technology and Zoom. We didn’t have a way to have lyrics on the screen, and our tech setup was the following: Rev. Alan’s laptop set up on a music stand, logged into Zoom for the video footage, and his phone sitting closer to him at the altar, also logged into Zoom, but for the audio.
Our children’s ministry team released posts detailing ways for parents to lovingly help their children enter into worship from home—like giving their kids a phrase to “hunt for” during the service, and inviting their kids to “join us!” instead of hushing them.
Our children’s ministry team also put together packets of Holy Week activities for kids to use so that they could fully enter into worship as well.
Jessie (our Parish Administrator) and Fr. Benjamin (our director of Pastoral Care and one of our priests) worked together to make liturgy packets for every Holy Week service so that people could participate from home. These packets included song lyric sheets, palm branches, communion wafers, a new edition of The Table, the kids’ Holy Week materials, and more. They stood outside the church building with gloves so that Redeemer folks could pick up the packets, and drove to the houses of those who were unable to stop by the church. Jessie recalled: “We were trying so hard to be excited: ‘It’s Easter!’ But everyone was thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, it’s like the world is ending.’ How do you celebrate Easter like that?”
But a year later, for Easter in 2021, conditions were different. And in a good way!
Greensboro’s COVID-19-only hospital is closed, vaccinations have been rolled out, and case numbers and deaths are decreasing around the country. We know that we’re not out of the woods yet, but this year we were able to have every single Holy Week service in-person at Redeemer (and streamed online with much higher quality than we had available last year). Praise the Lord!
We processed with palm branches and sang Hosanna together on Palm Sunday.
We had interactive Stations of the Cross through which two-year olds, high-schoolers, and adults alike walked the way of the Cross with Christ.
We celebrated Maundy Thursday in the greenhouse by sharing in the Eucharist and watching Pastor Alan wash Ben Lewis’s (our Senior Lay Leader for the Vestry) feet as a representative for us all.
We nailed sticky notes of our sins to the cross on Good Friday in the greenhouse. Listening to the sound of nails being hammered into the cross powerfully brought to mind the sin which we persist in even though we have tasted His grace. This is the only service during the year which we don’t celebrate the Eucharist.
On Holy Saturday, we grieved, watched, waited, and prayed.
That evening, we began our Easter Vigil service. We walked through the story of God all throughout Scripture, leading up to the crucifixion of Christ—and all the lights were cut off. The Paschal candle was lit from a fire which the sticky-notes we nailed to the cross on Good Friday were thrown into. As Christ’s life and resurrection was announced, we danced, sang, rang cowbells, and shouted joyful “Alleluias!” We had four baptisms and shared in the Eucharist together.
On Sunday morning with two services, our multiple venues, and outdoor overflow, we were able to have more than 200 people safely worship our Risen Lord in-person. Hallelujah!
On Easter Sunday, Rev. Alan centered his message around Romans 6:9, “For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him.” This past year, we were confronted with death in a way that most of us had never been before. Our world has always feared the power of death, and that fear was magnified across every single screen during the pandemic. We are right to be cautious, and we are right to grieve over the power which death has, but Rev. Alan reminded us that as we are found more and more in Christ, death does not have the final say. It no longer has mastery over Christ, and it no longer has eternal mastery over His people either—for we will enjoy perfect life and communion with Him and His people forever in the new heavens and earth.
So, this Easter season, may we give thanks for the ways that the Lord has been healing our world. Even as we practice caution and pray for continual healing, may we praise His name for the blessing of being able to gradually gather and worship in-person once again. And even as we grieve for what has been lost, may we consciously also live from a heart posture of joy at the life which our Lord has won for us.