As Christians gather to celebrate their holiest time of the year, local churches are taking time to emphasize the week of events that led up to the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Some of the services and special activities planned include some merging of congregations and separate, denominational rites that all are open to the public.
Several examples of those are listed below. More information about individual church plans will be published on Friday in the weekly “Church News” column.
Volunteers at the Twelfth Avenue Baptist Church have spent the week in a special prayer room set up by members of the missions committee.
“We started praying Sunday morning and we’re praying 24 hours a day all this week,” said Alicia Lambert, fellowship chairman and office assistant at the church.
Volunteers committed to praying there for one-hour increments throughout the week.
At the First Congregational Church, the congregation has been invited to help create a large cross of flowers.
“We’re inviting people to bring fresh-cut flowers from home, and of course we’ll have some at the church,” said Pastor Chad Poland.
The flowers will be pinned to the cross, which will be brought to the front of the church for the service. Later, it will be taken outside, weather permitting. The cross symbolizes both the tragedy and the victory inherent in Holy Week.
“The cross is an instrument of death, but to have these symbols of new life — flowers — is a reminder that God took that instrument, that tragedy, and transformed it into victory and new life,” Poland said.
Although sunrise services are growing more rare as years pass, several churches still keep the tradition.
Cottonwood Friends Church will be host to the First Friends congregation for a Sunrise Service beginning at 7 a.m. on Sunday. The two churches alternate as hosts for the annual early Easter service, and breakfast will be served by the Cottonwood church after the service.
A Fellowship Breakfast is planned at 8:15 a.m. at St. Mark’s Lutheran Church, following the 7 a.m. Early Dawn Eucharist service.
An ecumenical “Stations of the Cross” walk through the city is planned on Friday, beginning at noon. Participants will meet at St. Andrews Episcopal Church and will walk to Sacred Heart Catholic Church. The walk was begun last year as a cooperative activity by the Rev. Kelley Lackey of St. Andrews, and the Rev. Darren Henson of Sacred Heart.
“Holy Week is a way of reminding us once again of the great gift that’s made to us, and the ways that we continue to not be as gracious to each other as God has been to us,” Lackey said.
Lackey said that his congregation sees Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Sunday “as one big drama that happens in three parts.”
The washing of the feet, as Jesus did for his disciples, will be on Thursday, when the blessed sacrament will be taken to another part of the church, the altars will be stripped bare to recall Jesus’ being arrested and taken away, and the church will be darkened. People will keep vigil, usually for one hour at a time, with the blessed sacrament until sunrise Friday.
“What that does is that recalls the part of the Scripture when Jesus goes into the garden to pray and finds his three disciples sleeping and says, ‘Could you not wait for me even an hour?’” Lackey said.
On Good Friday, when people come to the church, “it’s almost tomblike, and it’s meant to be that way,” he said.
The Passion of Christ will be read, a large cross will be brought in, and holy communion will be taken from reserve sacrament. The latter is symbolic of “clearing out the old leaven and making the new leaven of Easter,” Lackey said.
St. Andrews will begin celebrating the Easter vigil at sunset on Saturday, in recognition of ancient customs that say the new calendar day begins at sunset. The pascal candle for the year, an ancient symbol of Christ, will be blessed and will continue to burn throughout the 50 days of Easter.
“A lot of churches don’t keep all of the ancient things,” Lackey said. “It’s exhausting to drag into church three or four days in a row, but at the end of it, it really is like a runner’s high. When Easter comes and the great hallelujah is proclaimed that he has risen, after going through that whole cycle ... Christ washing his feet, having supper with his friends, and then that betrayal, that arrest, crucifixion, once you’ve been through that ... you feel Easter in a way, a deeper sense, than if you just show up for Easter Sunday.”
Messiah Lutheran Church will have a prayer walk open to the public from 4 to 8 p.m. Thursday, 8:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. Friday, and 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday.
The prayer walk, set up in the basement of the church, takes participants through the final week of Jesus’ life and offers opportunities to meditate, pray, and perform an action associated with each moment in time depicted in the eight rooms that will be used, according to Elaine Whiteneck, minister of Christian education for the church.
The prayer walk is for children and adults of all ages.
“It’s an entirely different way to pray than we’re used to,” she said. “A fold your hands, bow your head kind of thing, it isn’t. ... It’s like a hands-on object lesson that ties in with the Scripture and the room.”
A Service of Darkness on Friday will begin at 7 p.m.
“It takes us through the final hours of Jesus’ life, and you go from a bright, lit sanctuary and it just gets darker and darker as different Scripture readings are read,” Whiteneck said.
The candles are extinguished, and the lights lowered until the sanctuary is completely dark and the congregation leaves in silence.
“It’s just a really moving service,” she said.
At sunrise service at 6:30 a.m. Sunday, with the church stripped bare of flowers and color, a giant cross draped in black is the focal point. The congregation will enter singing a Lenten hymn and when they get to the front will say, “‘He is not here, he is risen,’ so Pastor whips that big black drape off the cross and then the flowers come pouring in and the hallelujah banners and the color. It just really does help one to experience the transition between the service of darkness on Good Friday and the celebration of the Resurrection on Easter,” Whiteneck said.