Friday, March 30, 2007

Friday Five: It's Going to Be a Loooooong Week



The RevGals' Friday Five:

Will this Sunday be Palms only, Passion only, or hyphenated?
At our place it is Palm Sunday, complete with cardboard palm fronds to wave around...and it's going to be mostly about the kids, from what I understand.

Maundy Thursday Footwashing: Discuss.
For the past several years our church has had, in lieu of the traditional Maundy Thursday Eucharist service, a kind of agape meal -- stew, homemade flatbread and other accompaniments -- with a narrated liturgy, culminating in Eucharist around our tables, with participants serving one another the bread and wine. At the beginning, as we enter into the fellowship area, members of the Worship Committee meet us and, instead of washing our feet, wash/dry/lotion our hands. It's still a way of modeling service and humility, I think, and is both logistically easier and less intimidating for worshippers than the footwashing.

Share a particularly meaningful Good Friday worship experience.
Tenebrae services really move me -- the stripped altar; the reading of Jesus' last words and the loud thud of the Bible being shut; the silent procession out of the church. (Our congregation has a hard time with the silence.)

Easter Sunrise Services--choose one:
a) "Resurrection tradition par excellence!"
b) "Eh. As long as it's sunrise with coffee, I can live with it."
c) "[Yawn] Can't Jesus stay in the tomb just five more minutes, Mom?!?"

Oh, I love the early service -- not only for the evocative atmosphere, there in the faint but growing light of sunrise, but because it frees the rest of the day for celebration with family and/or friends. I once attended an 11:00 a.m. Easter service; just not the same.

Complete this sentence: It just isn't Easter without...
"Christ the Lord is Ris'n Today"!

Bonus question: Easter Vigil:
Believe it or not I have never been to one...my congregation had an Easter Vigil for a couple of years but I think the service burnout got to people. If it were logistically feasible for me to pack in this observance I think it would be really cool.

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