For as long as I can remember, Holy Week has been an important part of my life. Before I became a minister, when I was a child, Palm Sunday was a special day of pageantry. Our father tried to have a baby donkey for the occasion, but donkeys, with a year-long gestation, are notoriously hard to predict when it comes to the date of a birth. Nonetheless, some years we had a fairly young colt for the festivities. One year the colt arrived a week late and was born on Easter. We named the colt Hallelujah, but her name quickly got shortened to Lulu. She was a bit of a problem animal. When she was a yearling, she stepped through a cattle guard. Fortunately she didn’t break her leg, but she skinned it up terribly requiring a visit from the vet and bandages for a few weeks.

When we were seminary students, Holy Week was a time of extra services at the seminary and in the churches where I served my internships. After I graduated, I served congregations with various Holy Week traditions, Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, and Good Friday services were common even in small congregations that I served. The congregation we served in Rapid City had a tradition of a Maundy Thursday pageant with members of the congregation playing the roles of disciples at the last Supper. Over the years, the tradition shifted. There was a year when there was a Holy Week blizzard that brought down trees in front of the church. We barely got the parking lot cleared in time for Maundy Thursday and several of the people who would have played the parts in the pageant were not able to get to church. I was recruiting disciples as people arrived at the church.

In the later years of our time in Rapid City, we began having services every day of Holy Week. Instead of having a Palm and Passion service on Palm Sunday with the reading of the entire Holy Week Story, up through the crucifixion following the Palm Sunday festivities, we separated the two services, observing Palm Sunday on Sunday and having a reading of the passion story on Monday. A blues concert marked Tuesday evening. On Wednesday we had a meal and special observance in the fellowship hall. In the latter years representatives of the Synagogue of the Hills led a seder service on that day. Maundy Thursday was the observance of the Last Supper, with optional foot washing some years. Good Friday we had a “Journey to the Cross” service with readings and prayers at noon. On Saturday we observed the Great Vigil of Easter and Easter morning began with a sunrise service followed by a breakfast and a well-attended Easter service. When we offered all of those services, the combined attendance at the midweek services exceeded the attendance at Easter.

Then Covid-19 hit the last year of my service at that church. All of our midweek services were cancelled. I spent a lot of time figuring out how to use a new web camera to livestream the Sunday service. The first year of our retirement was a very unusual year for our new church home in Bellingham. The lead pastor was doing double duty as the Minister of Youth, Young Adults, and Mission was on a health-related leave. Both Susan and I helped that Lent with preaching. I preached on Palm Sunday. But it wasn’t preaching in front of the congregation. Rather we pre-recorded services in our living room that were included in recorded services streamed over facebook. The Easter services were similarly pre-recorded. It just didn’t seem the same. I don’t know if it was a bit of post-retirement malaise, or just the strangeness of living through a pandemic, but Holy Week didn’t feel right.

Last year we were back in the stream of things, working as Interim Ministers of Faith Formation at the church. We had a kind of Palm Sunday pageant, with children and adults waving palm leaves, and a family event at the church on the afternoon of Palm Sunday in which we taught a variety of lessons about Lent and Holy Week.

Today we have a full intergenerational Palm Sunday service with a scripted pageant, written by Susan, special music, and a variety of intergenerational services during the hour following worship with tables in the fellowship hall with activities as varied as baking pretzels, making palm crosses, writing advocacy letters, a discussion group for older youth and adults, working a large floor puzzle, and more. There will also be Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Sunrise services, so church staff will be busy with special services as well as the regular services. Our congregation shares our building with a United Methodist congregation and we will have a joint service on Good Friday and separate services on other days.

Holy week coincides with spring break in the public schools here in Whatcom County. There are a lot of families who are traveling this week. We had a problem recruiting players for today’s pageant. Fortunately our grandchildren were able to step in and take roles to fill out the cast. There is a lot going on and we will be busy. Busy and tired are part of the mood of Holy Week for us, however. I don’t mind pushing a little bit during this time.

I read an article yesterday about Pope Francis, who was admitted to the hospital last week with bronchitis. He was released from the hospital yesterday and the Vatican confirmed that he will lead a Palm and Passion Mass today. The writer of the BBC article was a bit surprised that he would be leading a mass the day after he was released from the hospital, but it seemed obvious to me that he would lead the mass if he was at all able. It is what pastors do during Holy Week. We lead worship for our people.

I’m not quite as old at the Pope, but I have come to the place where younger pastors are doing most of the leadership of the church, while I take a somewhat smaller role. It is appropriate, but there is a part of me that misses the rush of busy activities during Holy Week. I wish I knew where to find a concert to sit with the blues one evening this week. I plan to listen to my recordings of James Van Nuys playing his guitar this week just to remember and reflect. May your week be holy.