Hungry Saints This Holy Week
Going to a Lancaster County buffet means delighting in the options spread before you. Return trips for soup, salad, appetizers, entrees and dessert means leaving only when you are wonderfully full and satisfied. The Holy Week offerings in our congregation are like Shady Maple buffet. The Eden Resort offers a great Easter Brunch, but here this Holy Week Jesus offers you the amazing banquet and feasting on His Word and love. Just as in a buffet you may not have room for all the dishes, so too it may not be possible to partake of every service offered. Yet like a good buffet, one might just want to try.
Palm Sunday
On Palm Sunday we welcome Jesus among us with hymns of great rejoicing. Palm branches adorn our church (and hands!) as the service begins with the Procession of Palms and the singing of “All Glory, Laud and Honor.” Jesus came into Jerusalem riding on a donkey to shouts of “Hosanna.” Holy Week begins as the children sing and we honor Him by submitting our lives to Him. Even our donkey joins us again this year!
Maundy Thursday
On Maundy Thursday we enter the Upper Room as Jesus spends the last hours of His life with us. We confess our sins corporately as a congregation, then come forward for an individual absolution spoken by our pastor as from Christ Himself. The service ends with the “Stripping of the Altar” and the chant of Psalm 22. During His trial Jesus’ clothing was taken from Him. We take part in this humiliation of Christ as for our sins He was disgraced and demeaned.
Good Friday Chief Service
On Good Friday Noon we experience the benefit of His love for us as we stand next to our Lord during His hours on the cross.
- We read the Passion responsively. The pastor speaks the words of Jesus, and the congregation repeats the words of the crowd.
- The bell is rung 33 times to mark Jesus’ life lived and given.
- We adore the wooden cross, carried in for our remembrance.
- The Good Friday Reproaches cry out, “What have I done to you, O My people?”
- The Lord’s body and blood, offered on the cross, are received.
Service of Tenebrae Vespers
We return for the Service of Tenebrae (meaning “darkness”). The church lights gradually dim as the candles are extinguished. The strepitus (a large bang) occurs after the last candle goes out. Christ has died and His tomb shut. “It is finished.” We praise God for the redemption Christ accomplished for us on the cross.
Holy Saturday — Candlelight Easter Vigil
On Holy Saturday the church gathers in the Memorial Garden (weather permitting) for the Candlelight Easter Vigil. The new fire is lit as worshippers process into a darkened (and decorated) church. The smell of the Easter lilies awakens the senses to the full joy that will be celebrated the next day. Ancient chants are sung calling to remembrance the time when God’s people of old waited and were delivered. We call to mind the promises God made to us in our Baptism and celebrate our being joined with Christ.
The word vigil means “to watch.” On the “Easter watch” we wait in the night hours and prepare our hearts for Easter Day. Though we daily experience the darkness of sin and the sorrow of death, Christ is overcoming these things with His Easter light and is bringing new life to us.
Easter Service in Lititz PA
In the morning of a new day the Easter Gospel is read, and the angels declare to us the message of Jesus’ resurrection, comforting us in the sorrow of our sin and death. The center of the Easter Day Divine Service is the celebration of Holy Communion as Christ our Lord feeds us with His body and blood. We are released from sin’s grip just as Christ burst forth from the bars of death. He is free, and so we are also free. We begin new lives as Christ appears to us and proclaims His Gospel to us.
Come to the Buffet Line
Describing a buffet line may make your stomach yearn for its contents. We gather this week not in the shade of the maple, but under the shadow of the cross. Served at Our Lord’s Buffet at Mount Calvary we feast and delight and rejoice in what is coming. See you in the buffet line ahead.
Have a blessed Holy Week to all.
Pastor Seifferlein
