Lutheran Church of the Resurrection

I don’t’ think anyone would have ever imagined that would be celebrating Easter from behind ‘closed doors’. And yet, when we put it like that, suddenly we realize that, in fact, the first Easter was celebrated from behind closed doors. As we’ll hear next Sunday, “On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews…” All we have to do is substitute, “for fear of the virus” to realize that we’re actually in good company – the only difference being that WE KNOW MORE THAN THEY KNEW. And so, even from behind our “locked doors” we are nonetheless bold to declare: Christ is risen! He is risen indeed, Alleluia.

But we do long for the day when we will celebrate the Feast of Victory for our God – not in the isolation of our house but together in the Lord’s House. Who doesn’t have a much clearer idea of just what the Psalmist was saying about when he wrote, “I was glad when they said, ‘let us go up to the House of the Lord”? (Ps. 122:1) And so will we be glad when the quarantine is lifted and the word goes out, “let us go up to the House of the Lord,” and we sing “Jesus Christ is Risen Today!” together, with one voice in the congregation.
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On Palm Sunday, the Christian Church begins its most sacred and holiest week of the year. This is not an arbitrary observation that the Church adopted over time. In fact, it was established by the Gospel writers themselves by the disproportionate amount of attention that each one devotes to this one week in the life of our Lord.

Out of curiosity I did the math. Matthew, Mark and Luke devote 23% to 30% of their gospels to this one week of our Lord’s life. John devotes a whopping 43% of his gospel just to this one week of Jesus’ life. No wonder then that as the Church reads the gospels, it’s attention becomes so focused on this one week in the life of its Lord that it observes this week as the sacred and holy week that it is.

So, here’s the plan for our observance of Holy Week in this year 2020 during this time of quarantine. Each day during this week, we’ll prepare an audio bible study that will review the events of that day as given us by the four gospel writers. On Monday, we’ll consider the events that the gospels tell us happened on Monday of Holy Week, and Tuesday, and so forth. Today, we consider the events of Palm Sunday.

John writes, “The next day the large crowd that had come to the feast heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem.” By beginning with the words, “the next day,” John wants to connect the events of Palm Sunday to the events of the previous day.
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“I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Christian church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.”

There is a very real sense in which the Holy Spirit is much harder for us to get our brain wrapped around than the Father or the Son. Just the way that we identify the 1st and 2nd persons of the Trinity is different that the 3rd. “Father” and “Son” are very personal names which we can relate to. We all have fathers. We’re all either sons or daughters. We know what it means to trust, to serve, to speak to, to even worship a Father and a Son.

But the Holy Spirit is… different. What we said last week about ‘who’ the Holy Spirit is, is about as good as we are able to do. The Holy Spirit is Spirit, He is holy. The Holy Spirit is God.

But the Scriptures make it clear that the Holy Spirit is no less ‘personal’ than the Father or the Son just because we can’t identify with Him very well. The Holy Spirit is the personal Person of the Trinity who acts as the match-maker who brings us to the Son and the Son to us. Apart from the Holy Spirit, our relationship with the Son, and with the Father through the Son, would never happen.
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