Forget Holy Week....I'm ready for Easter Resurrection cause I need one!!!



Marva: I believe in life- what it does to you, and what you do back. (Leap of Faith)

Hosanna…

Hosanna….

….hosanna……….really?????????

Growing up in Western Kentucky in a town a lot smaller than Morehead, I don’t remember much about Hosanna’s, or Palms, or even Holy Week.  My daddy is a Baptist minister and we didn’t do all that  catholic kind of stuff like liturgy or lectionary or printed sermons or preachers in robes….We attended a small country church atop a hill where daddy preached.  It was a great place to live and grow and be nurtured in the faith.   The church there was the center of the community.  It’s where you learned about God’s love through the love folks had for each other…going to church was like sitting on the front porch in a rocker on Sunday afternoon and having a parade of neighbors drop by and chat….and I loved it.   About a week before Easter, my mama would get all consumed with the upcoming Holy Holiday---everything had to be just right……she shopped everywhere for just the right dress for us girls and for that suit my brother would wear one time…….usually we ended up at the JC Penny’s located on main street in the town next to us—and I’m showing my age but it was long before we really had malls. Some of you may remember those days of mom and pop shops…

She’d buy the dresses, pick us up those roll down socks with ruffles and of course those black Paten Mary janes….

Easter baskets and talks of resurrection  mainly centered around the upcoming Easter Egg hunt out on the hill….

Well

that’s what I remember about Holy week from my childhood….

There were no Hosanna’s or palm leaves or Maundy Thursdays or good Fridays……straight to Easter Resurrection …

that’s where we went and I kinda liked it that way……

No walk to Jerusalem,

no last supper with friends,

 no beating or crown of thorns…..

No Palms a waving and no yelling of Hosannas….

In studying this passage this week,

 I found that I’d kinda still like to live in that world….

In the The world where we don’t experience  pain,

hear about the suffering,

Or live in the uneasiness as we hear the recalling of the three on the Hill of Golgotha…

I like Easter…

Like the lilies and the new dresses

 and trumpets and chocolate,

 Easter baskets and colored eggs…

But in the real world most of us don't live that

Easter kind of life everyday, now do we?

I say...forget about Holy week this year...

Forget about Hosannas, skip the last supper and foot washing,

I'm ready for Easter  Right NOW! 'Cause my Spirit definitely could use a resurrection.

(taken from an excerpt of sermon preached at Faith Presbyterian Church on Palm Sunday in Morehead, Kentucky)