Tuesday, April 15, 2014

Those Darn Protestants ... a.k.a. Rushing the Liturgical Season Along

When people ask me if I'm Catholic or Protestant around here, I can't answer. As an Episcopalian, I think I am much more Catholic than Protestant. 

Case in point: Here we are in Tuesday in Holy Week.  I went to get the sacrament of St. Arbuck's today, and this is what I saw on the gigantic billboard of a local Southern Baptist Church: 

HE IS RISEN! 
HE IS RISEN INDEED! 

I kid you not.  We haven't even reached Good Friday, but those dang Baptists are Jumping the Shark over all of Holy Week, straight to the resurrection.  

I am gobsmacked. 

Fundamentalists generally slobber and waller all over the cross.  But not this one.  They're just jumping straight to Easter ... 5 days early.  What the heck's up with that?  

Frankly, I think it's a cheap Christianity that fails to spend time in this Holy Week,  spending time with Jesus through Good Friday ... and then imagining what his followers must have felt through Friday and Saturday. I think we must let our imaginations dwell deeply with it all before we come to Sunday.  That's what I'm doing this Holy Week.  Walking with Jesus.  

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4 Comments:

Blogger PseudoPiskie said...

That's one of the reasons I dislike doing the passion on Palm Sunday. It just becomes part of the liturgy. We should wallow in the excitement of Palm Sunday and what follows before the shock of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday.

4/16/2014 8:32 AM  
Blogger Unknown said...

Great post.
PseudoPiskie, I am in sympathy with your comment, and our parish has experimented with Palms-only Palm Sundays. But this year it was the whole shebang, ... and it worked liturgically and spiritually for me.
But I think it is working because I've also been to Morning Prayer or Evening Prayer each day this week, and the walk toward the Upper Room, Gethsemane and Golgatha continues. Lisa is right. The road to Easter passes by here, and it is a loss to take the short cut.
Lou Poulain
lay Episcopalian in
the heart of Silicon Valley

4/16/2014 1:48 PM  
Blogger Lisa Fox said...

Me too, PseudoPiskie. But look at Bosco's comment on my previous post. Apparent it is an ancient tradition of the church to read the whole Passion on Palm Sunday, not just a newfangled thing.

4/16/2014 9:35 PM  
Blogger Lisa Fox said...

Thanks for dropping in, Lou.
There was one year here -- when we had an interim priest -- when the parish gathered for Evening Prayer during all of Holy Week. Now we're back to Palm Sunday ... then the Triduum.
I like how you put "The road to Easter ..." comment. Thank you.

4/16/2014 9:37 PM  

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