It’s NOT about the Bunny!It’s NOT about the Bunny!
It’s not about coloured eggs, or chicks, or flowers or chocolate or even the new life of spring. Holy Week is the most important time of year for Christians. It’s a week in which we remember the last days of Jesus, full of emotion and drama, triumph and despair, death and resurrection.
1. It begins with Palm Sunday, called for the palms that the people greeted Jesus with when he rode into Jerusalem on a donkey. Jesus came humbly, knowing he was to die, but was greeted as a king by the people, long oppressed.
2. Maundy Thursday is when we remember Jesus’ last supper with his friends, how he insisted on washing the feet of the disciples, becoming their servant, and how he commanded (mandate) the disciples to love one another as he had loved them.
3. Good Friday (God’s Friday) we remember the arrest, the trial, and the long walk Jesus took dragging the cross, to that hill called Golgotha, where he was hung by the Romans between two felons until he was dead. When he died, darkness came over the earth and the curtain in the temple was torn in two.
Eastertide
Holy Week transitions into the fifty day season of Easter on Holy Saturday, when at midnight, Christians rejoice that Jesus was raised from the dead. The crucifixion and resurrection are for Christians, the ultimate proof of God’s unconditional love for us.. On the cross, Jesus sacrificed himself for the sins of all humanity.
Easter is not about bunnies and eggs, but rather about grieving women who went to the tomb where Jesus’ body had been laid, who found instead, the grave cloths empty and an angel who reassured them that he was risen from the dead. A time when we remember Mary, who mistook the risen Christ for a gardener, but who recognized him when he uttered her name. It’s the day when we remember the disciples, confused, amazed, terrified. It would take a few appearances of the risen Christ before they accepted that Jesus was risen.