We dwell so much in images today that the words often get forgotten or glossed over.
This is a limited look considering based on excerpts sermons and blogs for this year’s Holy Week, mostly from our services at St. Peter’s without considering hymns or prayers. That’s another story.
Here are 9 selections – totally subjective in choosing them!
1 Palm Sunday
Sermon, Catherine Hicks
“Jesus invites us to enter the tomb with him, to accept the death of the various hopes in our lives that we tried to keep alive for so long, to finally and to truthfully say, “God, not my will, but your will be done.”
“Sometimes we will be forced into the tomb, but other times we can decide for ourselves that it’s time to lay down our wills and to let that grain of wheat that we had held onto for so long go ahead and fall into the ground and die, and to enter the tomb that holds our shattered hopes and dreams, place them into the arms of God’s will and God’s mercy, and let them rest.
“Jesus has gone before us into the tomb.
“It is in the tomb of our hopes and dreams and in the death of our unruly wills that we come to know that only God is immortal, the creator and maker of all that is, and we are mortal, formed of the earth, and to earth we shall return…all of us go down to the dust, yet even at the grave, we make our song, Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.
“The tomb, even in its cold finality, is not a place without hope, for only God is the maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen, and the Lord, the giver of life. Jesus, true God from true God, has been there before us, and will meet us there.
“And it is there, in the tomb, that God brings life out of death and makes all things new.
2. Tenebrae
Some words about Tenebrae and the scriptures used.
Tenebrae invites us to journey through Christ’s suffering, darkness, and ultimate hope. As we extinguish candles, we remember His sacrifice, and as the Christ candle is restored, we anticipate His victory
Psalm 69 – The psalmist begins with a desperate plea for salvation: “Save me, O God, for the waters have risen up to my neck.” The imagery of drowning in deep waters symbolizes overwhelming distress
Psalm 70 – This psalm is a brief but urgent plea for God’s swift intervention: “Make haste, O God, to deliver me; make haste to help me, O Lord.”
Psalm 74 – The psalmist questions God’s apparent absence: “Why have you utterly cast us off? Why is your wrath so hot against the sheep of your pasture?”
Matthew 26:39 – His plea to the Father is heart-wrenching: “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet not as I will, but as you will.” The “cup” symbolizes the suffering and sacrifice He is about to endure. Jesus acknowledges His own desire for relief but ultimately submits to God’s plan.
In the Tenebrae service, these passages evoke a sense of darkness, abandonment, and hope amidst suffering. They invite
reflection on our own struggles and the enduring faith that sustains us.
Deuteronomy 28:7:
Verse 7 specifically states: “The LORD will cause your enemies who rise against you to be defeated before your face; they shall come out against you one way and flee before you seven ways.”
Isaiah 53:2-5:
He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.”
In the Tenebrae service, these verses resonate deeply. As we extinguish candles one by one, we reflect on the darkness that enveloped the world during Christ’s crucifixion. Yet, even in that darkness, His sacrificial love shines forth, offering hope and redemption.
Hebrews 9:11-15a
These verses highlight Jesus as the high priest of the good things that have come. He entered the heavenly sanctuary, not made by human hands, to offer eternal redemption.
The Tenebrae readings and music remind us that the blood of Christ surpasses the temporary purification rituals of the Old Covenant (symbolized by goats and bulls).
3. Maundy Thursday
Sermon, Catherine Hicks
“Once a year, on this night, we physically remember at the foot washing that we stand on the threshold of God’s house, that we bring our whole selves, our dusty, dirty, confused mixed up lives to God’s door. God is waiting.
As the invitation to the Eucharist in our Celtic Eucharistic prayer puts it, “Those who wish to serve him must first be served by him, those who want to follow him must first be fed by him, those who would wash his feet must first let him make them clean.”
“Jesus set an example for us when he washed the feet of his disciples.
“So we practice how to love one another tonight, as we wash one another’s feet. We remember how to welcome in and to love one another graciously and generously. The practice of foot washing becomes our perpetual ordinance of welcoming one another in love, as Jesus welcomes us.
“Bread, wine, water, welcome—God weaves these strands of melodies together into our resurrection song, our song of praise and thanksgiving for God’s love for us.
“When we practice this song, God’s welcoming love song for us will become the music that plays forever in our hearts, the unforgettable music that calls us to remember, the music that sings us through our days and shapes us into love.
4. Good Friday
Sermon, Catherine Hicks
“Blood is essential to life. Blood carries oxygen and nutrients throughout our bodies and helps to regulate our body temperatures. Blood carries waste materials to the organs that rid the body of that waste. Blood also fights off infections. Without blood, we cannot live.
“At the last supper, Jesus referred to the wine in the cup that he shared with the disciples as his own blood, the Blood of the new Covenant. The disciples are intimately related to Jesus at this point. Jesus is the true vine, and the disciples are the branches. The life giving sap of the vine flows into the branches so that the branches can bear much fruit.
“As the Father has loved me,” Jesus says, “so I have loved you; abide in my love….this is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”
“The lifegiving love of Jesus flows into us when we drink from the cup, and we are to let that love of Jesus pour through us out into the world.
“So may we worthily receive the cup of new life that Jesus drank for us and then poured out for us on this day, a cup of the new life free from the sins and sufferings of this world.
“Drinking freely and deeply, may we be filled with God’s grace and heavenly benediction, and made one body with him, that he may dwell in us, and we in him.
5. Washington National Cathedral – Good Friday
“Our Lord is laid bare, nailed to the cross, and we are stripped bare. We reveal our hearts and souls as they are, not dressed in the fashion of a false narrative of perfection, but imperfect and in need of healing and mercy. We bare our hearts and souls, not for the sake of performative suffering, but for the sake of revelation.
“We reveal what we have cast off onto the one nailed to the cross. We offer all of who we are to the one who, for the sake of the whole world, suffered on the cross. It’s in this time of bearing our souls that we move slowly and take a deep breath before moving on.
“We experience the ringing silence of a pause, awaiting the release of our Savior into the throws of death. This time of anticipatory grief and expectant joy remind us that the joy of the resurrection cannot come until after the suffering of Good Friday. We are in the midst of this journey, with the beginning behind us and the end within sight.”
6. Bishop Wright, Diocese of Atlanta Easter Message
“Allelujah Christ is risen the Lord is risen. Indeed this morning’s Easter Joy is brought to you by God and it’s all gift. Easter for us is distinct from the excitement of Springtime- the warmer temperatures, the blossoms on the flowers and the trees – they belong to us all the atheist, the agnostic, and the believer. But Easter the resurrection of Jesus, Jesus Christ that uniquely is reserved for those who have made Jesus’s teaching an example a lighthouse and a soundtrack for their lives.
“It was early in the morning when it was still dark when Mary Magdalene made her way to Jesus’s tomb. It was her diligence despite the darkness that won her the privilege of being the first herald of the Resurrection to the world. What Mary did then sets an example for us now. Mary was diligent even though it was dark. Mary keeps moving despite the darkness. Mary does love’s work even when it’s dark and doesn’t seem to matter.
“What makes Easter so glorious is that it refreshes our resolve to live out a dark defying hope. To trust God in the light is nothing said Charles Spurgeon but to trust him in the dark. Now that is Faith and we who follow Jesus know that the darkness does not not disprove the fact of God nor does it prove that God is indifferent. Easter proves that God does some of God’s best work in the dark. Easter proves that God can be trusted to make an Easter out of the dark times of our individual and Collective lives.
“That great African Theologian St Augustine said it this way. It seemed good to God to bring light out of darkness and good out of evil rather than darkness and evil to have never existed. What that means is God is using evil and darkness like a great jiujitsu Master manipulating its own force against it taking Good Friday and making them into Easter Sundays taking garbage and making it gold and if God did it then, God can do it now in your life in our common life and in the world. Way back in the first chapter of John’s gospel, John gives away the ending of the whole book. He says the light shone in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it. That is our Easter gift. Our companion God is asking us to press on certain of the light and God’s Mighty power to redeem. Allelujah Christ is risen the Lord is risen indeed happy Easter beloved.”
7. Easter, Sunrise
Sermon, Tom Hughes
“I’m sure growing up we all heard the phrase, about being saved by grace through faith. What we’re here celebrating is the grace of God who sent Jesus to fix this situation that we weren’t able to fix ourselves and we could not extricate ourselves from the terrible situation that human beings have been in because we lack the ability to resist evil. It’s just something the matter with us that we are not able to resist evil without help, but help has come – that’s what we’re celebrating this morning. Jesus died for us so that has been taken care of and that is the grace of this moment, that is the power and the love that God has shown to us.
“Happiness comes from in here. We live from the inside out not from the outside in. That’s where God is (inside). God’s everywhere. God is here and God is in us, each one of us, ever one of us, so that’s the place out of which we live our lives and that’s where happiness comes from. It’s the joy of knowing Christ, the joy of being in God’s world and and to live together in peace.
8. Easter, 11am
Sermon, Catherine Hicks
“Since the beginning of time, gardens have provided sustenance, beauty and inspiration. Those blessed enough to have a garden witness the ways in which the garden changes through the seasons.
“Gardens have always been places of death and resurrection. That first man, blessed to live in the Garden of Eden, could not simply live there, reveling in its blessings and beauty, but ended up putting himself above God, and sin came into the garden. God sent the man and the woman out of the Garden so that they would not eat from the Tree of Life and live forever. And so death came into the world.
“Now we come to this happy morning, this day of Jesus’ resurrection, the day that love comes again, like wheat that springeth green, the day that we return to the garden.
“On the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene started out in the darkness and made her way to the garden, and found that the tomb was empty. After the other disciples had left, Mary stayed behind, weeping. And then she turned and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. She thought that Jesus was the gardener.
“I love this part of the story, because it turns out that Jesus really is a gardener, bringing new life out of death. I wonder if Mary remembered Jesus saying earlier about himself that unless a seed falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain, but if it dies it bears much fruit. Jesus went to his death, but now…… Jesus is alive! Even though he was crucified, died, and was buried, on the third day he has risen.
“Now the garden is full of life again, new life, but this new life is not simply a return to the old life that Jesus had shared with the disciples before his death and resurrection.
“Although she will only come to fully understand this later, Jesus is opening for Mary the way of everlasting life. Jesus is going to prepare a place for her, as he had told his disciples he would. Jesus had said to them, “And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.”
“The promise for us in this resurrection story is that because of the resurrection, we too will be in a richer, more verdant lifegiving, abundant relationship with our Lord, starting this moment.
“Jesus is the gardener who tends to us. We are like the seeds that Jesus plants and tends. Jesus tends us, helps us to spring up with new life, to bear much fruit, to spend ourselves, to die back, to rest, and then to spring up bearing fruit in the next growing season of our lives.
9. The SALT blog
“But dawn is not the day. Easter Sunday is only the beginning: Jesus’ resurrection is the “first fruits” of the harvest, an encouraging glimpse of what’s ahead (compare 1 Cor 15:20-23). But “what’s ahead,” by definition, isn’t yet here. We call it “dawn” because its rays of light break through the shadows — but it’s also true that for the time being, the shadows remain.
“Accordingly, Easter comes not as the solution to creation’s problems but rather as profound assurance that a new, irrevocable era has begun — and in the end, love and justice, shalom and joy, will have the final word. The sun will rise!”