Postcard From The Past: What Holy Week Means to Me
By Pastor Charles E. Bream, Grace English Lutheran
If Jesus Christ had not been the long-anticipated “Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world,” if He had not carried to Calvary the sins of the whole world, if He had not broken forever the power of Satan by His atonement, if these essential facts of His work were controvertible or even demonstrably untrue, yet we would be more than justified in setting aside a week called “Holy Week” for the concentration of attention upon this last week in the human life of “the Rose of Sharon,” the one of whom even Pilate must admit, “I find no fault in Him.”
Holy Week, the period in the ecclesiastical year between Palm Sunday and Easter comes down through the centuries bountifully laden with memories and traditions which bespeak fruitful religious observance.
Palm Sunday is the day when humanity acclaimed her Lord in unstinted measure.
When jealous critics rebuked Christ for allowing mere children to join in the general applause he said, “If these should hold their peace, the very stones would cry out.”
The week following this unprecedented approbation was one of incomparable tragedy. When once Jesus had reached the time when He was ready to carry out the “I lay down My life” culmination of His mission, the events moved swiftly to their climax.
Bitter disputing in the temple, gracious retirement in the humble home of Mary and Martha and Lazarus at Bethany, the observance of the Passover and the institution of the Lord’s Supper, the incomprehensible agony of Gethsemane, the stupendous triumph of that prayer in Gethsemane, the peerless majesty of our Lord in the judgment halls of Annas and Caiaphas and Pilate and Herod and the Via Dolorosa and Calvary – the mere mention of each of these arouses a flood of memories so sacred, so awe-inspiring the name Holy Week instinctively comes to one’s lips as they think of that pregnant week into which all these events were crowded.
But the crowning event of Holy Week is Easter. To me, Holy Week means a period of almost breathless suspense as I watch with my Lord while He voluntarily endured such suffering as no man ever endured and such shameless indignities as degenerate men have never before nor since had the chance to visit upon a superior.
And this suspense, while I watch with Him in the upper chamber in Gethsemane, in the judgment hall on Via Dolorosa and in Calvary, would be unendurable were it not for the sustaining power of the subconscious realization after of all this comes the empty tomb.
Oh, what joy we find in the gentle rebuke which Jesus administered to those early visitors to His tomb.
They came with hands laden with spices to anoint an emaciated, decaying body, and He met them with the reproving question, “Why seek ye the living among the dead?”
This is the triumphant climax of Holy Week.
Holy sorrow while we watch our Savior pay the price of our redemption and holy joy when we behold the empty tomb, the useless grave clothes and the Risen Lord.
Who can begin to number the myriads who, standing at the sepulcher of their departed loved ones, have felt immeasurable calm come into their hearts as they heard the words, “I am the resurrection and the life?”
Man’s endeavoring for the ultimate has its eternal inspiration in the message of the empty tomb.
Hear me, men. Hear me, women. You pay yourself the highest compliment possible when you admit sufficient spiritual perception to be moved to bow your head in humble recognition of the sacred meaning of Holy Week.
– Guest column from the April 12, 1927 issue of the Casper Daily Tribune.
