Pastor Roggelin's Newsletter at Zion Church of Baltimore

ZION NEWSLETTER

Volume 18, Number 2

THE EASTER ISSUE

April/May 2003

Der Tod ist verschlungen in den Sieg.
Tod, wo ist dein Stachel, Hölle, wo ist dein Sieg?

DEATH IS SWALLOWED UP IN VICTORY.
O DEATH, WHERE IS THY STING? O GRAVE, WHERE IS THY VICTORY?

Many people are looking forward to celebrating Easter, and indeed it is the source and the highlight of the entire church year. Yet few realize that Easter is embedded in a sacred sequence of days and celebrations, called the Triduum (from the Latin, meaning “three days”), the destination of our journey through Lent.

The celebration of the Triduum is really one celebration in three days that consist of Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter. The events of all that happens in church during these days are not merely to help us remember in the contemporary sense, what happened with Jesus in Jerusalem. They are to make present for us and in our time the reality of God's accomplishment so that we may enter into the mystery. When Jesus said "do this in remembrance of me", he was using the word in the Hebrew sense. Memory does not mean to "look back on the past." It means to bring that reality present in faith.

To really celebrate, we should make every effort to be present at all three parts of the Triduum. There is no Easter joy without Good Friday grief, and there is nothing “Good” in Good Friday without the belief in the Easter resurrection. In that death on the cross, death was swallowed up in victory, lost its sting, and graves would become beds of hope.

We hope you appreciate again our service arrangement for Holy Week, designed to follow the stages of moving from Palm Sunday to Easter, and honoring the special gifts of our two languages and traditions in the best way open to us: Palm Sunday will have a German family service with an emphasis on Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, while the English service will have a double focus on “Palm and Passion”. Maundy Thursday has a solemn Eucharist in English with beautiful music, immediately followed by the stripping of the altar. Good Friday will have a German service at 3 pm, the traditional hour of Jesus’ death, with the reading of the passion according to St. John, German chorale music, and a plain setting of Holy Communion. For the Easter Vigil, the “night of nights”, you are encouraged to join our sister congregations at St. Mark’s. Easter Sunday at Zion has festive services in both languages with brass accentuating the Easter joy. In between, we will proclaim the resurrection over the pastors’ graves, have an Easter breakfast (prepared by the men) together, and let the kids have their Easter egg hunt in our garden.

In believing the resurrection and celebrating it on Easter, we again rejoice in the vision that once and for all death will not be the final fact of life:

“And you must be able to bear your sorrow; even if it seems to crush you, you will be able to stand up again, for human beings are so strong, and you sorrow must become an integral part of yourself; you mustn’t run from it.
Do not relieve your feelings through hatred, do not seek to be avenged on all Germans, for they, too, sorrow at this moment. Give your sorrow all the space and shelter in yourself that is its due, for if everyone bears grief honestly and courageously, the sorrow that now fills the world will abate. But if you do instead reserve most of the space inside you for hatred and thoughts of revenge – from which new sorrows will be born for others – then sorrow will never cease in this world. And if you have given sorrow the space it demands, then you may truly say: life is beautiful and rich. So beautiful and so rich that it makes you want to believe in God.”