Pastor’s Message
Dear members and friends of Zion:        Feiern Sie mit uns – Come celebrate with us!

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”), and that it is lasting a full joyful season of 50 days/8 Sundays until Pentecost/ Pfingsten.

The celebration of the Triduum is really one celebration in three days - according to ancient custom from evening to evening - consisting of Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter / Gründonnerstag, Karfreitag and Ostern. Everything happening in church during these days is not merely to help us “remember” what happened with Jesus in Jerusalem. These worship gatherings are to make present for us and in our time the reality of God's accomplishment - so that we may become part of it. When Jesus said "do this in remembrance of me", he was using the word in the Hebrew sense, in which commemoration does not just mean "looking back on the past." It means bringing that reality present in faith – and that’s what we do!

To really celebrate, we should make an effort to be present at all three parts of the Triduum. 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/ Gründonnerstag: an evening Eucharist in English with beautiful music, immediately followed by the stripping of the altar. The shadows of Holy Week are lifted a little for tonight’s Liturgy, for we understandably wish to express our joy in commemorating Christ’s institution of the Eucharistic Sacrifice and Sacrament. The color of the day is white, and the Great Doxology, Gloria in excelsis, is sung.

-         Good Friday/Karfreitag: a German service at the traditional hour of Jesus’ death: 3 pm,
with the reading of the passion according to St. John, German chorale music centered on the Passion Chorale “O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden”, and a plain setting of Abendmahl/Holy Communion.

-         For the Easter Vigil, the “night of nights”, we are joining our sister congregations at St. Mark’s.

-         Easter Sunday/Ostersonntag at Zion has festive services in both languages with choir and brass accentuating the Easter joy at 9:15 and 11:15am. In between at 10:15am, we will proclaim the resurrection over the Pastors’ graves in the garden with brass and daffodils, enjoy the Easter breakfast together (with the men of Zion cooking and serving), and the kids have their Easter egg hunt in Zion’s garden.

Have a blessed Holy Week, a Happy Easter and a joyful Eastertide!
Eine gesegnete Karwoche,ein frohes Osterfest und eine fröhliche Osterzeit wünscht Ihnen

Pastor Roggelin's Archive of Past Messages From Zion