on Good Friday services

Unrelated prelude: I'm sick. I ate two little oranges. I called in sick so I don't have to work at the stupid mall food court tomorrow. Too bad I can't call in sick for the next two weeks straight and avoid the mall completely!

Main topic: Church and Easter/Holy Week.

You St. Margaret's people are cool (here's the proof). I both envy you and also am happy I don't have to "do" Holy Week at St. Margaret's. I love how Holy Week is taken so seriously and is the biggest thing of the year, and how every day is celebrated fully. However, I also think you guys are nuts and you are all courting church burnout. I can't handle church more than two or three times in one week, it just begins to feel too crazy and stressful and burdensome, and it makes me pay less attention with each subsequent service.

This year, I have really missed my home church, TUMC. I suppose familiarity in so many ways is synonymous with comfort, and boy am I feeling it! At TUMC, the top three events of the year are the Good Friday service, the Christmas Eve service, and the Carol Sing (that lovely advent event where everyone gorges themselves on Christmas carols and Christmas baking and *cue music* the Hallelujah chorus). I absolutely love Good Friday at TUMC (Easter is important too, but it is in the usual Sunday morning format and thus doesn't stand out as a big tradition or anything). We set up round tables in our sanctuary and we sit and eat a simple meal with each other. Once we're pretty much done, the worship service begins with us all seated at our tables. There are usually many readings, and we end by celebrating the Lord's Supper together around our tables. It is such a simple, solemn and deeply significant service. I will miss it dearly this year. (I will also miss St. Margaret's dearly, no matter how crazy I think they are. My two years there were so important to me.)

I confess that I am apprehensive about Good Friday at Peace Mennonite Church, where I currently attend. I am going to be the narrator for the morning's service. I am excited to be involved. However, this church is a little too excited about their costumes. There are some very talented ladies in this church who have compiled quite the impressive church pageant wardrobe over the years. This is cool. Yet I was somewhat taken aback today (when I was at the church for an unrelated youth event) to see people rehearsing readings in costumes. I asked my husband if every significant service at his home church was a pageant...he wasn't sure. To me, it's beginning to feel like every high holiday of the church here gets turned into a cartoon. (I missed the Christmas Eve hullabaloo at Peace Mennonite, and was deeply grateful. I admit the possibility that I could have enjoyed it if I had been there, but I'm doubtful.)

To sum it up, I suppose I am as stodgy as an old grandma about changing my ways. I want a Good Friday service in the evening, not the morning. I want it to be dignified and solemn, not dramatised with church costumes and quasi-talented church members reading off a script. I want TUMC's communion supper. If I can't have that, I want the liturgical marathon of St. Margaret's. But not pageant costumes from the church closet!

I pray for the humility to set aside my own wants and for the eyes to see the value of Peace Mennonite Church's ways on Good Friday.