This is Ben, and this is Keith.

And this is Main Street Lutherans. And as we are getting ready to start this episode, we're going to be talking about Lent and some of the worship practices that you might find in a typical Elca Lutheran Church around the season of Lent and Holy Week, which we'll get into in a little bit. We just wanted to acknowledge that there are some difficult happenings in our world and in our country at the time, at the time of this recording. It has been about what, Ben? About a week since.

Yeah, about a week. When this, when this comes out, it'll be about a week and a half since the, the, the shooting, the death in, In Minneapolis. But it's been a couple months of pretty intense things going on with border protection and ICE troops, people.

Yeah. Stuff happening in Venezuela. Yes. And. Yeah. The deployment of National Guard troops that's been going on in various parts of the country the last couple of months. Yeah.

And a lot of churches are getting out in front of this and trying to help their neighbors, certainly protesting, making their voices heard. And at least I want to take an opportunity to say, you know, protect yourselves, be good to your neighbors, take care of each other.

Right.

And I think each of them. We talked about our sermons last week, this, this past Sunday. And I think. I think some of the things that, that we each said in there were important keystones for this. And for me, I. I said that the Jesus baptism, it was the baptism. Baptism of Jesus Sunday with John the Baptist. And, and what I talked about was how Jesus baptism helps us see the humanity of Jesus, but our baptisms help us to see the humanity and the divinity in all other people that is bestowed by God. And so I think that's important that we keep in mind as we deal with people from all sides of this.

Yeah. I came across this great quote that didn't make its way into my sermon, but it still stuck with me as I was preparing. That said, and I'm paraphrasing, but you know, there's a cliche or a statement out there that we hear sometimes that Jesus, either God or Jesus, you could use either term, becomes human in order for humanity to become divine. It's not a bad sentiment, but I read somewhere, someone else that said it might be more accurate to say that Jesus became human so that humanity could understand what it means to be fully human. And in my sermon, I did speak about the idea that when God speaks from heaven at Jesus baptism and calls him beloved, that we are bestowed that same name in our baptism, that we are beloved. And that. That's the primary label that we have for ourselves. And it's also the primary label that we have for each other. And so to try to strip back or look past the other labels and categories that we assign to people and just see them as beloved, whether they are an immigrant or a citizen or a protester or an immigrations and customs agent. Yeah. To just see people as beloved children of God.

Yep. All right, so that's our. That's our at least recognition of situation that's going on.

Yeah. Kind of a heavy topic and hard to make the transition. But now. Yeah, we just felt it was important to acknowledge that. And we'd like to get into our episode on Lent.

Yes. So Lent. This is another case. Our last episode, episode 51, we talked about what happened during Christmas, the Christmas season. And we have had an episode that dealt with Lent in some way. It was about spiritual practice and disciplines of Lent. It was actually episode number four. I will try to remember to put a link in the episode notes for this. I haven't been so good about that lately. And for that I am truly repentant. Which takes us into Lent. Right. Maybe that'll be my Lenten discipline this year is actually getting our links in the notes correct. All right. So Lent before Lent, though, we have a Tuesday. Lent begins with Ash Wednesday, but on the Tuesday before, we can call it Mardi Gras, especially if we're in New Orleans. We might call it Carnival down in. Actually, Mardi Gras is a much longer season than just one day, but. And Carnival is too. But. But Fat Tuesday, Shrove Tuesday. Keith hadn't heard about Pancake Day, which is the Shrove Tuesday sort of thing.

Right.

Pancakes and applesauce is a tradition that I'm aware of. It's not entirely Lutheran. It's, you know, lots of different Protestant dominations do that. It's very similar to the. We were talking because we also have Punchki and Fossnaz, which is more of a Pennsylvania thing there. Punchki is being Eastern European. So our Midwestern cities with lots of Eastern Europeans. So we're talking Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee, I believe maybe further up in toward Green Bay have punchkees, which are donuts with fillings. And then Fasnaz are donuts too. Right. Sugar coated.

Yeah, they're the Pennsylvania Dutch version. They're very similar. And with the idea in all of these practices being that kind of twofold, you're looking to sort of indulge in some of the things that you're about to give up for the season of Lent. Back to that other episode about Lenten disciplines. And so, you know, Lent being a season of fasting, so you're looking to give yourself permission to enjoy those things one last time before the season begins. And then sort of at a practical level, and we were talking about this before the episode began too, that just as Jewish people look to rid their houses of yeast in preparation for Passover, these traditions come out of places where you wanted to get rid of things out of the house, like lard and sugar and certain kinds of flour that you weren't going to be using during the season of Lent. And so you were finishing those things off in a sort of a fun, festive, festive way. Yeah. So it's funny that, you know, Fat Tuesday, Shrove Tuesday, whatever we call it, isn't actually part of the worship tradition, but it is sort of a natural cultural extension of the season of Lent. Yeah, yeah. But as you said, Ben, the season begins on Ash Wednesday. It's always, you know, the beginning of Lent is dependent upon when Easter falls. So you have to figure out when Easter is going to be in a particular year. And then you count back. I think it's actually 46 days from Easter back to the Wednesday that would become Ash Wednesday.

You could do that. Or I just have a calendar on my Google calendar that tells me when.

Right, yeah, yeah, yeah, that works too, I guess, you know, if you don't want to take the time to figure out what is going to be the date of the Sunday following the first.

I don't trust my own math.

After the vernal equinox, establish the date of Easter. Yeah.

So in 2026, Ash Wednesday is February 18th. So we don't have a Valentine's Day Ash Wednesday, which happens on occasion.

No. That makes for an interesting Ash Wednesday. I'll tell you. It does, yeah. Do ashes in the shape of a heart in somebody's forehead. There you go. Right. So Ash Wednesday. Yeah. Does involve ashes. Takes his name from the practice of taking ashes, which are a symbol of. It's a biblical symbol. Ashes and mixed with oil are both biblical symbols of repentance and grief and sorrow and mourning. And we mark those in the shape of a cross, worshippers foreheads, you know, and there's a lot of messages tied up in there. There's certainly Jesus's cross that we are moving towards in the season of Lent, which is ultimately moving towards his resurrection. But you can't get to the resurrection without the crucifixion. Also, you Know, it's a reminder of our baptism since frequently for Lutherans and other mainland Protestants and Catholics at baptism we have cross marked on our forehead and usually with either oil or water. But then the cross is also a symbol of resurrection, hope. And so, you know, we have these images all kind of commingled there right there on our forehead.

Yeah. And the phrase we get if you go to one of these services, if you haven't been to one before, you'll. People are called to come up. Not normally as orderly as communion. Often it's come up as you will instead of having an usher bring people because not everybody wants to do it. And some people pray a little bit before to take that. And so there's that. And then usually is it remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return. I believe is part of the phrase there.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. As the ashes are marked on remember your dust into dust you shall return. Another biblical image from the Garden of Eden in the making of the first person Adam. Yeah, yeah. So some people think of Ash Wednesday as being morbid. I don't know that it is. I think it's realistic and like I said, in all of this there's always hope intermingled with the sorrow, the repentance, etc. So.

And often a church will have a service, but because it's a Wednesday, often a church and I and Unity, the church I belong to, we've got an interesting driveway that our building shaped as an L and there are houses inside the L, but there's an alley that runs through there and then has a right hand turn or I'm sorry, a left hand turn to go. To go back to our parking lot. And so the pastor will set up by the doors right there at the middle of the L and, and sit there and wait for. For folks to come by to receive.

Ashes and do drive through ashes.

Do drive through ashes.

So a lot of churches have done that sometimes. Yeah, we've done this sometimes at St. Mat's too. It hasn't. We did it especially during the pandemic. It was very well received. Can't say that it lasted long beyond that for us. We went back to having a typical service, one at noon and one in the evening to consider people's.

And I think it works for us because, well, we're on a high volume route. We have a lot of traffic that goes by. But the pasture also, it's real easy to sit and work right inside the doors and then just go out when a car comes by. So just logistically it works out pretty well, so we still do it. So then after Ash Wednesday, we have weekly things. I know a lot of times there'll be midweek services. Our church participates with two others and we share who hosts the service. So two of them will take two and one will take one and different pastors will preach at each of those. We do the Holden Evening Prayer for that. It goes on real well. The conference that the churches are members that we're all in has a group library of Holden Evening Prayer books. And so we can handle hundreds of people to show up, although we probably get about 60 each night. So that's our midweek thing. Often a dinner with that. Sometimes it's bring your own sandwich and there's soup provided, that sort of thing.

We talked about Holden at the end of our last episode also. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Spoke about Holden Village and the Holden evening prayer. Yeah, St. Matthew. We have services in the evening and again, they've changed over the years. This year we'll do something that's fairly simple. We use a liturgy. A different publishing house for Advent and Lent than Augsburg Fortress, our denominations publisher. They're called Barngeese Worship and they are several Lutheran pastors and scholars. And they have this little sort of, you know, kitchen group of writers that publish, you know, self publish these materials. And they're really, really well done. They've been at this for, I'm not entirely certain, somewhere in the ballpark of five to 10 years. I think they put something out. They just focus on those two seasons though, Advent and Lent, which are sort of their kind of more reflective, kind of richer imaged seasons. Anyway, each year they do a Sunday series and they usually have a midweek series that accompanies it that's got a similar theme, but kind of takes things in a different direction than what happens on Sunday so that you can attend one or the other or both and not feel like you're just getting a repeat from what you saw the previous Sunday. Yeah, so we'll do those in the evenings. Those are. Those are nice. Other churches have other traditions. Some have fish fries. The Catholic church across the street from us will have a fish fry on Fridays and it's open to the public, so lots of Lutherans will stop in there too. It's really good food.

Yeah, we've got some Lutheran churches. Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod in particular in our area does fish fries. But back in, I don't know, 70, 80 years ago, I think it was the Pope gave downriver Michigan, the area I live in, a special dispensation to have muskrat as a meat in Lent because the claim was that muskrat live in the water, and so they count as fish and they don't count as meat, so you could eat them on Fridays instead of fish. Interestingly, our Catholic churches don't have muskrat dinners anymore, but there are some Lutheran churches, Missouri Synod, that do. And so in our area, you can have muskrat dinners on Fridays, which I think is probably more of the repentant part and the gloomy part than it would be otherwise. There's a lot of stuff. We talked about this a little bit in that episode four about things. So it's kind of an interesting.

Muskrat dinners. Yeah.

Yes. So that's a very, very particular to my area here. So Palm Sunday. I. I never liked Palm Sunday as a kid. For some reason. I did not like the parade thing that kids. We'd be forced to do through the church. I don't really know why.

Okay. Yeah.

Do you guys do that?

I don't know. We do, yeah. Like a lot of churches, we start. So our later service, our more traditional service in the nave, we start outside on the portico of the. Of the building, if the weather is. Allows for it, and we process into the worship space. Our. Our earlier service, which is held in our auditorium, doesn't have convenient access to the outside of the building. So we start. We have. There's a. It abuts our fellowship hall, and there's a wall that can open in between them. So we open that wall up. Everybody stands in the fellowship hall kind of slash gym area with our palms, and we start the liturgy there and then just walk into the. Into the worship space. And it's. It's kind of simple and doesn't take very long in either case because you're really walking just from one room to another or from outside to the inside. Right. It's still fun. Yeah.

And Palm Sunday, we should add that is a week before Easter.

Right. And so it's called Palm Sunday. It's the story of Jesus riding into Jerusalem and the people are strewing, you know, either their own garments or palms on the road, sort of a royal procession, you know, prepare the way of the king kind of thing. And so we. That's what the palms. And we often, you know, most churches on Palm Sunday will actually have palm branches to distribute with a very important choice to be made. Do you use the frond style palms, which look like sort of, you know, with these fingers that stick out from a central stem or do you use the long strip palms that can be bent and tied in cute little cross shapes if you're crafty enough to manage it. Yeah. Which kind do you usually use, Ben?

I think we use the. The single leaf kind of because I think they like to do the crafty stuff.

Yeah, sure.

But as a kid, we always did the. You know, I think of it as Florida style palms.

Yeah, right.

Palm trees we're used to seeing. So I think that's what we had. And I would often hang after Palm Sunday, I would hang that on the wall somewhere. I had push pins where I would hang it just to remind me of it for the rest of the year. And then my purpose was to then return it to church to be burnt for the ashes for Ash Wednesday. I don't know if I ever succeeded in that.

Right. But I do know a lot of churches that follow that. That practice that they take last year's palms that have dried out and then crumble them up and burn them for making the ashes for Ash Wednesday. It's really kind of a cool sort of circle of life kind of practice. Yeah. I actually do still keep my palms from year to year. I have a particular portrait of Jesus in my office that I'm just really drawn to, and I tuck them sort of kind of in behind the top edge of the frame, and they just sit there all year long. And each year I take the old ones down and I replace them with the new ones. And Palm Sunday is also sometimes called Passion Sunday. And churches will read the Passion story of Jesus, which is just the church word for the story of his arrest and trial and crucifixion. So sometimes you'll have, you know, the procession of palms or the Passion reading. Some churches, you know, like St. Matthew, we do both. There's sort of this turning point in the middle of the service, from the very joyous, festive Palm Parade to the more somber reading of the Passion narrative. Yeah, it's kind of a neat part of the church year.

So that's a special Sunday within Lent, but all the Sundays in Lent. Now, when we talk about Advent, we had the words, you know, we had the four Sundays with the candles and the words. We don't do that with Lent, though, do we?

Not typically not.

No.

No, not. Not that I can think of. I may well be wrong on that. Either one of us is liturgical experts, but. Yeah, not that I'm aware of. I mean, there are certainly themes for Lent, but I don't know that we have sort of a specific assigned themes for each Day as the season unfolds, the way we typically do for.

Right. But certainly if people are using the cranberry book worship, they're using a liturgy from our elw, Evangelical Lutheran Worship. The liturgy changes for Lent. There's a time when you would not say alleluia during the service. Some churches would bury it even on Shrove Tuesday, not to use it until Easter. I don't know that that's a tradition that's quite in practice as much anymore.

But we don't do the burying of the alleluia. But we do avoid using the word alleluia in worship during Lent.

Still, I've sort of noticed that maybe the normal. Our liturgies don't use alleluia as often as it used to. I think DLW had it more often.

Ours uses it a lot during the Easter season. It makes a really big deal out of it coming back after Lent. But you're right. Kind of the rest of the year.

I don't feel like we've. We miss it anymore.

Hallelujah.

Yeah.

Right.

All right, so we have Palm Sunday. Gets us into Holy Week.

Right.

Is Palm Sunday part of Holy Week?

Yeah, Yeah. I think Holy Week really encompasses Palm Sunday through Holy Saturday, the day before Easter.

Okay, so it doesn't include Easter then?

I don't think so. Easter is real. I mean, Holy Week is really part of. My understanding is that Holy Week is really part of Lent.

Okay.

And Easter Sunday is, of course, in the beginning of the season of Easter.

Okay. All right, so we've got Palm Sunday. Then we get. Then we skip to Maundy Thursday. Often. Often there won't be. If there's a Wednesday night service, often that won't happen during Holy Week because there's an awful lot going on.

Right.

So Maundy Thursday is the celebration of the Eucharist. Right. We usually go over the story of the first. The. The Last Supper. And part of that part of the story is foot washing. Some. Some of our churches will do a foot washing. I know a friend of mine, I think he brethren, and he had a special towel with. It was like a bottom. It was like the bottom part of an apron that went all the way down to his feet, was long enough to use that for the foot washing. And so. But. But special attire for the foot washing stuff. And I suspect there are probably some congregations that. That take the foot washing very seriously and would have things like that.

Sure.

So that's a possibility that you'd run into. Not everybody has to have their feet Washed.

Right.

It is something that a lot of people are uncomfortable with. So be aware of that. If you don't like seeing people have their feet washed, you might not want to be at that service.

Yeah. And like you said, it's also lifted up as sort of the institution or establishment of what we know as Holy Communion. Today, St. Matthew, we actually celebrate First Communion as part of the Maundy Thursday service. So we've had kids that have been learning about what communion is in an age appropriate way, and so they may be coming to receive their first Communion on Maundy Thursday, which is kind of a cool connection with the festival itself.

Yeah.

And then Maundy Thursday also wraps up, you know, and it was interesting. I had never experienced this until I came to St. Mat's in as dramatic a way as what is done there. But the Maundy Thursday liturgy often concludes with these. What's called the stripping of the altar. So in that formal worship space, kind of all of the, you know, significant objects are very slowly and reverently and ritualistically removed. So we're talking like the communion ware, you know, the cup, the chalice, the flagon, the patens, you know, all the things that get used for the blessing and distribution of the sacraments, all of the paraments, the tablecloths and linens and fabric decorations that adorn the altar, maybe the pulpit or lectern as well, the offering plates, the processional cross. For us, it's even the stoles that the pastors wear that are the symbols of our office as pastor, and our pectoral crosses, we remove those. And in St. Matthew, after all that, you know, those things are removed from the space one by one, but they're all handed to this group of people that are lined up in front of the church at the communion rail. And then once that's all is finished, it's very slowly, all of it is processed out of the worship space in this very slow, ritualistic way. And as that's going on, the lights are gradually dimmed throughout that process of stripping the altar, typically a single cantor is chanting Psalm. I guess it's Psalm 22, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Which is one of the words that Jesus says from the cross. So it's this very somber mourning kind of thing. And it's supposed to represent the stripping and beating of Jesus's physical body. So we sort of, in a symbolic way, reenact that by removing this stuff from the altar. It's a really beautiful, sad, but beautiful ritual that's become really meaningful to me personally in the last 15 years. Yeah.

And in the churches that I've had that done in, their altar book gets slammed shut at the very end when the last lights come. And then it's carried out.

Right? Yeah.

And that's a shocking thing. And then everyone leaves in silence, right?

Yeah. The service ends with that, literally. And then they just. Right. Everyone just departs. You might sometimes have the opportunity to sit and pray for a bit, but there's nothing else that happens. There's no postlude, there's no conversation in the lobby. People just leave in silence. Yeah, it's really moving.

And then there's Good Friday and there's Good Friday Now. A lot of. A lot of the churches in the towns I've been in have had community Good Friday services. So they'll do that like at noon because people don't work. And so they. They have this and so they. It's a good reason to. To do it then. And then most of the time, in my experience, when they have a community Good Friday service during the day, they don't have their own at their own congregation.

Okay.

But that's not true everywhere for sure. A lot of our churches do have a very meaningful Good Friday service.

Yeah, we've had. We have a noon service that used to be billed as a community service. And it was for a very long time and it kind of worked out because then churches that did want to have their own service could still do so in the evening.

Right.

But this was available during noon like you said, because a lot of folks weren't. Weren't working. That's kind of the practice at the time. And it's also one of the services we broadcast. I think I talked about this before we broadcast our 11 o' clock Sunday service on the radio. Have been doing it for. Oh my gosh. I think we're up to like 90 years close to that. But this is one of the other. This is one of the non Sunday services that's a part of that contract. And so that 12 of noon services is on the radio. Now we used to do, interestingly though, was a. We used to do a Traora service, a three hour service, which again represents the three hours that Jesus hung on the cross. So it would start at noon and end at 3pm, but only the first hour of it was broadcast on the radio. And so since the pandemic, as you know, people's interest in some of these kinds of special services have waned a bit. Numbers have dropped. We no longer do a three hour service. We simply do the, a one hour service, you know, which is kind of a typical length worship service for most Lutherans, but it focuses on the seven last words from the cross. That's just what's been our tradition the last several years. You know, we have a seven o' clock service in the evening too. And that service does not have a set format. It's one of the only things that we do that isn't exactly the same every year. And not just exactly the same, but is wildly different. Sometimes it involves, you know, a Tenebrae service where you're having scripture readings and prayers and extinguishing candles in a very quiet, somber kind of way. Sometimes we've done these vignettes of sort of telling the story of Jesus's crucifixion with live people in like these scenes where the light comes up and they're standing on the stage sort of frozen in position. They're not speaking, they're not moving. They're just sort of portraying the story in still life fashion. It's really, really kind of cool. And then the lights go down and we might sing a hymn and when the lights come up again, there's another stage scene set. And that's been pretty cool. So that's some years and other years it's, it's, it's just very, you know, sometimes we've walked around to different parts of the building with like stations set up where there were readings or stories being told and, and kind of tokens that you collected as you went. You know, a little symbol that you keep, keep as a keepsake after each one. Anyway, so it's just that our Good Friday evening service is one that's kind of never the same from one year to the next. It's sort of odd and fascinating in that way.

Yeah, we have a church in our synod that does. A Lutheran church in our synod that does a dramatic representation of Good Friday. And so I think they run that all afternoon and groups start at different times and go through. It's, it's sort of like our Good Friday version of like a haunt, a haunted trail sort of thing with stations of, you know, there'll be centurions and, and all these, all these things. And so they'll, they'll do dramatic portrayals throughout. During the day. Our church, when we, we do it at Unity, we do dramatic readings. I, I think there are 13 different readings that are there. So we have 13 different people, which is quite an accomplishment to get that many volunteers to read that in our congregation where we worship, about 35. So that's a substantial number of people to come out on a Friday night when a lot of our folks are not the kind that want to drive in the dark. So pretty much everybody who's there is. Is participating in some way, which isn't a bad thing. Definitely not a bad thing.

Do you guys do an Easter vigil?

We don't. I've been part of, obviously, when we were at Calvary, we had an Easter vigil, and that was one of the highlights of the year, certainly for the choir, because they put on the party afterwards.

Right.

But, yeah, we talked in episode four, I got a group to do an Easter vigil at a Presbyterian church in Columbus, Indiana, because of my Lenten discipline that I got people to join me in, which was brewing beer, our Lenten brew that was brewed before Lent, and then it was ready on Easter vigil. And so I was going to have a party and said, yeah, I wanted to. One of my goals was to incorporate more Easter vigil elements into the delivery of the beer that people helped brew. And that turned into actually having Easter vigil service at somebody's home. They lived on a lagoon, and so we incorporated the lagoon and around their house and then into the house. I had a mobile pizza oven for a food truck. I ran, and so I made pizza and we had a keg of that beer out. And when we had a party afterwards to celebrate the Easter vigil that night. And that was fun. But it was his first experience for. For the pastor that was there. He was actually interim so he could get away with some stuff. But it was a neat experience that goes through. The Easter experience. Starts with. With Good Friday and the tomb and. And traverses. It starts at a time where. What the. The Easter vigil part, I think it ends just as it gets dark. Right. Or after. Or some certain part of it is when.

Yeah, you try to. You try to. You try to start the readings, I think right around dark. But really, depending on the time of year, that could be tricky. Yeah, yeah. It's really. The service kind of has four segments. There's the procession of light where you start outside and you light a new fire and light the paschal candle and process into the church building. And then there's the word section where you have like nine scripture readings, I think it is, that tell the story of, you know, from the Old Testament all the way through. It's sort of a bird's eye view of the whole Bible. It's just nine long Readings, but you've got Old Testament in there right up through the. The resurrection story. And then there's a baptism portion where maybe there is a live baptism or more. Or there might be a thanksgiving for baptism for the whole congregation to just be remembered of the blessings and promises of baptism. And then there's communion. And so you make this. It's long. It's like kind of at minimum, like two hours, and often more like three or more.

And often moving.

Yeah, yeah. You start outside, you move into typically, like, the fellowship hall or maybe a big Sunday school room, and then from there into the worship space. But when you first go in there, it's like, dark. And then there's this moment where the liturgy transitions from dark to light. And, you know, when we were at Calvary, we actually the. The lilies, the flowers that would be used to decorate the sanctuary for Easter Sunday, they were carried in during the vigil in procession and just kind of placed at random throughout the room. And it was this beautiful, chaotic moment of where you're sort of, again, like, just like you stripped the altar on Maundy Thursday, you're sort of, you know, reenacting the Resurrection. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. They're bringing back to life. It's really cool. But, you know, it's one of those services very. It's very volunteer heavy. And sometimes, you know, you can get to the point where everyone participating is only there because they have a job to do and they'd rather not be there. And so some churches just choose to not to not observe the tradition. And we haven't had one of St. Matthew longer than. I've been there. I'm not about to start one, at least this year, so. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And. And at Calvary, it always seemed like more people came to Easter vigil than to actually Easter Sunday.

It seemed like it.

Yeah.

Yeah. And it was awesome. You know, it really was. Yeah, it was. Yeah. Yeah.

So. So if. If you're at a church and you're looking for something to spice up Easter a little bit, I would highly recommend looking at the Easter vigil tradition and seeing if there's anything of that that you can incorporate into it. It's a lot of work. And adding more work to our pastors probably isn't the best idea. Might get us. Might get us in trouble, but.

Well, it's not just for the pastors, too. It's really. You know, it's all the musicians and lots of volunteers and.

Yeah.

But it is a gorgeous. A gorgeous experience. And if you get any Pushback from people saying, well, why would we do this the day before Easter? Let me ask you this in return. Do you go to church on Christmas Day or on Christmas Eve?

It's definitely not Easter Eve.

Right, right. Although it does have Easter E elements, especially at the end. But it's. It's a completely unique kind of service. It's not like anything else we do then this time of year.

And the Easter bunny doesn't come to be part of it, so.

Well, depends on the church, I guess.

Hopefully not any Lutheran ones.

Probably not.

So then that takes us to Easter.

Yeah. Yeah.

So after we've had our Easter vigil service that's kept us at church until midnight, then people show up at 5 o' clock in the morning to start making pancakes for the Easter sunrise breakfast.

Right, right, right. Or, you know, if that's. If they didn't go to the Easter sunrise service. Yeah. So, yeah, we do a sunrise service at St. Mat's which has only been the last few years. It kind of started after the pandemic, but it's. It's been. It's. It's held its own. It's been kind of a neat addition. We do it out in our courtyard, which is where our columbarium is. And sunrise services are often held in church cemetery, if you have one. We don't have a cemetery, but we have a columbarium, so. And there's also a fountain in the center of it, which makes for really cool opportunities to do the Thanksgiving for baptism.

Sure.

Yeah. That is neat. So that's. That's fun.

Yeah.

So, yeah.

Sunrise service outside.

Mm. Yeah. And then we just. After that, we just have our regular two Sunday services. I mean, they're. They're kind of bigger and badder than the rest of the year, but we don't change our schedule at all beyond that.

Yeah. And Deacon Margaret gets to go to town on the pipe organ. Or does she? Her dad probably does it. Right.

Her dad plays the organ. She. At these. Our sunrise service incorporates part of that service of light from the vigil that we didn't do the night before. So we borrow some of the segments of that for about the first half of the Easter sunrise service is very much like some of the stuff that we would have done at the vigil, including, oh, I don't remember the name of it, but it's a very long chanted prayer. I can't remember the name for it. It's like the Easter proclamation. And so she's out there, you know, often. It's very Chilly in Pennsylvania on Easter Sunday, singing for a very long stretch of time. It probably takes about three or four minutes to chant this. This proclamation with little bits of it responded by the congregation, but most of it is just her. And, yeah, trying to keep all that together is a lot of work, I'm sure. Yeah.

Yeah. So. So we mentioned the flowers, the lilies, a lot of hyacinths. It's a bad time for allergies for me. And in my experience, a lot of people are good on incense, especially on Reddit. There's a lot of talk of, you know, how could you not have incense on Easter? My first experience with incense at Easter was a few years ago when I was assisting and Pastor Carm got out her burner or her. What is the thing that holds the incense?

The thurible.

The thurible. She lights it up right in my face and then swings it over the water and then takes it and swings it around everybody. And I had a hard time breathing for the rest of that day, so.

Right. Yeah. So, yeah.

I don't many that do it.

Right. I love incense as a concept, but in practice, I just find it. I find it more trouble, including the ones that you're describing, which, you know, my wife has the same reaction. She walks in the order with incense and has an instant migraine. Yeah. And so, yeah, I don't want to inflict that on anybody. Yeah. But I do. You know, I appreciate it when it happens. I think it's really cool. I just choose not to in my settings.

And honestly, hyacinths inside a congregation, inside a sanctuary, if they're left there overnight, they just. The pollen's everywhere and it gets wild.

Yeah.

There are florists who will remove the stamen. Right. That has that. So they will come in without being able to do that. It costs extra. But. But if you've got folks with allergies or that might be a problem, that is a solution to that. If you still want the flowers.

So you can get your flowers neutered. Wow. Yeah.

Yeah. So there you go. So that's Easter. Then we have weeks of Easter afterwards.

Right.

Which is mini celebrations of Easter. A lot of the Easter songs. So loud. Pipe organization, if you have it. And those. Lots of alleluia songs.

Yes, absolutely.

And lots of Christ is risen. He's risen indeed. Alleluia.

Right, right.

So a lot of call and response that way.

So there we go. That's. That's Lent and Holy Week.

Yeah.

Now, speaking of hallelujahs.

Exactly. One of our prior guests, Dr. Imad Haddad, who spoke with Keith last year about Palestine and Jordan and the church there, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land. Reverend Dr. Haddad is now bishop. Dr. Haddad. He was joined just installed as bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land. And we're very, very glad to hear that. A lot of our associates have been, have gone to to be part of that installation service, the consecration. And so nice to see one of our, one of our guests be elevated as such. So.

That's right. No doubt rocketed to such prominence by having appeared in our podcast.

That's right.

But no. But we do wish many blessings upon Bishop Haddad in his new role and on all of our siblings in that part of the world.

Absolutely. And we'll try to. As part of my Latin discipline, I'll try to get that link in the episode notes. It's not lent yet, so I guess I don't have to do it, but I will still try. Yeah. He's the fifth Bishop of the ELCJHL and was installed on January 11th. So there we go. So congratulations. Very happy. All right. Main Street Lutherans is hosted by Keith Fair and Ben Fot, and the show is produced by Phote Media Productions. Find all our contact information in and a transcript in the episode notes. Until next time, go in peace. Serve the Lord.

Thanks be to God.