A Holy Week to Remember

Holy Week 2010 at Immanuel Fellowship really began with Palm Sunday with me preaching in the first service and Pastor Glenn Garrison preaching in the second service--a stirring message on the triumphal entry of Jesus to the Royal City of Jerusalem.

Monday and Tuesday we had evening readings from Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Life Together. It was Bonhoeffer who said that when Christ calls a man he bids him to die. Bonhoeffer knew what he was saying because in 1945 just days before the fall of Berlin Hitler had him hanged.

Life Together is a slim volume in which Bonhoeffer wrote about living together in community as a local church. It has plenty of insight about the grace that God gives through the fellowship that Christians have in their local church. Fellowship is not friendship. We choose who our friends are. In fellowship it is God who chooses who we have fellowship with. Fellowship, Bonhoeffer wrote, is only in and through Jesus Christ. A feel-good type of fellowship is rare, Bonhoeffer wrote. Most of the time it is something we have to believe in rather than do our best to experience, He who desires some extraordinary social experience rather than what Christ has given is not looking for fellowship, Bonhoeffer insists. He is confusing a natural human desire for the spiritual reality of the Christian brotherhood.

In the last 50 years of the evangelical resurgence around the world, a lot of experimentation has been done on churches, with disastrous results and at huge expense to frustrated Christian lives. The church is not our creation, but a creation of the Spirit of God. It bears the stamp of the image of Jesus Christ. We should not erase it and substitute our own.

We could not finish the entire book. We just went through the first chapter. Bonhoeffer was not only a great teacher but a devout follower of Jesus who lived what Jesus commanded. His other book is The Cost of Discipleship and this is one book I can recommend wholeheartedly to those who want to follow in the footsteps of their Lord.

Wednesday night and Thursday morning we had a retreat with Attorney Edwin Catacutan whose reflections on redemption from the first three chapters of Genesis was based from his experience as a trial lawyer. When he talked about God's judgment of death because of disobedience, it sent shivers down my spine. And then when he talked about how Adam and Eve lost the divine covering after the fall, one could only imagine what if would have been for our first parents to stand naked before that unblinking gaze of a holy God.

Thursday evening we had Communion together, with one bread and one cup signifying our unity in the Body of Christ which in the New Testament was primarily experienced within the local church. The passage in 1 Corinthians 11 is the earliest New Testament record of the Last Supper and in it Paul called the night of the Passover Festival when the New Covenant was instituted as "the night that he was betrayed" words that could only make real sense in the context of the local chourch. Finally on Friday afternoon at two seven people from the Fellowship itself, ordinary people, with unadorned simplicity spoke on Jesus' last seven words on the cross.

We rested on Black Saturday. On Sunday we had joint service. We faced technical difficulties with our computer and projector. We were half an hour delayed. When the Multi Media Team threw up the towel, the Praise and Worship Team went ahead, and people sang from memory. The congregation responded with enthusiasm and became one of the most uplifting worship services we ever had.

The ABBA Kids with their parents presented a lively Kids Praise song about the Body of Christ and the singles sang about the mission of the church.

The week was rich with reflections from the past and the present, from simple folk to great students of the Word. The diet was varied. The celebration of the Lord's Supper was simple but very moving in both Thursday and Sunday Holy Communion services.

Paul wrote about the church of Philippi, "I thank God for every remembrance of you." I know I cannot stay long in Cebu but I can say the same of Immanuel Fellowship. And I wish to enjoy my short time together and especially Holy Week with the brothers and sisters of the Fellowship than anywhere else.