A Holy Free-for-All

I've never forgotten a Maundy Thursday service I attended years ago at St. Paul's Lutheran Church in Milwaukee.  At the end of the service, anyone could come up to the altar area, grab something and remove it. Holy things - all handled with care by the women of the altar guild, the choir director, the pastors, the neighborhood children who came without parents, the church secretary, strangers, me.

People really got into it - everything that was not nailed down had to go. So focused on the task, some of the kids would have removed the furniture and rolled up the carpet if asked -- a somber, dead serious, holy free-for-all.

Like many churches, St. Paul's has an altar built against the wall. Behind the altar was a cloth backdrop.  If I remember correctly, it was a curtain or banner in the appropriate color of the season - probably a Lenten purple. When the custodian jumped up on the altar in his work boots and pulled down that cloth, I was shocked -- so completely appalled and offended, I remember it vividly years later! 

These days of Holy Week are like that - or should be.  Not so tamed down that we are not offended by the dead seriousness of the Cross.  Not so routine that we are not blown away by the new life that follows - God's holy free-for-all.  

Hold on.  Easter is coming.