Holy Week in Olney Ends with a Message about the Suffering and Resurrection of Christ

On Thursday, April 18, the Ministerial Alliance’s Holy Week luncheon took place at First Baptist Church of Olney. The Holy Week luncheon provides an opportunity for the community to gather to break bread and reflect on the life, death and resurrection of Christ.

Reverend David Carpenter from the Olney Cumberland Presbyterian Church opened the lunch with the invocation followed by Minister Rodney Nantz who shared a message based on 1 Peter 2: 21-24.

Nantz said the primary purpose of the Holy Week luncheon is an opportunity for the ministerial alliance to serve. Through serving, the alliance’s gratitude is revealed to the people in the community who have donated to the benevolent fund. Nantz said it is also an opportunity to be able to bring forth the word of God to all the people who come to celebrate Good Friday during the week.

Nantz said his goal was to deliver a sermon that examined the sufferings of Christ from the Garden of Gethsemane to Christ’s Resurrection.

In a general overview of his sermon at the Holy Week Luncheon, Nantz said, “Christ’s agonies and cries in the garden, all the way to the arrest that resulted from the betrayal of Judas to the first, second and third trial that eventually led to Christ’s beating and mocking allows us to walk through [Christ’s] sufferings.” Nantz further explained how Christ stood before Pilate twice, and Herod during three consecutive trials then carried his cross to the place where he was nailed to that cross he carried as he hung between heaven and earth. Nantz described how the sky turned black on the day he was laid in the grave and how Mary Magdalene rolled away the stone to find that his body was gone.

Such details about the death and resurrection of Christ serve as a reminder about the intention associated with the celebration of Easter.