Holiday Resources / Easter & Pentecost

From Eden to Gethsemane to the garden in which Jesus was buried and raised, our story of faith wanders through much fertile soil. But in our current world of fast food and to-go meals, we often do not make time to explore where our food comes from and how we break bread together. Journeying through the season of Lent with this in mind, A Time to Growencourages readers to slow down, move through the painstaking process of growth, and end together with great feasting and celebration of the resurrection. Themes of soil, water, light, time, fasting, feasting, and more guide the way from Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday. Readers will explore the intricacies of how faith is required to produce food and how that faith can lead us all to feast at the table on Easter morning. Additional elements are included to enhance communal spiritual practice for small groups or the entire congregation during Lent. These elements include sermon prompts, liturgies with communal responses, altar art ideas for decorating worship spaces, and prompts for children's time in worship.

Preachers dread the arrival of Easter, because these holy days bring the daunting task of finding new ways to tell the old stories everyone's heard so many times before. But what if it were only we preachers who are bored with these stories? asks Will Willimon. What if people keep showing up at Easter because the story of God's victory over death continues to hold power for them? What if the point were not to capitulate to the culture's insatiable appetite for novelty, but to tell the old stories faithfully, trusting in the power of the Spirit to make the text, the congregation, and yes, even the preacher come alive again in the preaching event? With Willimon's Undone by Easter pastors can face the prospect of preaching their next Easter sermon with joy and confidence rather than worry about finding something to say.

Easter is the high point of the church year and the very heart of Christian hope, and yet sometimes we are tempted to simply move on once Easter Sunday is over. Easter, Season of Realized Hope invites us to linger a bit. Join the women who visit the tomb of Jesus in the early morning and encounter the risen Lord. Travel with the disciples walking to Emmaus and let your heart burn with recognition. Learn from Paul what a difference it makes that Christ is risen. Let your deepest hopes be realized.  

At Eastertime, the most important holiday in the Christian world, religious processions in many Latin American countries pass over ornate street "carpets" fashioned from colored sawdust, flowers and fruit. Children in Finland and Sweden dress as "Easter witches." In the Caribbean, those who swim on Good Friday risk bad luck. In the Philippines, some penitents volunteer to be crucified. In some European countries, Easter Monday is the day for dousing women with water. With 240 entries, this book explores these and scores of other unusual and sometimes bizarre international Holy Week customs, both sacred and secular, from pilgrimages to Jerusalem to classic seasonal films and television specials.

"The power of Pentecost is inseparable from the good news of the Christ who is proclaimed in the Gospels, in accordance with the Scriptures." Pentecost may well be the most misconstrued day on the church calendar. A long legacy of cessationism has drained Pentecost of much of its significance, and it's largely misunderstood in many Western churches today, if not outright ignored. That's not the case in Emilio Alvarez's tradition, though. In this Fullness of Time volume, the Pentecostal bishop and theologian offers us a rich biblical and theological introduction to the day of Pentecost and sets it in its liturgical context--not only in the Protestant tradition but also in Catholic, Orthodox, and Pentecostal expressions. The result is a rich theological feast and an invitation to find afresh the power of the gospel for all peoples. Each volume in the Fullness of Time series invites readers to engage with the riches of the church year, exploring the traditions, prayers, Scriptures, and rituals of the seasons of the church calendar.