Holy Week In The Early Church

Worship renewalists have revived the ancient customs of Holy Week worship. In particular Holy Week worship centers around the re-enactment of the last days of Christ. This article summarizes worship on those days in the early church. In the church of the first centuries after Christ, every Sunday was a "little Easter. " The Easter season itself was a special event in which the living, dying, and rising of Christ was not only told in words, but acted out in a participatory drama. The earliest evidence of an Easter celebration in the New Testament is found in the words of Paul written to the Corinthian community about a. d. 55: "Christ our Passover has been sacrificed for us" (1 Cor. 5:7). The clue to how Easter may have been celebrated in the primitive Christian community is found in the word Passover, for the earliest Christians were Jews. Jewish worship passed two emphases on to early Christian worship: First, worship was rooted in an event. The Passover service, for example, ce…