The countdown is on. A few days ago it was Palm Sunday, and from here it is a rapid journey through Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Vigil of Easter to Easter Sunday itself. These services are so meaningful, so captivating, and so full that I often feel pulled between adding and removing, including and trimming– until the balance is just right and the service comes together to the glory of God and the benefit of God’s people.

When I was a kid, I once suggested to my Sunday School teacher that since Jesus was 33 when he died, we really should only do Holy Week every three decades or so, then do Christmas the very next year and wait another 33 years for Jesus to grow up before another Easter. It would work, I argued, since we had a three-year liturgical calendar already that could just be massaged to repeat differently every eleven years. (I was not invited to join the worship planning team.) We talked about it– why we need to do Holy Week every year, why this is part of our rhythm of worship.

For one thing, my teacher pointed out to me, a ten-year old, if Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter came only once every thirty-three years, kids would often grow up without ever experiencing them. When I argued that would make it more authentic, not less, she said, “It’s not a reenactment. It’s a reminder. It’s the story that matters most, and we tell it every year in worship so that everyone knows that Jesus is alive.”

Now there’s a good reminder. When we tell the stories: of foot-washing, of a last meal, of a sham trial, of death, of grief, of an empty tomb, we aren’t reenacting them. We aren’t trying to find our place in a story from two thousand years ago, and we don’t have to, because part of the story is that after the resurrection, Mary Magdalene told Peter that Jesus is alive. And then fifteen years later, Paul told Lydia that Jesus is alive. And then three hundred years after that, Monica told Augustine that Jesus is alive. One hundred fifty years after Augustine, Patrick told the Irish that Jesus is alive. A thousand years later, Martin Luther told Hans and Magdalene and Martin and Paul and Margaret that Jesus is alive. And four hundred years after that, your grandparents, perhaps, told your parents that Jesus is alive. Someone told you, maybe eighty years ago or maybe fifty-two or maybe just last month: Jesus is alive.

The story of the resurrection is our story. Not because we flash back to events of two thousand years ago but because the Holy Spirit has made a place for us in God’s family. We tell the story, not to reenact it, but because it is ours. It’s our family history as children of God. The resurrection is not just a long-ago moment in Jerusalem. It is our moment. When we hear it and trust it, it is new life for us, every time.