OK, put down your stones, and hear me out! … This is a trust fall from afar.

I’m embarrassed to share that until recently I found myself struck by competing emotions over this year’s Holy Week, which begins March 29 with Palm Sunday.

Dwelling on our church’s Easter week services, I’d been feeling that this ritual, this story of the Holy Week, had become a bit too familiar, maybe even a little mundane.

I mean, you can only celebrate the progression of Lent to Palm Sunday to Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and then Easter Sunday so many times, right? … After a bit, doesn’t the story lose a little grandeur?

Yes, being in the worship service planning business, I tend to get clinical about the organization of what should be remarkable celebrations. And that probably wasn’t helping my mood.

Do we have the palm fronds for the kids’ procession? Do we have everything in place to celebrate the Last Supper and to make Good Friday feel as sombre as it should? … .Oh mercy, who again was in charge of the egg bake for after service?

But then, late last week, just as my lack of enthusiasm for all that is Easter was reaching concerning levels … the Holy Spirit rescued me!

Walking through our shelter cafeteria one day, no less than a handful of community members approached me to ask whether we were going to hold our Easter service at the shelter again this year.

They said that last year’s Easter service was tremendously moving, and they wanted assurance we would again celebrate Easter at the shelter this year.

“Of course,” I reassured them a little too robotically. Because, even though this will be only our second year hosting an Easter service since I arrived, it already feels like the event is woven into the fabric of our agency’s history, and so community members are excited about it.

And, in that moment, looking into the eyes of those folks eagerly anticipating a yes to the Easter service … BOOM … an electric tingle ran down my spine and my arms sprouted goosebumps.

Friends, there is nothing mundane about the story of Jesus, a ruler unlike the world had ever witnessed, riding into Jerusalem on a donkey to the adoration of a loving people, only to suffer the cruelest twist of fate less than a week later.

Christian believers, and nonbelievers alike in my experience, love this story, even when the pastor is weary and a bit jaded!

Yes, it would be easy to dwell on Christ’s crucifixion and all that means, but we are an Easter people after all. So instead we are invited to celebrate Christ’s resurrection! … Jesus’ conquering of sin and death here in this world so that we don’t have to.

My prayer for you this Holy Week is that you too can once again find the sacredness and joy(!) in such a familiar story! Amen!

Devlyn Brooks is the CEO of Churches United in Moorhead, Minn., and an ordained pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America serving Faith Lutheran Church in Wolverton, Minn. He blogs about faith at findingfaithin.com, and can be reached at devlynbrooks@gmail.com.