"Church" is not a cuss word

The Christian holy week is here. April 13, 2025, was Palm Sunday, and many churches (including mine here in Nashville) staged sermons and distributed palm branches to commemorate the beginning of Jesus' last week on this earth.

I look forward to both the spiritual and not-so-spiritual parts of Easter. My special needs brother and I color eggs each year - like kids who are decades younger than us. I am 51, and Ben is 47.

I plan on attending the Good Friday service at Woodmont Hills Church in Nashville this week.

I plan on joining my mother and brother for Sunday worship in Ashland City, Tennessee.

I am scouting out brunch possibilities for me and my loved ones. The outlook is unclear as the week opens up, but it will be resolved.

My favorite Easter memories include egg hunts at school and with family as a child. Many Easter Sundays were spent with extended family (especially grandparents) in greater Cincinnati or in Newbern, Tennessee. In an era of time, we celebrated together on Palm Sunday in greater Cincinnati.

Easter, however is a church holiday. Somewhat like the Christmas that we will celebrate later this year. Somewhat not. In my mind, Easter is the ultimate spiritual/church/Christian holiday.

After all, the date of Easter is based on the moon - the first Sunday of the first full moon after the spring equinox.

More often than not, Easter happens in April. Sometimes it happens in March.

Regardless, even in this current American culture of ours that is not church-oriented, I don't see how anyone can celebrate Easter without the larger Christian meaning of the day.

Regarding Christmas: Maybe you can scoot through this holiday and ignore the birth of Jesus Christ by the virgin Mary. After all, Christmas falls on December 25 every year. Most of the time, Christmas is not on a Sunday.

Jesus Christ is all but certain not to have been born on December 25 - according to any calendar used now or in past centuries.

But Easter happens in concurrence with the Jewish Passover. The day occurs at about the same time it did centuries ago.

The church that Jesus Christ founded centuries ago still rolls here in 2025. Granted, there are many differences that humans with good intentions have injected into church over the course of the aforementioned centuries.

But forget the denominations and divisions that are with us today. It's still the church that Jesus started. In the book of First Timothy, the apostle Paul, after sending along some guidelines about how a church should run, stated as follows - translated into English:

"Although I hope to come to you soon, I am writing you these instructions so that, if I am delayed, you will know how people ought to conduct themselves in God's household, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of the truth."

More to come soon. 

James A. Rose, Publisher