Welcome to Holy Week
This Holy Week leading up to Easter is one that millions around the world share together. In the midst of the hustle and bustle of regular life, going to work and fixing meals, catching the bus or texting a friend back, this week is lived against the backdrop of a central divine drama. Each year we are invited to remember, and in some ways re-enact, this movement between kingdom, community, table fellowship, suffering, death - and then life.
On Palm Sunday we join the crowds in shouting "Hosanna" - and then remember his last week; when Jesus turned over tables in the temple, was questioned by the religious elite, and then learned Judas would betray him. Maunday Thursday we remember that Jesus celebrated his Last Supper with his closest friends. And on Good Friday we will remember the good, terrible gift of the cross and a love so compelling it changes everything. Then we wait in stillness on Silent Saturday, before meeting together to proclaim life next Sunday.
Each step of this drama whispers an invitation to us - look again at Jesus, at the stuff of our faith, and pay attention to each movement. No rushing to the end of the story, no wallowing in one portion without moving on. This Paschal Mystery defines our faith story, it focuses the power of Jesus, and it gathers us up as people following this kind of King, friend, teacher, servant, fully human yet fully God, Savior.
May you be encouraged by this drama, and remember it's power, this Holy Week. Below is a poem by poet and Presbyterian Pastor, Ann Weems:
“Holy Week” by Ann Weems
Holy is the week …
Holy, consecrated, belonging to God …
We move from hosannas to horror
with the predictable ease
of those who know not what they do.
Our hosannas sung,
our palms waved,
let us go with passion into this week.
It is a time to curse fig trees that do not yield fruit.
It is a time to cleanse our temples of any blasphemy.
It is a time greet Jesus as the Lord’s Anointed One,
to lavishly break our alabaster
and pour perfume out for him
without counting the cost.
It is a time for preparation …
The time to give thanks and break bread is upon us.
The time to give thanks and drink of the cup is imminent.
Eat, drink, remember:
On this night of nights, each one must ask,
as we dip our bread in the wine,
“Is it I?”
And on that darkest of days, each of us must stand
beneath the tree
and watch the dying
if we are to be there
when the stone is rolled away.
The only road to Easter morning
is through the unrelenting shadows of that Friday.
Only then will the alleluias be sung;
only then will the dancing begin.