The Journey of Holy Week
Dear Friends in Christ,
One of the temptations of our lives is to go numb. When we are overwhelmed—by our schedules, by personal challenges, by relationships, by politics—we often shut down. We function in our daily lives, but we are psychologically and spiritually asleep. We shut out those overwhelming emotions. We stop feeling our feelings.
Holy Week opens our hearts again. It asks that we stay present with all that is difficult. And it asks us to do the challenging work of juxtaposition—knowing opposing and yet true things at once.
- Palm Sunday foregrounds the triumph of Jesus’s entry into Jerusalem, letting us experience the deep fulfillment of seeing a worthy person honored by his people. At the same time, it hints at the loss ahead. We are asked not to plunge headlong into darkness, but to do the harder work of holding two contradictory experiences together.
- Maundy Thursday invites us into the tenderness of Jesus’s love. We experience the intimacy of having our feet washed, of knowing that we are loved. And then we experience the cost of that love, and the altar is stripped and we end the service in darkness—and darkness that will not lift until the first light of Easter.
- Good Friday asks us to enter into the most uncomfortable of feelings, the bleakness of loss and grief, and we gather in a bare church. Even as we face that loss, we are led towards hope, understanding the promise inherent even in the deepest suffering.
- And then the Easter Vigil. We make ourselves vulnerable to hope again, as a spark becomes a fire which becomes a church full of light.
Are you numb? To some degree, most of us are. I encourage you to join in the liturgies of this week and awaken your heart. It’s hard. I can’t pretend otherwise. But the rewards is that we are truly alive when we do—alive and available to experience the deep joy of the resurrection.
Yours in Christ,
Anne+