Tag Archives: Holy Week

Signs and Symbols of Holy Week: Pause and turn

A life in the Spirit, Spiritual direction, ,

It is the Holy Week. It will end with the most important day on a Christian’s calendar: Easter, the Resurrection Sunday.

Last Saturday, we led a retreat to help us prepare to walk with Jesus through the whole week, since every day of His last week has significance. Christians all over the world will be walking with us, dying and rising with Jesus. They join the billions throughout history, who have also marked this week with their devotion and disciplines. Holy Week is a “thin place” in the calendar where the spiritual and material dimensions seem especially close.

Our retreat was all about pausing and turning into that closeness, daring to hope we could have a deeper, person-to-person relationship with God. We took a curious look at each day to see where there was a place of connection for us. We wondered, “How can I walk with Jesus, even see through his eyes, even be touched like those he touched? How can I be like those first people who heard his teaching and watched his love come to fruit?”

Can still see the ruts near Baker, OR

I’ve been moving through Holy Weeks with such spiritual intention for many years. Those who have gone before me have left a trail to follow, something like a spiritual Oregon Trail through the prairie, ruts so deep it is hard to miss the way to the “promised land.” They’ve left a lot of stories and markers along the way. Every year they lead me somewhere better.

I decided to give you a small replay of what we did in case you want to start the journey today, or whenever you read this. Let me show you a symbol for each day of the week, give you a snippet of the scripture story, and suggest where you might like to turn to find the deeper connection. Whether you find something new or deeper in the next few minutes is probably not as important as the fact your stopped, you paused, and you turned a hopeful heart in God’s direction. You might find Jesus, or you might be quiet long enough to be found.

The palm

Yesterday was “Palm Sunday.”

As he went along, people spread their cloaks [and palm branches] on the road.

When he came near the place where the road goes down the Mount of Olives, the whole crowd of disciples began joyfully to praise God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen: “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!” “Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!”

Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples!”

 “I tell you,” he replied, “if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.” — Luke 19:36-40

Turn into your stoniness. Where you have scar tissue, where hate or fear has made your heart hard, where you feel numb is the kind of place I mean. Jesus is riding into that area right now. You might want to throw your Burberry in the dirt so the donkey hooves don’t get dirty.

The cornerstone

Jesus runs into hard hearts on Monday and all week, especially among the leaders who are afraid of losing power in the zero-sum contest they are having with God.

Jesus claims Jerusalem.

The stone that the builders rejected
    has become the cornerstone.

“Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces, and it will crush anyone on whom it falls.” — Luke 20:17-18

Turn into the upside-down kingdom of which Jesus is King. It will take changing your mind. If you’ve been a Christian for a while, this turn will likely be harder than it looks, since you know a lot and changing will feel like betraying who you’ve come to be — or worse, it will feel like you are betraying the image you think people believe you are. You’re not the cornerstone.

The fig tree

Jesus continues to teach publicly and on Tuesday draws his disciples away to lay open the trouble ahead for a world which refuses to follow God incarnate, into a renewed, truthful, love relationship. At our retreat, it was inevitable we would need to talk about Trump.

Then he told [the disciples] a parable: “Look at the fig tree and all the trees; as soon as they sprout leaves you can see for yourselves and know that summer is already near. So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near.” Luke 21:29-31

Turn into the “what ifs” that scare you: financial threats, deportation, attacks on your identity, and the uncertainty of the future. Each of us is going to die, the whole world could come to the end of an era or the end of time. Jesus would like to take our chins and lift our heads, nudge us into alertness so we can stand with him in confidence, no matter what.

The alabaster jar

On Wednesday, a woman came to Jesus to anoint him with expensive oil and honor him. Like they did in those days, it was like she was preparing him for his burial. But the broken-open jar, full of precious oil, the out-of-order act of breaking into a dinner party, was like Jesus bursting out of his tomb on Easter, too.

As he sat at the table, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very costly ointment of nard, and she broke open the jar and poured the ointment on his head. …And they scolded her. But Jesus said, “Let her alone; why do you trouble her? She has performed a good service for me. She has done what she could; she has anointed my body beforehand for its burial. Truly I tell you, wherever the good news is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in remembrance of her.” — Mark 14

Turn into the wildness. The money is “wasted.” The woman takes center stage. The Lord receives his praise. The future is foretold. This holy week is full of mystery — only it is happening right before our eyes! Where is the wildness in you that is worth remembering, worth daring?

The basin and ewer

At the famous “last supper” on Thursday with his disciples, it begins to become crystal clear how Jesus is going to change the whole world. He turns the bread and wine of dinner into sharing his body and blood — something so profound his inner circle can barely eat it. Then he gets up from the table and washes the disciples’ feet — something so humble they can barely stand it.

You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, for that is what I am. So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you. — John 12:13-14

Turn into the love. Yes, this directs us to get down on the dirty floor and serve. But before we can stick with such endless giving, we need to receive the love: Jesus handing us his body and blood; Jesus doing anything for us, no matter how beneath his rights.

Later that same night Jesus did what he always did before something big or miraculous was going to happen. He paused. He found a thin place to commune with his Father. This time he went to a garden just outside the walls and prayed. The picture of him doing it is so iconic, ChatGPT had no problem providing a drawing.

I ask not only on behalf of those who believe in me through the word of my disciples that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.

The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. — John 17

Turn into aloneness so deep it makes you sweat or cry, into connection with God so deep it fills you with compassion. Hear Jesus praying for you even as he prays for himself. Be one with him as he longs to be one with you. Your oneness with God is a revelation of all the goodness built into the world and an incarnation of mysteries we innately long to experience.

The crown of thorns

Judas is lured into handing Jesus over to the Sanhedrin’s soldiers. Peter cuts off one of their ears. There is a night full of secret trials run by angry, frightened, self-righteous men determined to get Jesus killed. By early Friday morning, the sentence is set and Jesus appears before the crowd stripped, crowned and mocked.

The soldiers wove a crown of thorns and put it on his head, and they dressed him in a purple robe. They kept coming up to him, saying, “Hail, King of the Jews!” and striking him on the face. Pilate went out again and said to them, “Look, I am bringing him out to you to let you know that I find no case against him.” So Jesus came out wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. Pilate said to them, “Behold the man!” — John 19:2-5

Turn into the terrible truth. Behold the man.

The torture and execution of Jesus has many meanings. But the meaning it has for you this week can be the most important. Dying and rising is a daily experience for us. We avoid dying and suspect rising; nevertheless, it is the way of life and the way to life. There is an old, less-than-true person in you who was ready to die a long time ago. The fear of that part of you getting nailed to the cross is the suffering Jesus is bearing with you.

The guarded tomb

After Jesus died and was buried, the authorities set a guard on the tomb who stayed through Saturday. They were sure the disciples would steal the body and claimed they did. Some people still believe their big lie.

This man went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Then he took it down, wrapped it in a linen cloth, and laid it in a rock-hewn tomb where no one had ever been laid. — Luke 23:52-3

Turn into the silence, into the waiting. Saturday of Holy Week can be torturous if you’ve been into deliberately walking with Jesus all week. Now you are dead with Jesus. Listen to that. You are waiting for the promise. Feel the longing.

The empty tomb

This is one of the most-told stories in the world. Despite the soldiers, the stone is rolled away from the tomb and Jesus enters the Sunday morning sunshine alive! The women coming to properly prepare his body after the sabbath see the tomb is empty; Mary Magdalene has the first conversation with the risen Jesus; the disciples see him. Hundreds of people witness his resurrection.

Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord,” and she told them that he had said these things to her.

When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors were locked where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” — John 20:18-22

Turn into the wind of the Spirit, into Jesus blowing new life into your nostrils like God creating Adam and Eve. Turn into peace with God and peace in yourself, into the confidence of knowing all will be well and you will rise too. Turn into how much God values you, how Jesus breathes new life into you, and gives you a true purpose within the work of Creation. Anything is possible.

What a week it is going to be! I hope this helped get you started. The Lord knows there are a million things to distract us and plenty of powerful entities and people eager to steer us into attending to them. Just keep pausing and turning. This week is an especially thin place in a world that seems far away from God.

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Here is some more info and encouragement regarding Holy Week from our Transhistorical Body site.

Chaos and creation for Holy Week: Demise and rise of your institution

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No metrics exist to measure life without institutions, because they’ve been around as long as humankind. The first institution was the first family. The tribe was the first community. The first tribe’s leader was the first politician, and its elders were the first legislature. Its guards, the first police force. Its storyteller, a teacher. Humans are coded to create communities, and communities beget institutions.

So what institutions are being created now?

Look out Pizza Dads!

When the present disaster is over, what institutions will have been created? Something is happening. CBS Sunday Morning suggested it might be created by robots. Gwen and I suggested it might be creating more anxiety and depression, the life disorders that can be associated with severe self-interest, a turning in on oneself, the mental illnesses of being alone.

Social prophets keep talking about chaos syndrome as the trickle down contribution of our present elites. In general, the idea identifies a chronic decline in  a system’s capacity for self-organization, especially the political system. It begins with the weakening of the institutions and brokers—political parties, career politicians, and congressional leaders and committees—that have historically held politicians accountable to one another and prevented everyone in the system from pursuing naked self-interest all the time. As these intermediaries’ influence fades, politicians, activists, and voters all become more individualistic and unaccountable (and anxious and depressed!). The system atomizes. Chaos becomes the new normal—both in campaigns like Donald Trump’s and in government actions like the House of Representatives considering healthcare.

Government is all most people think we have for an institution, but there are a lot more disintegrating before our eyes. There are four ex-Catholics for every new one in the United States, for instance. Local schools cope with chaos every day. We had people deployed to pray on the steps of our governments last night in honor of Jesus doing the same; it was very hard to find any radicals to believe in prayer, to believe in extravagant gestures of prophecy, or to believe they should even think about what disintegrating institutions are creating.

What is the solution to a disintegrating institution?

Frustrated people are trying to fill the vacuum left by disintegration. We don’t trust any news outlets, so like-minded “followers” and “friends” feed us news online. People sometimes barter on eBay, even start local businesses rather than bow to Amazon. Parents increasingly homeschool their children rather than expose them to under-supported public schools. But most of that is coping, not creating nourishing institutions. Any Sociology 1 student can tell you we need the organizing institutions provide; it’s how things get done. But by Sociology 2 they can probably cite a study that shows how many people despise all institutions; they even hate their church if they think it is institutional, since they don’t like “institutionalized” religion.

When people trust their institutions (you may not remember such a time), they’re better able to solve common problems. Research shows that school principals are much more likely to improve struggling  schools where people have a history of working together and getting involved in their children’s education. Communities bonded by friendships formed at church are more likely to vote, volunteer, and perform everyday good deeds like helping someone find a job. And governments find it easier to persuade the public to make sacrifices for the common good when people trust that their political leaders have the community’s best interests at heart. Institutions — even dysfunctional ones — are why we don’t experience common chaos.

Circle of Hope | 💐This Sunday is Mother's Day, so at our Sunday Meetings we will be reflecting on mothers in different ways. In South Philly, Rachel will... | Instagram

At least for a while we may not experience total chaos. I pray chaos does not engulf us. Which brings me to praying during this holy week. Some people  probably saw Jesus riding into Jerusalem yesterday as the perfect agent of much-needed, anti-institutional fervor. They will follow his movement all week as he upends retail business on Monday, invades higher learning on Tuesday, subverts family and social norms on Wednesday, performs alternative religious rites on Thursday with his subversive cell, defies government authority on Friday and undermines the supposed laws of nature on Sunday. They see him as a big ball of chaos. I agree that he is the great disrupter.

But all through this holy week  Jesus is doing a lot more than being an amazing individual who can stand against all forces, alone and in control. Much deeper, what is happening all week is this: Jesus is God, again brooding over the chaos and exercising his redemptive creative touch. What Jesus is doing, for anyone with eyes to see, is creating something new in the chaos of the fallen institutions. The main new institution he is creating is the church. One will not be able to summarize what he is doing in a sociology book; he is not institutionalizing something alongside all the other institutions. He is the metric by which life is measured — and his grace is new every morning, like this one. He is happening no matter what happens.

Last night our reps in Washington DC, Harrisburg, Trenton and Philadelphia prayed a common liturgy that restated the heart of our revelation in these troubling times. It ended with:

It all happens on a cross
it all happens at a state execution
where the governor did not commute the sentence
it all happens at the hands of an empire
that has captured our imagination
it all happens through blood
not through a power grab by the sovereign one
it all happens in embraced pain
for the sake of others
it all happens on a cross
arms outstretched in embrace
and this is the image of the invisible God
this is the body of Christ.

But can anyone still be part of the body of Christ? Are we so reduced we can’t connect? can’t covenant? can’t marry? can’t build anything together? Our church is living proof that is not so. We are doing it. But the chaos does not stop undermining us. Each Holy Week is a test of our capacity for living. If there are no holy people to experience the Holy Week, if no one makes the connection between what Jesus did and what He is creating through us, our institution isn’t the body of Christ, it is just one more thing we mistrust and destroy.

Good Friday story: What do Christians REALLY want?

A life in the Spirit, , ,

The title of today’s post hit me while I was walking the streets with Jesus on the way of the cross last Friday. I was pondering our journey in Capitolo Park, in the rain when I heard a nice singing voice on a loudspeaker in Spanish. I looked around south of Pat’s cheesesteak, but it appeared to be coming from even farther south. I started walking to investigate. I heard the Spanish word for sin, I saw the crest of a Roman legionnaire glinting in the distance, so I started running. Before long I was in a procession behind Mexican Jesus carrying his cross and being periodically whipped by soldiers who were taking their roles as seriously as everyone else in the parade. I stood very close to Mary, herself, and hummed along with the rest of the singers in the crowd.

The police were trying to make it all work. The neighbors were standing on their stoops looking bemused and indulgent. A reporter made it a human interest story on Saturday in the Inquirer. But I was strangely moved when Jesus fell and the soldiers started yelling at him to get up and finally whipped him again with their cotton-rope whips to keep him moving toward His death. What an important spectacle! — few words, just a big visual aid for what the day in history was all about. I was glad I was with everyone for a while before I continued my own more meditative version of the discipline. As I stood out in the middle of Broad St. and prayed for the city, in the rain, in the median, in the line of sight for all sorts of cars wondering why anyone was doing such a thing, I began to wonder what people really want.

Lots of people do not want Jesus crucified and risen. That is for sure. It hasn’t changed much since Paul insisted that his story about Jesus’ death and resurrection was all he really had to give people. People wanted “spirituality” and the idol worship of the state back then, too, instead of Jesus. But what to the Christians really want? They did not want to get out in the rain and make themselves known as followers along the way of the cross, for the most part, certainly not with the Mexicans who were importing their extravagant passion play. I began to make a list in my head.

What do Christians REALLY want?

Mind you, this is not a list for all Christians, or even for the Christians I know. It is more along the line of “these are the things Christians get sucked into when their courage is weakened by their environment and the unique challenges of their personal journey” or “this is what people think Christians really want instead of Jesus that makes them hypocrites.”

  • They want the best for their kids.

Who doesn’t? But if that is all you really want will they ever find out what is best beyond what you can get for them?

  • They want to pay less taxes and control their money.

Thus, Republican candidates can assume the evangelicals will vote for them.

  • They want good friends.

So all sorts of churches have tight communities and don’t even need to mention Jesus to keep them going.

  • They want more personal time.

So many church people resent the church because it appears to eat up too much of the time not dominated by their jobs.

  • They want to argue about church policies

This is for people who are into church, of course. Most people only argue about policies when the church doesn’t have one that benefits them or has one that makes what they want to do look wrong.

  • They want to follow rules

No matter how much the Bible writers fight the constant pressure to makes rules that manage God people still want to tame the Lord and lead God around — you know, whip him into shape.

Does Jesus really care about any of these things? He cares about us, so he ends up caring about what we care about. But, as the Son of God, none of these things make his top twenty list. He doesn’t have a wife and kids (or a house or even a career in the normal sense of the word). He gets tax money out the mouth of a fish. He has great friends, but they were not too reliable last week. He doesn’t work on dichotomies like public and personal. He is frustrated with Pharisees who have created policies about policies. He is a ruler, not a rule follower.

What do YOU want?

I suppose Jesus is so weird his weirdness is a good reason that people just motored through Good Friday and were impatient when a processional of Mexicans messed up their search for a parking space. Obviously, needing a parking space is not wrong and being frustrated about parking is a normal feature of city life. I suppose the problem is more about the desire that creates one’s list rather than the search itself. For the joy set before him, Jesus endured the cross. For the frustration of being annoyed a parker might endure the processional.

What do you REALLY want? The church normally promises whatever people want in the name of Jesus so they can keep butts in the seats. Church ends up all about your kids, your career, your friends, your “you” time, and all brought down to principles, policies and rules that a fifth grader could understand and apply without too much demanding spiritual stuff added in. You’re OK if you attend enough meetings to keep off the absentee list.

But there was Jesus out on the street again last Friday. I felt like my puny, twisted desires were whipping him, too.  I was moved all over again to make myself absent to any of the normal fears that make me desire things I don’t have or desire more perfect versions of the things I already have in order to follow the Savior in the life I have been given. I want to know the miracle of being raised from the death of need so I can more needlessly receive and carelessly love. I want to know Christ, even though it means being one with him in death and suffering with him along this journey in order to know the power of his resurrection — instead of just desiring what I pretend I can get for myself.

Six good reasons to observe the Holy Week

A life in the Spirit

I have always had a bit of resistance to telling people about Holy Week. It is one of those things that casual people might gum up and mere consumers might defile. It really deserves people who voluntarily seek the Lord  — not people who are pressured into some observance by fear of unholiness and not people afraid of being on the outs with their peers or the people who dominate them. Holy Week is a radical thing to do — not really something to be visited but something to be accomplished, just like Jesus will say at the end of it, “It is finished.”

Walking through the Holy Week with Jesus is the ultimate in taking to heart the great theme verse of Lent, Philippians 3:10-11:  “I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death,  and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.” The discipline is all about knowing Jesus – knowing his death and moving through it with him to resurrection. Powerful.

At the same time, I also hate for anyone to miss Holy Week! So many Christians de-radicalize themselves and ramp down Christianity to fit into their “side-project” category while their schedule is devoted to who they really are. I cannot resist calling everyone into true faith that invades their schedule with as much discipline bent on knowing Jesus as it can tolerate – a true attempt at praying without ceasing and being the body on a pilgrimage together into eternity. This journey is our true life and no one should miss it. We got the strangest compliment the other day; someone said, “That church really expects us to be Christians.” It’s true. I hope that’s not becoming unusual for the Church in general. But it is true; Holy Week expects us to be Christians.

So here are six reasons I think we should do it. You still have a few days to plan to do what you can to become who you might be — and, as Paul seems to say it, “attain to the resurrection from the dead.”

It connects us.

The “Holy Week” of the Christian discipline year is the week immediately before Easter. The earliest allusion to the custom of marking this week as a whole with special observances can be found in the Apostolical Constitutions (v. 18, 19), dating from the late 200’s and early 300’s.

Do it because it is great to be part of the transhistorical body of Christ! Our church also has its own version of this tradition that is as old as our church is. It is great to be part of our own spiritual tradition! Some people think that resisting the tradition makes them something. Could be — not going with the crowd, being “free” or merely being oneself  has good parts, too. But as a spiritual lifestyle, staying singular is detrimental.

We need to identify.

The main discipline of Holy Week is the spiritual exercise of being with Jesus, quite consciously, prayerfully and physically, as he moves through the final week on the way to his great work on our behalf. He is fully indentified with us and we seek to fully identify with him.

Do it to become one with him, to know him and to die and rise with him. We could do this in our imagination in our house, of course, or binge watch it on a movie. Making the effort to go to a gathering connects us to our own problems with being that real, that active, and that committed as well as being all those things with all those people. We exercise our Christ-connected identity in graphic ways and that solidifies it.

It helps us receive Jesus.

The time we spend every day during the Holy Week gives us a lot of meditative space we do not normally have and may not normally discipline in our own schedule. The teaching, worship, dialogue and quiet give us a lot of space to receive Jesus: what he is saying and what he is doing.

Do it because as God came to us in Jesus in the past, he is coming right now and will come back to welcome us into the age to come. These mysteries are very deep and are a little different for us each year. We need to be softened to them and we need time to receive all that Jesus was, is and will be.

We need to develop our faith.

Many of us are just starting off in faith and we need to get a handle on what we are doing. Holy Week lays it out in a deep but linear path we can follow. Exercising spiritual discipline at this level is a formative first for many of us. It challenges who we are as individuals and a body, which is why many people don’t risk it. Others are settled in Jesus and the church and don’t feel so needy anymore – they need to regain some humility, enough to place themselves on the now-familiar path with Jesus and get somewhere.

Do it because we need to place ourselves on that path as who we are now. New believers need to get on a new path. Old believers need to get further on the path. We need to move with Jesus where we are going next, not get stuck on the track we’re in. We dare not become content with our level. Holy Week demands a deeper level, since Jesus is out in front of us demonstrating what self-giving love means.

It makes us a deep community.

While spiritual discipline is probably primarily a silent, singular practice with God, we can’t leave that as the full extent of our practice. We need each other. The weak need the strong and the strong need the weak. During the mutual discipline of Holy Week, we dispense with our normal cell schedule. We band together as four congregation who will meet as a whole on Easter morning and then will be sent into our stations on Easter evening.

Do it because it is so descriptive and formative it is priceless! The practice helps us face up to our new faces and to live in the truth and love that makes us one. The story of Holy Week is the story that makes us the body of Christ. Reliving it is remembering our birth.

We want to witness to Jesus.

In a world full of newly-formed detractors and deconstructors, the word of Jesus needs to be told and the way of Jesus needs to be demonstrated. This week of the year cannot be turned into a cute celebration of family/friendship or gift-giving; it is the Holy Week in which Jesus dies and rises. It is the gospel lived out by the Lord and His people. It is the re-creation moment held up for everyone to see. The Holy Week observances are like a march down Broad St. by which we let people know that people of this generation follow Jesus and take his work so seriously they are drawn to emulate it in their small way as they gather to be a part of it together.

Do it because the more appointments we need to reschedule, the more bosses we need to ask for time off, the more friends we have occasion to tell what we are doing, the more trouble the whole process causes to the homeostasis of this present time which as it smothers hope, the better.

You may have more reasons! You may have stories to tell about why you do it. If this is a good place to share, please feel free.

Five Reasons Holy Week Might Be Hard For Us

A life in the Spirit, ,

Walking with Jesus will be hard this week. It is hard to walk Spirit to spirit every day, but this week is the “discipline week” that often brings up everything that makes it hard to walk with Jesus every day. You may not think Holy Week is going to be hard, but I, and most others I think, will be struggling a bit.

At a conference full of evangelicals last week the worship leader started out a plenary session with “At the Cross” (an example sung robustly here). It reminded me of my childhood experience of Christianity. I can’t really defend our skeptical reaction, but my sister and I always lampooned this song when we sang it (robustly!) in the front row of the Baptist Church. We were tickled because of this line, “At the cross…it was there by faith I received my sight and now I am happy all the day.” Even then, we knew that most of the people in the room were not happy all the day and that the song made promises it wasn’t keeping.

What I mean is that the story of “At the Cross” should have stuck with Jesus and not included somewhat narcissistic declarations of how happy Jesus has made his followers as evidence that his work has efficacy. The burden of sin has rolled away, but I am still rising from my tomb. Dying is still easy and living is still hard. Everyone who knows me, especially my intimates, can tell you that I am generally a happy-all-the-day kind of guy who still shoots himself in the foot all the time. I will be happy to limp through Holy Week, following after Jesus, who saved me and is saving me, with whom I am suffering as he is suffering with me. That’s harder and better than pretending “it’s all good.”

We offer a Holy Week observance that is harder and better and I think that is good. I need it.

Now, I am not writing this to make non-participants feel stupid or bad. The school district has made this week a vacation and some people will take advantage of that and miss the whole thing. Some people work at night, when we are holding our meetings, and there are not that many jobs to be had. Plenty of people have not figured out how to have spiritual disciplines that actually help them connect to God and aren’t merely more things to do; they don’t need more obligation. So don’t take this the wrong way.

Jesus in the Temple. We follow him on Monday of Holy Week.

I am just writing to you in the spirit of Jesus, who tells people to follow him even when they make a lot of good excuses why they can’t do it. He meets people who are honest enough to admit that it is hard to follow him, and Jesus is honest enough to tell them that he knows it is hard and they have to do it anyway. We need to die, too, in order to live. Paul says he wants to share the Lord’s death so he will share the Lord’s life. Our audacious determination to follow Jesus through his last week, in whatever way we can, hopefully using the community’s observances, is the kind of focus serious disciples keep. I think it is life-giving.

Five reasons that it will be hard. That’s OK:

1) You might be called in to work or have classes. There are very few people in power and probably no corporations or universities who will recognize your obligation to follow Jesus through his last week, especially if it costs them any of your time or devotion. They are against such divided loyalty to their money. They will make it hard. The younger you are the harder it will be because the unemployment rate for the young is something like 14-20% according to Sunday’s Inquirer. Holy Week calls for focus on the master, so it brings up the other masters on whom we are called to focus.

2) We will have to work on it. Having devotion that calls for scheduling outside our “ruts” for an entire week is work. That’s why we do it. Some people honestly love the whole thing and not only look forward to Lent but also Holy Week all year. Most people don’t. Most people think good things happen to them, or not; they don’t feel like one should work for them. Their marriages disappoint them as soon as they are “work,” so do their churches, jobs, whatever. Holy Week breeds agency – a sense that we have value, that we make a difference when we show up, that doing something can build something.

3) We will do it together. The way we observe Holy Week, a lot of the process is communal, not just individual. That makes it even more inconvenient and even more subject to being messy and inept. New leaders will lead the meetings and they may be great or awful. We’ll have to deal with that. Jesus, after all, is visibly making himself subject to humankind throughout the week. We need to do that too — we’re even going to follow him as he carries his cross through our neighborhoods and experience what it is like to be observed by the neighbors! Being spiritual as people among other people is one of our greatest challenges. Holy Week breeds humility and patience.

4) The whole idea requires surrender. First, it requires surrender to love. Like David Benner says: “It is possible to know God’s love personally, beyond simply knowing about it. The fact that I am deeply loved by God is increasingly the core of my identity, what I know about myself with most confidence. Such a conviction is, I am convinced, the foundation of any significant Christian spiritual growth.” Living in that love means surrender of time, surrender of attention to other things, other pursuits, maybe even surrender of wages or visits with important people, or pleasure.  Holy Week breeds waiting expectantly for the fullness of love.

5) It is all about Jesus. That makes it hard, in itself. Holy Week makes it plain that following Jesus is not an ideology one can hold in one’s brain, it is an embodied faith that happens in real time. Jesus did not die in the abstract; he died in time and space. We are called to die daily, too. During Holy Week we enact faith that is about our whole lives. Being deeply involved in doing something that is all about Jesus, that is devoted to relating to Jesus and being like Jesus, that even leads us to be public about following is hard and very good for us. Holy Week nurtures a character that can be a true self day by day.

Focusing on the master, showing up because what we do makes difference, developing humility and patience in community, learning to wait expectantly, nurturing a character that reflects our true selves – all those are good reasons to do something hard. I am trying to talk myself into it. Jesus already came to town last night. I don’t want to miss the whole thing for the nothing I somehow consider more important.

I Don’t Want to Zone Out During Holy Week.

A life in the Spirit, Mostly the arts, ,

Last night I talked about my favorite new painter, William Brassey Hole. I am not sure he is the most spectacular painter. But the scenes he paints are the most spectacular ever.

The one on which we were meditating last night is the one called, in short, “Jesus about to heal a boy.” It is one of Hole’s “on the spot” imaginations of what it must have been like to be part of the scene when Jesus descended from the experience of transfiguration on the mountain and entered into a village in which a boy was tormented by an evil spirit.

There is a lot to say about what Mark reveals about that moment in history. But the part of the painting that sticks with me is the man in the foreground zoning out. He is reminding me too much of myself. I can’t help but pay attention to him as we get near Holy Week.

Zoning out in the middle of importance

A few people reading this probably just said, “What is Holy Week?” Wikipedia does not really do it justice. Circle of Hope tries to get into it deep. We spend the whole week walking with Jesus through his last days, in a symbolic way, mainly through our nightly meetings that listen to the scripture and replicate it in some significant way. Our Holy Week observance is intentionally “over the top.” It stakes a claim to our attention and time in a world that would love to shuffle Jesus off into “private time,” which none of us has much of anyway. Holy Week insists that we plan around it, we change our schedule, we do something so Christian that our acquaintances will find out about it and we will have to explain ourselves; it honors Jesus going to the cross, which is still the scandalous basis for our faith. I love it.

That is, I love it theoretically. It is certainly the right thing to do. I am proud to have it in my schedule. I think I should honor Jesus. But I am still way too much like that guy in the painting looking “wherever.”

The most important thing that will ever happen in his village is about to happen and he is looking somewhere else. I can’t quite interpret what he is thinking.

  • He could just be blanked out, like people on the subway waiting for the train to stop, sleepwalking.
  • He could be lost in his own thoughts, slightly depressed; a screaming boy can’t even get his attention.
  • He might be worried, looking up the hill to see if anyone is watching this, like his wife maybe, who wishes they would move out of his terrible village into her father’s village, where there are no seizure-ridden boys.
  • He might be wondering if that dog wandering up there is his dog that got untied and is chasing the neighbor’s chicken.

For whatever reason, his attention is wandering away from Jesus coming to his village and the miracle that is about to happen. I might do that with Holy week.

A lot of my friends will ignore the discipline of Holy Week because they think they carry Jesus with them in their heart, exclusively, like they are the vehicle for his existence. They don’t live in Jesus, Jesus lives in them; and whatever they do, Jesus is privileged to bless. If they let Him out of the cage of their heart, he should feel grateful.

Privileged to follow

I never quite got that Christianity, even though it has been popular for decades. I still feel like I am privileged to follow Jesus around. I expect to be surprised at how he is going to show up. I spend a lot of effort tuning my receptors, so I am ready for him. I am welcomed into his universe, restored to my place in it. I am watching for what my king desires.

So I don’t want to zone out during Holy Week. Yes, it is arbitrary to have a holy week, and no, Jesus is not restricted to showing up during it. Yes, most of it was invented by Catholics, and no, it is not a magical vortex of some kind. Yes, there are a lot of arguments for why one should go to class or wherever instead of the observances, but they are mostly bogus reasons, imho. I think the week will be especially helpful in fulfilling my desire to zone in on Jesus, so I don’t just zone out about stuff that is threatening to overwhelm me.

It is tempting every year for me to tamp down the meaning and emotion of Holy Week, to look away, to let it happen without me while my mind is occupied elsewhere or my mind is occupied with resisting being occupied. I am way too much like that man in the painting. Jesus is going to the cross and I…

  • could be preoccupied with my relationship problems.
  • could wonder if the observances are worth the effort to attend. Some people would think it was radical to ask their boss for time off from noon to three on Good Friday because they aren’t going to work while Jesus is on the cross doing his work. And it is true, some people in charge of the observances might not be all that adept.
  • could be distracted by how weird it is to be a Christian who is so serious. Every day!?
  • could just stay distant. I might go to every meeting and manage to never concentrate on what they mean, or on the Lord’s presence in  the moment, or on my own heart’s struggle.

Those are just a few of my issues.

How are you working with the opportunity?

I think it is the most important week of the year. It is the week that should color all the other weeks. If the year is going to be Christian, it should be like Jesus is coming to heal a boy in our own village, not like a passing thought trying to get into my preoccupied mind.