Will you pray with me?
Lord, may the words of my lips and the meditations of all
our hearts be
acceptable in your sight. Amen.
In her book To
Dance
with God, author and illustrator Gertrud Mueller Nelson tells a
story of
watching small children playing at the beach.
At first, the children cling to their mother’s legs and
stare wide-eyed
at the huge and heaving water crashing onto the beach, overawed by its
immensity. Eventually, they turn away from
the hugeness
and power of the sea to do what you and I and children everywhere have
always
done at the beach: they begin to dig a hole.
When it s big and deep enough, the water begins to seep into
it; before long,
it is their own little ocean, one that they can control, and
understand, and
play in safely in ways they do not yet feel they can in the big one.
It is an image both charming and
telling. The children, fearful at the
immensity and
the sheer, raw power of that which they are being asked to face, turn
from it,
for a time at least, and create their own version of the thing, a
smaller
version, a controllable version, a safer version of the too-big ocean. And in that small, safe sea of theirs, they
play, they learn, they experience the water.
That is, they practice getting ready for the time when they
will enter
the real thing.
Today, with the story of
Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem,
we begin our
journey through the immensity of Holy Week.
We begin here, with a king on a donkey, with palms and
praise, cheers
and impromptu processions, with great high hope and a generous measure
of
excitement and fun. And next Sunday,
next Sunday we who love our Jesus will be there with song and shouts,
with drum
and banner and brassy joy to celebrate the truth of life with our God.
But there is a long road
between Palm Sunday and Easter. In the
days that come, today’s procession will
take a turn into some dark and nasty places.
We will pass through the betrayal, desertion, the terror,
and the
mockery of Maundy Thursday. We will be
led into the violence, the hopelessness, and the death of Good Friday. We will wait in despair and bated breath
through the dim silence and agonizing pause of Holy Saturday. It will be neither easy nor pretty.
It is tempting to skip these
parts of the story, the dark
and the nasty ones, where people betray and the powers of the world let
us down
and we must face the huge and heaving truth that we, we have been
complicit in
the death of God. It is tempting to go
straight from the glory of today to the glory of a week from today,
from
mountaintop to mountaintop, to avoid being dirtied by the blood and the
spit,
to avoid the thorns and the nails and the agony and the death. For haven’t we already lived through Good
Friday a hundred times in our own lives?
Haven’t we experienced betrayal and crucifixion in our own
ways, and
been in our turn on both ends of the hammer and nail?
Isn’t the whole world a Good Friday world?
Author Annie
Lamott sums it up in
this way: “I don't have the right personality for Good Friday, for the
crucifixion: I'd like to skip ahead to the resurrection. In fact, I'd
like to
skip ahead to the resurrection vision of one of the kids in our Sunday
school,
who drew a picture of the Easter Bunny outside the tomb: everlasting
life, and
a basket full of chocolates. Now you're
talking.
“In Jesus' real life, the
resurrection came two days later,
but in our real lives, it can be weeks, years, and you never know for
sure that
it will come.” Finally, she admits, “I
don't have the right personality for the human condition, either.”
(end
quote)
I don’t have the right
personality for the human condition,
either. I wonder if, in some way, that
isn’t true of all of us. If, in some
way, none of us has the personality for the reality of this life, for
the sheer
power of that which we face: the sickness and death of loved ones or of
ourselves, the hurricanes and floods and wars and murders, insecurities
and
betrayals at work and home. I wonder if,
in some way, we aren’t all like those kids on the beach, staring at the
immensity of that which fumes and roils before us, and feeling utterly
unequal
to the task of braving it.
And I wonder if that isn’t
exactly the reason we seek to
relive Holy Week together, here in the church, year after year. We seek to place ourselves deep in the
mystery and the drama, in their intensity and emotion and tragedy and
hope. Today, we created a triumphal
procession and placed ourselves in the thick of it.
Maundy Thursday, we will join Jesus and the
disciples on their last night together, sharing the Last Supper with
them,
snuffing candles and praying in the gathering darkness each time one
betrays
him until finally, there is no more light. On
Good Friday, we will shout “Crucify him!”
with the crowds, and go with him to the halls of power, carry his cross
through
this city, and pray prayers of repentance as the sounds of nails being
driven
into wood echo through the chapel.
The grand, intense liturgies
and services of the week ahead
of us are the church’s way of squatting down for a moment and digging a
little
hole in the sand, there by the vast and heaving ocean of life and death
and joy
and sorrow and boredom and engagement and fear and hope.
They’re our way of carving a little container
in time and space, a little ocean next to the big one.
We let it fill up with the emotion and the
intensity. And there, in safety and in
the company of our sisters and brothers and our God, we touch, and
splash, and
immerse ourselves in the experience, and begin to learn what it is
about.
There are many little holes in
the sand, little containers
that we will use to hold and make safe the power and the intensity of
the experiences
of Holy Week. There is this building,
itself a sign of God’s presence in the world, covered with the hopeful
symbols
of our faith and saturated with the prayers of thousands that have gone
before. There are the sacred stories and
scriptures, shared and told during this time by followers of Christ for
two
thousand years. There is the treasured
music we will listen to and sing. There
are the ancient prayers and liturgies we will say and experience. Most importantly, there is the community, the
sisters and brothers who will surround us with love and presence even
in the
darkness of Maundy Thursday, even at the foot of Good Friday’s cross. And through it all, in, around, above, and
below it, there is God, whispering over and over again the deep truth
of our
faith, that though we live in a Good Friday world, that because
we live in a Good Friday world, we are Easter people.
In Holy Week we are practicing
believing that. We are making ready, we
are preparing for
real life, out there, beyond the safety of our worship, out there where
don’t
we know that betrayal, and desertion, and crucifixion are real, and
deep, and
powerful as the ocean. We practice
losing well, and grieving well, repenting well and rejoicing well. We practice knowing that God is with us,
knowing
that God loves us with a love stronger even than our capacity to screw
up, practice
knowing that with our God, death is never the end of the story. In living through the pain of Maundy Thursday
and Good Friday in the holy safety of this place and its people, and in
emerging into Easter in the same way, we practice never forgetting
that, just
as crucifixion is real, so too is resurrection.
And in the practicing, we learn that, though we may not have
the right
personality for the human condition, we have the perfect God for it.
So come, this Holy Week let us
carve out in time and space a
little hollow in which to practice together the ways of life and the
presence
of our God. Let us together walk deep
into the valley
of Holy Week’s
shadow in
the holy safety of this place, that we might emerge prepared and
equipped to
live as Easter people in a Good Friday world.
We have begun here, with a
king on a donkey, with palms and
praise, cheers and impromptu processions, with great high hope and a
generous
measure of excitement and fun. We have
begun here; let us ride on in the way of the Lord.
