What time is it? As I write it is noon on Wednesday of Holy Week- the week we follow the events that mark the final days of Jesus’ life. The Palm Sunday celebrations saw Jesus enter Jerusalem amid a crowd crying out to him. That was three days ago. Tomorrow, Maundy Thursday, we will recall the last supper he shared with his disciples, the prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane and his arrest. Friday morning we will hear, reflect and pray our way through his passion, his death, and his burial. And then we wait… until the great celebrations of Easter morning!
We know all this. We prepare for this. It is a familiar story. We have heard it all before and it is a spiritual piece of work to be in each moment, to let the current part of the story affect us, and not to skip forward to the last joyful chapter. We are Easter people going through Holy Week again. We are resurrection people hearing again of the suffering of Jesus amid the suffering of the world. Life is not so easily compartmentalized into times of struggle, times of joy, times of calm and times of chaos, times of doing and times of being.
But isn’t this what we have been practicing all season? “Human Being” is all about living fully and deeply into the current moment, even and maybe especially when it doesn’t come easily. Maybe, by the grace of God, there is joy within the struggle. Maybe there is calm within the chaos. Maybe there is being within the doing.
I think that may have been what Natalie Sleeth was getting at in her hymn lyrics. In the bulb there is a flower. In the seed, an apple tree. In cocoons a hidden promise: butterflies will soon be free. In the cold and snow of winter there’s a spring that waits to be, unrevealed until its season, something God alone can see.
n each confined little moment of this holy week, may you find the unconfined presence of God. In each limited moment of your life, may you experience the unlimited grace of God.
Blessings, Will
