So very true.
And what a difference a week can make...
Highs and Lows...
Friends and Enemies...
Life Before and Life After...
Some would say Ever After.
Here are some thoughts from Sunday
And Thursday
And Friday
And Sunday again.
What a week…
Holy Week they call it.
An impromptu parade…
Cheering and palm-branch waving…
High hopes and higher expectations.
A final meal shared by friends…
A new commandment given:
Just Love One Another!
And then all hell breaks loose.
Betrayal by a friend…
Brutality by the powerful…
The religious authorities and
The machinery of government
Enforce the dirty deed…
A death will quiet the mob, and
Satisfy the holy assembly, and so
A death it shall be!
On Sunday a parade…
On Friday a public lynching.
And the man says “It is finished.”
And on Saturday all seems quiet…
But maybe not so much…
Because according to nothing other
And nothing less
Than faith…
The story may not be over.
Always beware of the mob
That waves the flags of
Regime and Religion
Together…
No good can come from that…
Beware, and keep the faith…
The story may not be over.
What a week!
But just wait…
There’s another Sunday coming.
To share food and drink and conversation...
A meaningful meal...
A Last Supper, even.
Maundy is the word we use
Maundy...
From Mandatum...
Which means Commandment.
Some wine and some bread
Enlarged in meaning to include
Life shared...
Life given and received...
Memories for all lifetimes yet to come...
As often as you do this
Remember.
Feet washed and dried...
The dust of life before wiped away...
And the New Commandment for life ahead offered
Love One Another.
And then the darkness of the night deepens...
A life is betrayed with a kiss.
The leaders of State and Religion are in charge now.
And evil plays out.
Enough blame to go around...
State and Religion
One of the man's closest friends and the crowd-turned-mob.
And for the man...
A Place that feels like its somewhere between life and death.
An Empty Place where life is hollow and thin.
An Overwhelming Place…
Hectic, and hellish, and unmanageable.
A Damnable Place where everything life can throw
Arrives in full and without end.
A Nowhere Place where life folds back in on itself...
Sucks the fire from the soul and the joy from the heart.
My God, My God
Is there still hope...
Surely there is still hope
Hope in the goodness of God...
Hope that we are never separated from the love and
The redemption of God...
Hope that we are not so flawed, or so defective
Or so not-good-enough that God has abandoned us
Even in the worst that life has to offer.
Even when the Place we find ourselves feels like
It is somewhere between life and death.
Death finally comes...
The man's body is laid in an offered garden tomb.
The women arrive at the tomb and
Find it empty.
That is how the earliest version of
The First Important Story of The Church ends…
Abruptly disarming and
Troubling in its lack of closure and
Asking us to hold in tension
Contradictory raw emotions and
Mold them into A Profound Mystery and
Leaving us with the expectation
That we might just run into
This Resurrected Presence
Anywhere and any time and
Inviting us to believe that
Love is stronger and longer than death and
Light will overcome the darkness
Any time and any place and
Every time and every place and
Neither the State nor the Church
Can ever control the Human Spirit. And
Every-now-and-then and
Especially on a day like this…
The First Important Story of The Church
Becomes Our Important Story, too. And
Life goes on and
It is better than before.
