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Holy Week resources and reflections

What Holy Week means for the rest of the world

Who cares, really, about Holy Week? Not many of my kids’ friends. Most of my children’s closest friends have no faith affiliation let alone a church one. Countless years my kids bemoaned the reality that their Spring Break was spent at church while their friends were on the beach (or at least not in church). While the parents of these secular children had mostly left a tradition they’d grown up with, and therefore had at least a rudimentary knowledge of the sequence of events they ignored, their kids had nothing. Zippo. Palm Sunday? No idea. Maundy Thursday. Never heard of it. Good Friday? Isn’t every Friday by definition good? Holy Saturday? Nada. Easter? Eggs. Bunny. Candy.

Now that I am not as tightly tethered to a pulpit, I realize that those friends of my children are the norm. There is no question that mine are the oddity. Outside our tight circles, no one gives a thought to Holy Week. Last year I received an email from a clothing store with the subject line, “Good Friday, Great Deals!” Holy Week, not just Christmas and Easter, is now an occasion for shopping and sales. Once again, ritual has been retailed. Even Good Friday can be co-opted by our consumer culture.

I could bemoan that fact, and I do, but I also want to take on the challenge and try and articulate why Holy Week matters not only to those of us planning and leading and attending a packed week of worship, but to those who may not have any idea those services are taking place.

I want our Holy Week-honed lives to make an impact in the lives of the kids, and so many people like them, who come in and out of my house, but who never darken the door of the house of the Lord.

I want us to wave palms and sing “Hosanna!” remembering that the One we laud came to save the world and not just a part of it so we cannot wall off those people and places we don’t like.

I want us to wash feet and gather around the table and hear again the new commandment of love and let that Thursday night shape the rest of our lives. Where and whom are we to serve? Who do we need to seek out and invite to the table? When is it that we have refused to love?

I want us to hear the last words of Jesus or walk to each station of the cross or read the Passion narrative and be heartbroken — for the Marys, for the disciples, for Jesus and, yes, for Pilate and the priests and the ones charged with pounding in the nails and for ourselves, too. I want us to immerse ourselves in the pervasive hurt of humanity that Christ took upon himself, and I want us not to look away. I want us to see it on Good Friday so that we can enter into it on any given day, on every given day.

I want us to grieve on Holy Saturday for all the hopes that were not, and will not, be realized. No platitudes or excuses. No politeness or stiff upper lip. I want us to weep with those who weep on Holy Saturday so we know how to stay with those who refuse to be consoled.

I want us to stay up and keep watch until the break of dawn. I want that vigil to give us the patience to wait for the morning. I want us to know to the marrow of our bones that it is always darkest before the dawn so that we can speak a word of hope with certainty to those who dwell in deep darkness.

I want Holy Week to be the week that forms us to our core so that when that week is over, come and gone with few knowing it was different from any other week, we can never be the same. I want that week to take us, bless us, break us and lift us up and send us out, so that the others, no matter if they ever darkened the door of the church, will be transformed, too.

Grace and peace,
Jill

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