A Concord Pastor Comments: Blessings to you this Holy Week!

John McGinty over at Both Sides Now has an excellent post on Holy Week. Please be sure to read what follows here and then jump to his page for the rest.

Blessings to you this Holy Week!

As the church gathers this week, intent on being with Jesus from his entry into Jerusalem through his giving of the Eucharist, his self-offering on the Cross, his dying and entry into the ultimate quiet, to the moment (everlasting) of Resurrection, somehow – as in all of the most significant moments of life – I think of you.

Each year this week provides such an invitation to consider the paschal mystery in Jesus’ life, and so in ours as well. I have been thinking more in recent years of the necessity for me of not racing past the crucifixion to get to the empty tomb and the reality of new life.

And so this Thursday tells me that community in my life is vitally important. That importance is most revealed at unrepeatable moments of either joy or sorrow. But it is true everyday. To live is to belong together.

This Friday confronts me with the fact that the stuff I most fear I ultimately will have to face. I must as well run toward it, rather than away from it. To do so is more reality-based, and somehow, always, in confronting reality we find the real God right there.

This Saturday makes real the moments of in-between-ness when nothing seems to be happening, and yet much that is about to be born is awaiting its time. Those times, that can feel (in American cultural terms) like a waste of time, may be some of the most vital times of all.

And next Sunday! What does it say to you and me? What does it sing? What does it shout out? What does it reveal in a blaze of color – color not that the eye sees (though that too!), but colors that the heart knows, colors that embrace the soul and renew hope as a reality that is at times even more vital than faith and love, the greatest gift of all?

Next Sunday reveals God alive forever – both human and divine – both willing and able to share that life with us. After we have known the delight and the failure of our own communities. After we have run into and through our own sufferings. After we have lain fallow in the quiet for a time. Next Sunday introduces us to Jesus in a moment that is new every time it happens, and in a way that makes known his significance to all the world – to those who have met him and those who have not, to the conscious world and the entire world of creation.

"He is risen!"

I wish you, with all my heart, all the joy to which this week beckons us...

(John's reflection continues here)