Journeying Through Holy Week
There’s a fantastic poem by the Sufi Muslim sage Rumi that is just perfect for Holy Week:
I called through your door,
“The mystics are gathering in the street. Come out!”
“Leave me alone. I’m sick.”
“I don’t care if you’re dead! Jesus is here, and he wants to resurrect somebody!”
–Rumi
Once again we find ourselves turning toward Jerusalem, as the story goes, focusing on a well-known story that gives eternal wisdom. Once again we find ourselves paying close attention the intentional readings, prayers, music, and embodied rituals that help ground us in the transformative potential and hope of the Spirit’s presence. Once again, we prepare to step into Holy Week. Once again, we examine our lives and honestly name both the suffering as well as the deep hope in the Resurrection. Life, death, rebirth: it is a timeless pattern that offers hope to us all.
Holy Week is a spiritually powerful time. As a child, we really only celebrated Easter Sunday, and even then I knew that something was missing. I knew there was something else, something more, that could give me a space to connect the deeper questions, confusions, desires, and even sufferings of my life with the wisdom of Jesus. Not just the familiar stories of Jesus that I saw in the words on the page, but the living reality of his own life that I could feel. I didn’t have the words for it then, but I yearned for a sacramental space that could hold all the complexities of my life. As I began studying the stories more, I realized they were actually studying me. The power of these stories lies with the deep wisdom beneath and within the words on the page. As William Blake once described to those who only want to remain on the surface level: Both read the Bible day and night, but thou read black where I read white. What happens when we fall through the words on the page?
I think back to so many conversations when people have shared how they are struggling to make meaning in their lives right now. I think back to countless times when I have wondered how to do so. Our practice of faith, grounded in a mystical and incarnational wisdom, constantly calls us to see how we bring the fullness of who we are—struggles, hope, despair, joy, confusion, grief—and experience a connection through the living power of Jesus Christ. Our part in this is to come, to be intentional about our presence, so that we can experience the connection of the true presence of God that is always burning. Give us eyes to see, ears to hear, and a heart full of courage.
The truth is that every week is Holy Week, in our hearts, because we are always invited to make the journey from self-centeredness to self-emptying. We are always challenged to see Jesus not only in historical or doctrinal terms, but in terms of how our own hearts are transformed. Every moment of our lives is an opportunity to move from death to new life. The core wisdom teachings of the Christian tradition invite us to see how our lives are transformed by Jesus’s life—and how his life embraces our life. There is a mutual indwelling at the heart of our practice of faith, and this radical awareness of the Spirit’s presence opens our eyes so that we can see the world as it truly is: completely saturated by God’s love.
To help us experience the full arc of the Holy Week story, I worked with the bishop and staff this year to shift some of the readings. Beginning on Palm Sunday and extending through Easter Sunday, each reading will focus on the next step in the story of Jesus’s healing ministry, death, burial, and resurrection. No story will be repeated; rather, each liturgy we share will be an opportunity to take the next step and absorb even more of the transforming and illuminating wisdom. Specifically, the Palm Sunday readings will be different this year. As always, the Triduum readings (the three parts of one continuous service, which is Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Great Vigil of Easter) will help guide us through the deep soul work that lies at the heart of the wisdom of Jesus’s transformation of death itself. If you have never attended the Great Vigil of Easter, I strongly encourage you to come this year. You will never forget it. Easter Sunday, of course, will be a glorious celebration as we step into the Great Fifty Days of Easter that culminate on Pentecost.
I really encourage you to be present at all the services this year. By making the liturgies a priority, we make our spiritual lives a priority, and we need this in these days. Of course our attention goes to the Sunday service framework that we are familiar with, but Holy Week gives us an opportunity to delve more deeply into our practice of faith. It is an intentional space designed for the complex work of meaning-making. And, this year, take a risk and invite a friend or family member to come with you! We need times like this to settle down into our hearts. We need times like this to be reminded of what is possible.
As Rumi said, “I don’t care if you’re dead! Jesus is here, and he wants to resurrect somebody!”
Blessings to all,
Stuart
