Palm Sunday

So it begins, Holy Week. Our choir presented half a cantata this morning, complete with slides of the scenes we were musically portraying. We began with the Triumphal Entry when Jesus rode into Jerusalem. What a divided perspective He must have had, knowing what was coming immediately afterwards, and seeing the victorious resurrection beyond at the same time.

In a short half hour, we touched briefly on the events of that week - the Passover and Last Supper, the trial, the torture, the crucifixion, the burial. And we left Him there, in the tomb, for an entire week. We will not sing the rest of the cantata, the resurrection, until Easter Sunday.

This church has a tradition of removing everything from the chancel at the end of the Palm Sunday service. So we buried Jesus, the final slide showing three crosses on a hill, and then, as we sang the closing hymn unaccompanied, each choir member picked up a candle, a Bible, a purple banner, the offering plates, anything else not nailed down, and left the sanctuary with it.

I sat contemplating the bare, empty front of the church. The lights were off. There was nothing left. The once sacred place was just another area, just some storage space where an odd table or two took up room, surrounded by a few chairs. Nothing special. Surely this is how one mourns the loss of a loved one. You take their things and pack them away, out of sight. Your heart is broken, and looking at the klediments that remind you of that person brings pain and sadness. It is finished. The place where they once lived becomes just a meaningless space that someone else takes over for other purposes.

It doesn't entirely help to pack things away. You still hurt. You are still shocked and bewildered at the emptiness where once there was life. You forget, and go to call the person, or visit them and suddenly you remember - they are not there anymore. You cannot reach them. Not on this side of the Jordan.

It takes a long time for us to accept such unrelenting constraints. One moment they are alive and warm and looking at you, the next they are gone. Gone. They don't look dead, but they are, and nothing you do will bring them back. Science has made amazing advances, but it cannot reach beyond the grave. Only God can do that.

Only God was able to overcome death. Only God breathed His immutable power into the lifeless form of Jesus and re-enlivened the dead body. Only God put Being back into flesh. Only God will translate our being from flesh to immortality.

Next week, we will triumphantly put everything back, and more. The banners will fly again, the Bible will take is place on the altar, the candles will be set on the communion table and lighted once more. The choir will sing with joy and not sorrow. The congregation will celebrate in many ways the return of the one who made it all possible. We will reclaim life.

But this week, the silence was eerie and uncomfortable. What should I do now? I shake my head and slowly file out, into the hallway where life is still going on, where people are talking and laughing and eating as if nothing had happened. I find it hard to enter in. I am still thinking how hard it must have been for his bewildered disciples, for those closest to Him. They scattered, crawled off to dark hidden places, frightened - perhaps angry. Certainly scared.

Can I possibly know what they felt, how sick to their stomachs, how weak and undone they were? To remain in that state for three days must have been close to unbearable. Did they have any idea what was to come? Probably not. They believed it was over. Their dreams had come crashing around them, their leader destroyed.

How do you move on, get back to the business of living? How indeed? I cannot imagine life without Christ, cannot fathom facing that horrible yawning crevasse of dark nothingness that caused Jesus to cry, "My God! Why have you forsaken me?" Wait. Don't leave me. I can't live without you. Please don't go.

We will explore again and in more depth the events of the week leading to His death. Maundy Thursday communion service, Friday stations of the cross, a tenebrae service, the all night vigil of the orthodox community until we come at long last to the Easter Sunrise Service, the return of Light and Life, the renewal of hopes and dreams.

I vow to move through this week at a sacred and savoring pace. I hope you will too, and that you will enter into a new sense of His presence, and new awareness of His absolute love.