Notes for the Week Fifth Sunday in Lent March 29 2020

Dear friends,

Yes, it’s real. A Real Lent, when all seems dark and without direction and the candles are all out.

We have come to the Fifth Sunday in Lent, a time of deep reflection as we prepare to join the world-wide entry into Holy Week, soon to arrive. We make the walk together, just as the Israelites did so many years ago. We are just as unsure of our direction, uncertain of when we will reach the place when we can dance together again. But we keep walking, trusting that God will lead us to that place of great joy. It is out there, waiting for us to arrive. Lead on Holy Spirit!

For now, however, in this Real Lent, we have been given an opportunity for deep and profound reflection on just what it is we will take with us into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, and what it is to be that we will lay at the foot of the Cross on Good Friday. What are our priorities showing themselves to be during this strange and surreal time of isolation and self-monitoring? Have our priorities changed? Why? Or why not? What is more important than self? What about oneself is one able to recognize as a strength or a lesser strength? Where am I contributing to the joy of another and where am I destroying that joy?

What regrets do we harbor deep in our souls that we would so love to lay down forever? What injustices, real or imagined, do we still feel wounded by, or resentful about, that burden our souls without ceasing? Are there thoughts rising up about changes we would make about ourselves now, that we might not have thought about just two or three weeks ago?

These are important questions we must all ask ourselves during this time of Real Lent. While God did not bring the coronavirus to the world, God is probably not surprised that it came in the same way that other plagues and pestilences develop through humankind’s misunderstandings.   But, given that the world finds itself in this predicament, I can’t help thinking that God must hope that we will choose to think carefully about how we move forward from here.

We must think on these things, so that we are able to clearly define just what it is we will lay at the foot of the Cross. Jesus was led to the Cross in order to bear them all and when he dies, they die. We will be redeemed. There will be no turning back, no pulling the old resentments or judgments back, no reverting to old attitudes which have had their day and their destructive ways. We will lay part of the dark side of ourselves down on that day to make room for the light of Easter that will surely come.

And, even if we are in total lockdown when Real Lent is over, with our heaviest burdens laid down, we will know Real Easter. The real meaning of rising again with new possibilities filled with joy and hope, whoever and wherever we are. For the Light will surely come, the candles will surely glow, the flowers will surely flourish, God’s world will reveal its glory again and God’s people will sing with joy!

We journey together,

Mother Esme+

“But he was wounded for our transgressions,
   crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the punishment that made us whole,
   and by his bruises we are healed.” (Isaiah 53:5)