Notes for the Week Palm Sunday April 5 2020

Dear friends in Christ,

It has been a surreal week for all of us, and it seems strangely fitting that Holy Week is not just “here,” but is actually caught up as part of it all.  I have to admit, that for me, it is serving as a lesson in a very real level of helplessness and Ta very real meaning of servitude above one’s own needs.  My sense of helplessness came in the form of a giant life-wave which lifted me out of the expected and planned for, and into an unexpected, unplanned MRI, C-Scan, and immediate surgery for a badly dislocated back.  A blessing?  I have to admit to a less than appreciative dialogue with my Maker at the outset, which has turned into a deeply appreciative, even if not quite understood, prayer of thankfulness for all the gifted medical people who got me in and out of the hospital, with the best of care by the most skillful of doctors and nurses.  I am blessed.  Humbled.  And I well understand what it means for someone to keep on keeping on for the sake of someone else.  For them all, and for everyone who keep showing up on the front lines of defense and support for the rest of us, I give most profound thanks.  What a way to have us understand that it is just what Jesus did.  Keep on keeping on, so that we could be free to keep the faith, to love and to take our turn at keeping on, just for the sake of others.  

There is non-stop talk in the church about Holy Week preparations being upended, as clergy work to bring  Holy Week worship to their congregations and comfort to all. For all Christians, Holy Week is the deepest and most meaningful time of our liturgical life.  As with Ash Wednesday, the Great Three Days: Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and the Great Vigil of Easter on Easter Eve, allow us to show, unashamedly, that we are Jesus people.    As each Holy Week arrives, we are reminded anew of what true Christian discipleship means: humility and sacrifice, steadfast faithfulness and unending love of God and God’s creative power.  

Like many of you, I love the rituals that begin with Ash Wednesday, travel with us through Lent, and carry us through the story of God’s powerful and uncompromising love for us.  For me, they carry the core of feeling that is almost too powerful to express.   

At first, I began to grieve the loss of them, as the reality of the global grip of COVID-19 was made clear.  There are no plans left intact, no events left untouched, no rituals to wrap ourselves in, as we keep on keeping the faith.  No parades up to 181st, amid honking horns and thumbs up signals from others of the faithful.  No opportunity to get over ourselves and offer our feet to another to be washed or to wash someone else’s feet.   No opportunity to feel gutted and naked as the bells, the books and the candles are taken away.  No opportunity to sit there, in the half-dark with nothing but the cross, pointing to each one of us, and speaking its truth to each. No opportunity to light the Paschal Fire, to move through the darkness of the Great Easter Vigil into the brightly joyful and triumphant first Eucharist of Easter.  

And yet.  

Maybe we will find something new in the Holy Days to come.  Maybe we will take something away to ponder in a way we never have needed to before.   Either way, it will be a Holy Week to remember forever. It will be the Holy Week we will recall as singularly profound and deeply embraced.  

We may not be able to enter into every accustomed ritual, or may not celebrate each step of the way in our usual fashion, but we will embrace, and we will celebrate just the same.  This is the year when we show Jesus just what his disciples are made of.  We will not need the trimmings to help us get to the feelings and understanding that Jesus so wanted his disciples to experience.  This year, we will understand loss, uncertainty, confusion, and we will feel Jesus’ suffering on the cross, and we will feel the triumph of His love, all around the world.  The world will be celebrating that glorious day, in a thousand different ways, in the face of coronavirus, which will have to take a back seat for just a moment in time,  For us, as for many around the world, Holy Week will be simple, profound, humble and close.  It is all that God requires of us.

So, we will not grieve.  Our love of God in Jesus Christ is not measured by how beautiful our rituals may be, not measured by how many candles are lit at the Vigil, or how many flowers adorn the altar on Easter Day. We love them, to be sure  But our love of God is measured by something far more precious to God…..and that is our attempt to show God the extent of our faithfulness.   We will read the scriptures and lessons, make our way through the structure of services that have been created through the centuries, and we will experience, perhaps for the first time, what it means to be truly alone and lost in the wilderness, and what it means to let all the meaningless in our lives die, and what it means to emerge better and more faithful than we ever were before.

That was all God wanted in the first place. 

We journey together, 

Mother Esme+