Peeling back the layers
I've had a week or so to think about my first Holy Week and Easter in my new church. With essay deadlines just beforehand and a busy schedule, it all felt quite intense.
But the intensity I felt didn't come from the busyness. I seemed to feel every conversation, every talk, every hymn and song much more keenly than I would do normally. The sense of walking through the week from Palm Sunday to Easter Day was very real - following the steps of Jesus as he went, inescapably, to his crucifixion and then the joy as he rose again on Easter Day. I have felt like layers of meaning and understanding have been peeled back slowly and deliberately this year more than ever before.
On Maundy Thursday evening, there was a communion service with washing of hands (rather than feet), followed by stripping of the altar and the rest of the church and then a silent Watch. My wonderful and thoughtful supervisor, knowing that much of this was quite new to me, invited me to help throughout the service and it was the most extraordinary experience.
Washing someone else's hands is one of the most intimate things you can do - it was special and powerful and, in those quiet moments holding someone else's hands in my own, I felt God speak to me about my future ministry and the privilege it is to hold his people in my heart.
As if that wasn't powerful enough, we then stripped the church of all decoration in silence and dark. Peeling away anything that might distract us, remembering the way Jesus was stripped of everything after his arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane, focussing our attention on the horrors that night held - the accusations, the trial, the flogging, Peter's denial of Jesus.
This wasn't a comfortable place but as I sat in the pews during the Watch, I felt God talking to me about the difficulties that I and people that I love fiercely have been experiencing recently. It's been a tough couple of months. I have prayed often for this cup to be taken from us - just like Jesus prayed that night before his death - and that night I had a real sense of God saying that these hard places we have been treading through are a kind of Gethsemane for us and that I should keep watching what Jesus did. And as I did, I knew that the next thing Jesus said was "Yet not my will, but yours..." He knew there was a bigger picture and, if I'm honest with myself, so do I. The difficulties we currently face will be used for good in the long run. I don't know how that will play out but I have to trust that it will.
Then Good Friday came and we welcomed over 20 young children and their parents and grandparents to church, to walk through some of the Good Friday story in an interactive way. We washed their hands, they touched the crown of thorns, they listened carefully to the story and offered their own picture prayers to God, laying them on the cross. There was unexpected, holy silence in a church full of 0 to 7 year olds. This was sacred space.
Later on Good Friday, we had an hour's meditation at the cross. As I listened, I felt that familiar sense of incredulity - Jesus did this, suffered an unbearable death, for me. As I dwelt, not for the first time on a Good Friday, on just how undeserving I felt for this kind of sacrifice, that also-familiar sense of grace washed over me. God loves us this much - to give himself up to death on a cross - just so we would never, ever again be separated from him.
I think that there's a rush towards Easter Sunday, and not just because of the commercial appeal of chocolate eggs in the shops, which misses out the vital bits that have to happen first. Even those of us who acknowledge and remember the sacrifice that Jesus made on the cross can be eager to fast-forward to Easter Day, when God's victory over death is clear and we can have confidence in the power of Jesus.
But fast-forwarding can leave us missing the point. There's all of Holy Saturday between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. A whole day of quiet, uncertainty, fearfulness, anxiety about the future. It was reality for the disciples at the time but we gloss over it all too easily, knowing, as we do and as they didn't, that it will all be alright.
Pete Greig wrote a book called God on Mute, about unanswered prayer, which I heartily recommend. When I read it for the first time a few years ago, I was struck by his argument that, far from being able to fast-forward to Easter Sunday, many of us live in Holy Saturday states. He's right: we live constantly with uncertainty, fear and anxiety of different kinds. To push past that too quickly, to dismiss it too readily, is at best dishonest and, at worst, leaves us in danger of missing the unsurpassing joy of Easter Day. Without the rain, we will never appreciate the sun.
So as I peeled back these layers this year, I felt myself dwelling in the rainy places- allowing myself to feel them more than before. And the warmth and joy of Easter morning was all the sweeter as a result.
But the intensity I felt didn't come from the busyness. I seemed to feel every conversation, every talk, every hymn and song much more keenly than I would do normally. The sense of walking through the week from Palm Sunday to Easter Day was very real - following the steps of Jesus as he went, inescapably, to his crucifixion and then the joy as he rose again on Easter Day. I have felt like layers of meaning and understanding have been peeled back slowly and deliberately this year more than ever before.
On Maundy Thursday evening, there was a communion service with washing of hands (rather than feet), followed by stripping of the altar and the rest of the church and then a silent Watch. My wonderful and thoughtful supervisor, knowing that much of this was quite new to me, invited me to help throughout the service and it was the most extraordinary experience.
Washing someone else's hands is one of the most intimate things you can do - it was special and powerful and, in those quiet moments holding someone else's hands in my own, I felt God speak to me about my future ministry and the privilege it is to hold his people in my heart.
As if that wasn't powerful enough, we then stripped the church of all decoration in silence and dark. Peeling away anything that might distract us, remembering the way Jesus was stripped of everything after his arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane, focussing our attention on the horrors that night held - the accusations, the trial, the flogging, Peter's denial of Jesus.
This wasn't a comfortable place but as I sat in the pews during the Watch, I felt God talking to me about the difficulties that I and people that I love fiercely have been experiencing recently. It's been a tough couple of months. I have prayed often for this cup to be taken from us - just like Jesus prayed that night before his death - and that night I had a real sense of God saying that these hard places we have been treading through are a kind of Gethsemane for us and that I should keep watching what Jesus did. And as I did, I knew that the next thing Jesus said was "Yet not my will, but yours..." He knew there was a bigger picture and, if I'm honest with myself, so do I. The difficulties we currently face will be used for good in the long run. I don't know how that will play out but I have to trust that it will.
Then Good Friday came and we welcomed over 20 young children and their parents and grandparents to church, to walk through some of the Good Friday story in an interactive way. We washed their hands, they touched the crown of thorns, they listened carefully to the story and offered their own picture prayers to God, laying them on the cross. There was unexpected, holy silence in a church full of 0 to 7 year olds. This was sacred space.
Later on Good Friday, we had an hour's meditation at the cross. As I listened, I felt that familiar sense of incredulity - Jesus did this, suffered an unbearable death, for me. As I dwelt, not for the first time on a Good Friday, on just how undeserving I felt for this kind of sacrifice, that also-familiar sense of grace washed over me. God loves us this much - to give himself up to death on a cross - just so we would never, ever again be separated from him.
I think that there's a rush towards Easter Sunday, and not just because of the commercial appeal of chocolate eggs in the shops, which misses out the vital bits that have to happen first. Even those of us who acknowledge and remember the sacrifice that Jesus made on the cross can be eager to fast-forward to Easter Day, when God's victory over death is clear and we can have confidence in the power of Jesus.
But fast-forwarding can leave us missing the point. There's all of Holy Saturday between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. A whole day of quiet, uncertainty, fearfulness, anxiety about the future. It was reality for the disciples at the time but we gloss over it all too easily, knowing, as we do and as they didn't, that it will all be alright.
Pete Greig wrote a book called God on Mute, about unanswered prayer, which I heartily recommend. When I read it for the first time a few years ago, I was struck by his argument that, far from being able to fast-forward to Easter Sunday, many of us live in Holy Saturday states. He's right: we live constantly with uncertainty, fear and anxiety of different kinds. To push past that too quickly, to dismiss it too readily, is at best dishonest and, at worst, leaves us in danger of missing the unsurpassing joy of Easter Day. Without the rain, we will never appreciate the sun.
So as I peeled back these layers this year, I felt myself dwelling in the rainy places- allowing myself to feel them more than before. And the warmth and joy of Easter morning was all the sweeter as a result.
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