Dear Friends,
“Holy, holy, holy
week, there to make the clergy weep!” So sang my friend as
we sat together over lunch one Holy Saturday. Over the years since
being ordained I have come to understand just what he meant, for I too have always found Holy Week to be a very
trying and tiring experience. And from conversations I’ve had with other folk
whether ordained or not there is certainly an air of tiredness and even slight
depression around this particular time in the Church’s calendar. So why should
such a familiar and annual event have this effect on people? What’s so different about this particular religious festival?
Well, I think that
it’s because during this particular week, unlike any other in the year, as we
consciously and deliberately walk the road to Calvary, we are coming face to
face with the common lot of all humanity. For we have all, no
matter how young or old, experienced times of loss and sadness; times of endings and partings. Some of them we can recall and some have entered so deeply into our subconscious
that we’re not even aware of feeling them. And so, as we think
and pray and meditate on Jesus’ Passion and Death in the final week of his
earthly ministry, it’s no wonder we’re tired and no wonder we become a little
bit giddy on Easter Day.
For Easter Day is the promise of hope and new life, the
promise that the common human experience of pain and loss punctuated by the odd
Bank Holiday break is not the only thing that we have to look forward to, and
it’s a promise not only for us gathered in Christian churches, it’s a promise
held to everyone. As the scripture reminds us “God was in Christ, reconciling the world to
himself.” That most generous of all the generous gifts of our generous God, spills
over to affect even those who can’t, won’t or have not had the opportunity to
hear the Good News. For Easter influences us all, as we all share in the pleasure. And as we
eat our chocolate Easter Eggs, share celebration meals, or just chill out with
friends, family or even on our own, we can be sure that we share this pleasure
with many others whether they claim the Christian faith or not. For in great generosity our Creator God chose to be limited by the human
experience, to enter fully into all that that would mean, to know intimately
all our experiences of joy, of pain, of loss and of sadness. And who for our
sake was prepared to walk the road to Calvary, not simply in memory or
imagination but to walk that road in reality, and who as he lay pinned and
dying prayed for those who did not, would not, or could not believe as well as
those who did.
A Happy, Hopeful and
Blessed Easter to you all.
