It’s Palm Sunday. 2021.
I’m sitting on the couch, my daughters snuggled in tight on either side of me, the computer sitting on the coffee table in front of us. The organ plays, and they begin to sing the first stanza of “All Glory Laud and Honor” with all their might. Feeling my eyes start to water, I stand up and walk toward the kitchen, looking for something to keep my mind off what I’m feeling inside. This isn’t what I want for today. I don’t want to watch this service. I don’t want to imagine Jesus’s procession in my mind. Not here. Not now. I want to ignore it and pretend today is just another day of the week.
This is not what church is supposed to be like. There is no celebration in my heart for this Jesus that is coming into the city. It doesn’t feel celebratory. It feels too far off. Jesus’ power feels empty today. Or maybe I’m just cranky.
A cramp forms in my stomach and I feel the physical pain of mourning. A physical sign of the angst my body feels over spending this holiest week at home, without my beloved church community. Sure, there will be a celebration of sorts on Easter Sunday, but without the other gatherings of this week, I almost don't even want to go. I don’t want a substitute Easter celebration. I want Easter like it’s always been. Gathered together, wearing our best dresses and our fanciest hats, singing “Alleluia” and “Christ is risen” and celebrating the truth that Jesus is victorious over death.
Usually Holy Week feels sacred. The most sacred week of the year. The week when we remember the death so that the resurrection feels majestic. The resurrection has no teeth without the days that precede it. But this Holy Week feels different. This Holy Week feels redundant. Like it started more than a year ago and has been the longest Holy Week of my life. More than 365 days of remembering loss. Of feeling sadness and lament and heavy, heavy emotions. I am ready for the flowers and the new life and the resurrection.
I have experienced resurrection in my own life. I know it’s real. I know it’s beautiful. And I don’t want to wait for it any longer.
And yet.
We have to.
We have to continue to live in this place of lament. This last year has shown us the stark divide between God’s kingdom and our world. In the last year we have seen, firsthand, how the world is not what God intended when he created it so long ago.
We’ve seen almost three million deaths worldwide because of a virus that no one could control.
We’ve seen black men and women killed. Simply because they are black.
We’ve lost friends and relatives without being able to say goodbye. Unable to celebrate their lives with other people who have loved them.
We’ve seen mass shootings.
Nuclear bomb testing.
Nasty and emotional political divides.
Broken democracies.
Fights for power.
Children torn from parents.
And so much more.
It has been a year from hell. It has been a year like no other I can remember. Ever. In my life. It’s like in Harry Potter when Voldemort increasingly gains power until it feels like he will win and kill them all. It feels like evil will win this world and we will all be crushed to pieces. We know how the story ends, but right now, it feels like maybe we’re wrong.
Is this what it felt like on that very first Easter? The mourning, the uncertainty, the pain of loss? This sense of unbelief—Will we ever get through this? Will the church as we once knew it ever be quite the same?
Church isn’t supposed to be virtual. Church is supposed to be the living, breathing, touchable hand of God. Church is supposed to be the place where we physically feel the touch of other humans, a promise that God is here, in the midst of us. Church is supposed to be the place where we feel the water dripped on our heads and taste the bread and wine on our tongues. Church is a sensual place; not a virtual one. And we haven’t had any of that in over a year. No wonder this Holy Week feels so dark.
The pastor starts his sermon with a question that pierces my heart and puts me back into my place: “Are we willing to make the sacrifices required in following Jesus?”
This is really the crux of our faith. Even today. Especially today. We have given up so much of our lives over the last year; not for our own safety, but for the safety of others. For those who are more vulnerable than we. We have sacrificed our own desire for “church” to protect the ones who need it most. We have laid down our own hearts for the sake of others’ lives.
This question makes me wonder: What if church is more than a community of people gathered together to worship this Jesus that we all love? Maybe church is a community of people willing to sacrifice everything—even its own life together—for the sake of the world. As painful as it feels not being together, maybe this year Holy Week isn’t so much about gathering together to remember Jesus’s death. Maybe it’s about what our empty church represents instead.
We represent a Jesus who was willing to give up his entire life so that we would know how much God loves us. We represent a Jesus who was willing to come to the earth and live his entire life as an outcast so that each one of us could experience true love and eternal life. We represent a Jesus who everyone thought would break down the walls in this world, but instead was about showing us that greater things are still to come. We represent a Jesus that proclaims the Kingdom is here, and yet will never be fully here, all at the same time.
At the start of worship I thought to myself, “This is a Holy Week like no other.” But now I’m not quite sure. Now I think maybe this is a Holy Week like all the others that have come before. Maybe this Holy Week feels different because we really understand what Holy Week is all about. Maybe this Holy Week is about reminding us that death and resurrection will never be truly complete here in this life. Easter is always temporary—and permanent—all at the same time. That is the paradox of the Christian faith.
And maybe this year we are experiencing that in a very real, and very tangible, way.
