Disciples, Apostles, and Saints!
For centuries, the church has followed a pattern of observance that allows us to experience the highs and lows of the events that lead to Jesus’s crucifixion and resurrection: a period of time and practice we call Holy Week. And this pattern allows us to live into the time ourselves, gathering on the evening on Thursday in anticipation, then again in the middle of the day on Friday, to solemnly acknowledge his death, only to experience the absence ourselves for the rest of that day and into Saturday night before we begin to name Jesus’s return. This pattern is ancient and has been lived into by millions of faithful people for more than a millennia.
It is also a pattern that is hard to maintain in the modern world. I’m writing about Easter on Monday of Holy Week, setting it to go live on Wednesday, before our faithful celebrations, printing hard copies to be mailed out to be read on Monday or picked up in church on Sunday. When people encounter this not set.
The word many use for this moment is to say we are distributed, which is to name, not only our physical and technological dispersement, but our chronological separation. That some will be celebrating Easter before the memorial of the Crucifixion takes place! This isn’t just the weird thing we see in churches who skip over the crucifixion, or treat the crucifixion like it is the center of Easter. I’m speaking to the disorienting character of modern life in light of our need to be mindful of time, too. Of presence. Of being with other people. And the Easter story is fully dependent on our embracing God’s desire to transform the finality of death. Which means we must wrestle with our own expectations of death, life, and the possibility of all of us being born again.
With love,
Drew+
