Carrying Holy Week

It was Thursday night, after Maundy Thursday services. I listened to a voicemail from my best friend, who is also a pastor. “I don’t need anything, really. I just wanted to talk. I’m just feeling… something. I don’t know what it is.” 

‘Ah,’ I thought, ‘I know what it is. It is the weight of Holy Week.’ 

It is not exactly sadness or depression or grief or fear. It is not exactly exhaustion or stress or overwhelmed-ness or tension. It is some of all of these things. And, it is more. 

As pastor, I experience Holy Week in a different way than I ever experienced it as ‘simply’ participant. Even when I was assisting minister or intern, the Three Days were about me and God and God’s transforming work. Only as pastor did I become aware of the weight, the honor, the responsibility, the burden of carrying a congregation through these days. God calls us to stare death in the face and carry our congregations directly to that place. These people we love, we cherish, for whom we have great responsibility, we take to the edge of death and plunge into it with them.

This is heavy. It is burdensome. Not burdensome in a way I wish to cast off and be rid of – but in the way of an honored animal who has been entrusted to keep an entire family’s possessions secure as they cross a raging river. Carrying those we deeply love, we step into the waters of death; hoping, praying, trusting for a miracle. Hoping, praying, trusting that we will make it through the danger and come out on the other side, resurrected. 

We need no more faith in the story than we had before we were pastors. We need no more guidance than the story itself. We need no more promise than that which we already have received. But perhaps we need more courage. 

Because as pastors, when we step into these waters of death, we do not do so alone. We take our entire communities with us. And we pray, and we hope, and we trust that God will not only meet us there, but bring us through to the other side, where in the end we might raise up our voices in a triumphant shout: God has overcome!! 

But today, our Alleluias wait. Today, our lips move in silent, fervent prayer. Today, our hearts tremble. And today, we carry this weight as we walk, together with Christ, into death.

I just can't remember...

We spend the first half of our lives celebrating as we reach new milestones, learn more information, find ourselves able to do more things. We laugh with joy when a child says a new word. We throw a party when a young adult graduates from high school. We give a clap on the back and a "well done" when an adult secures a new job.

And we grow older.

As we grow older, we discover we can't do the things we used to do. We grieve as our sight worsens. We often feel useless when we must hire someone to do our laundry or our cleaning. We complain, "My mind must be going... I just can't remember things like I used to."

I am somewhere in the middle -- still able to reach milestones, learn more, do new things -- and yet also recognizing and grieving that there are some things that I will never do, some I may never do again. [I suspect that we never move beyond this 'middle space,' the liminal place between what I could do or think before and can't now, and what I can do and think in the future.]

We recognize that through Jesus, God has experienced the human life. Jesus really knows what it is to grow up, to be an infant and then a child saying first words and then a young adult setting out to do a job. Jesus knows what it feels like to age, and Jesus knows what it is like to suffer physically and to die. But Jesus didn't get to live to be 80 or 90 or 100. What, do you suppose, Jesus knows about that?

We might imagine that before coming to earth, Jesus (being one with God) knew what God knew, communing with God in an intimate way we can but imagine. And then, Jesus became bound by humanity: a human body, a human mind. Speaking about the last hours, when God's kin-dom will be made manifest on earth, Jesus told his disciples: "But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father." (Mark 13:32, NRSV)

I wonder, was Jesus experiencing one of those moments? One of those "...I know I know the answer to that question... and now I just can't remember" moments. One of those "My mind must be going, I can't remember anything like I used to" moments. I wonder if Jesus' mind pricked with an ancient knowledge that he just couldn't bring into his human mind in that very human moment.

There is a grief process associated with memory loss. Frustration at being unable to remember, perhaps anger at the way things are and are becoming, perhaps depression that we know we won't be able to return to a better memory, and perhaps finally acceptance. In my stage of life, I still hear "If it's important, it will come to me later" a lot. That's not always true. As we age, it becomes less true: there are many important things that we forget, can't remember, and may never remember until God's eternal kin-dom comes.

And so, perhaps this is one more way that Jesus comes to be with us. Perhaps this is one more way that Jesus understands us. Perhaps this is one more place that we can lean on Jesus. Perhaps Jesus, too, knew what it was like to forget, forget what is so very important -- vital, even -- and to learn to trust that it's enough that God knows, and will always know, and we can be blessed in that.