The Wait of Holy Week

It is one of the busiest weeks of the church year for clergy. Invariably, things come up that were not planned, with no consideration or respect for the tasks at hand. Children get sick. Parishioners die. Wars continue. Our newsfeeds remind us of the world's deep need for redemption and reconciliation. The normal events of a week continue being thrown at us, not leaving any breathing space, pressing and pushing our boundaries.

And I find myself swearing under my breath as I wipe my child’s nose and rock him. This is not what I had planned to be doing this week. As I desire to watch and wait, as I crave the breathing space of Easter morning, the immediacy of my child, his eyes tired, his nose running, struggling against me in his desire for both comfort and independence, I realize that Christ shows up even in this space. In fact, I think the space of struggle is precisely the place where Christ is most powerfully found.

Christ comes into a world that insists on “business as usual,” leaving no room for life, for breath, leaving no room to be saved as we struggle to save ourselves. I wait for the events of Holy Week only to realize they are present in the places that I think get in the way of my watching and waiting. We watch and wait as we hold sick children. We watch and wait as we make the sign of the cross on the deceased and comfort the mourning. We watch and wait as we receive phone calls about the minutiae of ministry.

Perhaps I wanted Holy Week to be something other than what it is: a week in which Christ dies in a world that insists on business as usual. It is a week in which Christ dies as a statement against the world that insists on business as usual despite the horrors of the weekly news. Christ redeems a world where sin, suffering, and death are treated as business as usual: forgiving the sinner, bearing up those who suffer, and promising life in the face of death.

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So, as I rock Hugo to sleep, my breath comes as prayer. 

May our watching help us to see the world around us with compassion. May our waiting help us to be patient as we struggle against a world that insists on “business as usual.”