Holy Week in a Not-so-Holy World

 

Palm Sunday is behind us. The crowds then and now have gone back to their business. Along the road are remnants of that day. Trampled grass. Withered palms. Crowded road with all their alleluias silent now. It is almost as if yesterday—or was it the day before—as if nothing special had happened. Before the week ends there will be a terrible hill and blood and gore and smugness and tears, too. Rome with all their soldiers were there. Always in charge. And scattered and fearful little knots of heart broken half-believers. There was gambling and laughter and cursing thieves and a middle cross where stretched there was a naked dying man and impalpable sorrow. 

This would be the setting that the church later would call Holy. Was this a bad joke? Holy? The whole long terrible week holy? And in that not-so-holy place the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world hung. And since that time people have clung to their own rugged crosses and hoped they would make it through their own sloughs of despond.

Amazingly amid everything wrong and unjust there was a kindly light that led them through their own flicking sputtering gloom. At first those closest to him were so bereft they hid in caves. Even after Easter they shuffled down roads muttering :”We had hoped he would be the one to redeem Israel.” How wrong they were in their not-so-holy world. 

And us just beginning our own way of the cross are we any different? Some of us still hunker down in churches and synagogues too—singing what we hope will be true, taking tiny remnants of bread and wine and whispering over and over: let it be. God, let it be.

But outside those stained glass windows the doors open to anything but holy. Fear stalks most of us. Look at any direction from cancers and mental illness to Alzheimers to kids on drugs to freshly dug graves. Not to mention Gaza and Israel and Ukraine and Russia and a red and white and blue tattered flag or all the ugliness and hatred that runs rampant. Remember back when he railed out in pain and delirium: “My God, my God why have you forsaken me?” Sound familiar.

And from that first Via Dolorosa—the Arabs call it the way of pain—we dare to walk this road station after station. Pilate…and Simon coming forward to help. Soldiers spitting and cursing. And a weeping mother. 

His falling not once but again and again. And then the nails and the terrible crown and the tearing of flesh as his splintered cross was put in place. 

So we come this week, like Bunyan’s Pilgrim with a burden on our backs. And we follow this week called holy like all those others along their way. We may even have our own crosses and sin and unfinishedness 

But we know the headlines and twisted power and whatever dark there may be at the top of all our stairs—we keep coming back. Hoping, hoping this lamb that they say takes away the sins of the world would stop on our street and stand by our door. They made it, not without scars and tears but moving through it all a centerpiece they believed was sound and sure.  Taking in his arms all those who were weary and heavy laden.

And despite the odds they would, like their Lord, give mercy and love and care and even peace in the midst of their raging wars. And we climb the hill with all those others and we find something that keeps us going.

And wonder of wonders it may be the truest thing that ever was.

Holy…Holy…Holy even here—especially here.