An effort is needed
The gradual all pervading presence of our secular society has now breached the walls of Easter. Our school “Easter” holidays no longer coincide with the festival which gives it their name. Instead, this year the two week break begins on the 4th April, a full week after the great day. It used to be a fact that Easter would sit majestically in the middle of the fortnight school holiday, and allow maximum attention to the celebration of the Resurrection. I know it is the case that for a lot people Good Friday has for a number of years been a working day, and that the Tuesday after bank holiday Easter Monday has regrettably often been the preferred choice of employers. Oh how the insidious march of secularism goes inexorably on! SO we may well now ask how long will it be before the status of “Bank Holiday” is officially transferred from Good Friday to the following Tuesday, so as to avoid any accusation of preferential bias towards Christianity in our calendar?
Well it”s Holy Week, and the effort required not just to come to Church during this most important of weeks but even to acknowledge its presence in our society is becoming more and more onerous. The challenge for us this week is to make the fact known. Where will we be on Thursday evening, Friday afternoon and Saturday evening?
If we’re happy to sit them out, and let the pull of the Premiership win our attention, or if we feel the attraction of the shopping mall as somehow irresistible, then the world has once more scored a victory. But that victory won’t win us anything in our ultimate search of what it means to be human. So be brave and tell anyone who asks what are you up to this week that you’ll be following the most dramatic and important event in the course of human history. Tell them that you are going to be living out a real love story that trumps anything anyone could have thought up. Tell them that this story entails the full gamut of human emotions. Tell them of the betrayal, the denial, and the cowardice. Tell them of the deceit, the abuse of power and the cruelty which is played out as an innocent man is brought before the authorities to be humiliated and made fun of. Tell them how this man is condemned by false witnesses and sentenced to die a shameful death. Tell them of how no-one stood up to plead his cause or come to his aid and of how all of his friends abandoned him to his fate, leaving his mother and some women friends to deal with the traumatic aftermath of his judicial murder. And then tell them why you’ll be doing it. Why? Because it is the story of the love which gains our freedom and which triumphs over all those human characteristics which are framed so graphically and poignantly in the events of Holy Week.
If we allow this story to fade and if we abandon our involvement in it, then what have we to hand on to our children? So we have to live it and experience it. We have to connect with the reality of the events being played out, so that they speak to us about our own lives with their shortcomings and difficulties. We have to live through them in order to experience the ending and it is an ending which the world could not imagine.
Out of the all the horror of what had gone before, the power of love conquers. So we need to tell them who the condemned man is and what he means to us. We have to tell them of the reconciling love that he shows, the compassion which he expresses and the faith he has in the human spirit to understand that being made in the image and likeness of God calls each of us to act in accordance with God’s love. We have to tell the world: this is my Son the Beloved; listen to him, and in its listening the world will hear the Easter message calling us all to awake sleeper and rise from the dead, and Christ will shine upon you.
Palm Sunday
An effort is needed
The gradual all pervading presence of our secular society has now breached the walls of Easter. Our school “Easter” holidays no longer coincide with the festival which gives it their name. Instead, this year the two week break begins on the 4th April, a full week after the great day. It used to be a fact that Easter would sit majestically in the middle of the fortnight school holiday, and allow maximum attention to the celebration of the Resurrection. I know it is the case that for a lot people Good Friday has for a number of years been a working day, and that the Tuesday after bank holiday Easter Monday has regrettably often been the preferred choice of employers. Oh how the insidious march of secularism goes inexorably on! SO we may well now ask how long will it be before the status of “Bank Holiday” is officially transferred from Good Friday to the following Tuesday, so as to avoid any accusation of preferential bias towards Christianity in our calendar?
Well it”s Holy Week, and the effort required not just to come to Church during this most important of weeks but even to acknowledge its presence in our society is becoming more and more onerous. The challenge for us this week is to make the fact known. Where will we be on Thursday evening, Friday afternoon and Saturday evening?
If we’re happy to sit them out, and let the pull of the Premiership win our attention, or if we feel the attraction of the shopping mall as somehow irresistible, then the world has once more scored a victory. But that victory won’t win us anything in our ultimate search of what it means to be human. So be brave and tell anyone who asks what are you up to this week that you’ll be following the most dramatic and important event in the course of human history. Tell them that you are going to be living out a real love story that trumps anything anyone could have thought up. Tell them that this story entails the full gamut of human emotions. Tell them of the betrayal, the denial, and the cowardice. Tell them of the deceit, the abuse of power and the cruelty which is played out as an innocent man is brought before the authorities to be humiliated and made fun of. Tell them how this man is condemned by false witnesses and sentenced to die a shameful death. Tell them of how no-one stood up to plead his cause or come to his aid and of how all of his friends abandoned him to his fate, leaving his mother and some women friends to deal with the traumatic aftermath of his judicial murder. And then tell them why you’ll be doing it. Why? Because it is the story of the love which gains our freedom and which triumphs over all those human characteristics which are framed so graphically and poignantly in the events of Holy Week.
If we allow this story to fade and if we abandon our involvement in it, then what have we to hand on to our children? So we have to live it and experience it. We have to connect with the reality of the events being played out, so that they speak to us about our own lives with their shortcomings and difficulties. We have to live through them in order to experience the ending and it is an ending which the world could not imagine.
Out of the all the horror of what had gone before, the power of love conquers. So we need to tell them who the condemned man is and what he means to us. We have to tell them of the reconciling love that he shows, the compassion which he expresses and the faith he has in the human spirit to understand that being made in the image and likeness of God calls each of us to act in accordance with God’s love. We have to tell the world: this is my Son the Beloved; listen to him, and in its listening the world will hear the Easter message calling us all to awake sleeper and rise from the dead, and Christ will shine upon you.