Lent has almost run its course. Palm Sunday approaches and, on its heels, Holy Week.
This is intended to be the highpoint of the Church’s liturgy; the recalling of those sacred events of more than two thousand years ago. We will journey with Jesus into Jerusalem on a donkey’s back, see him betrayed, we will receive the gift that is Eucharist from the table in the upper room, listen as he cries out in Good Friday anguish: “It is accomplished” and share in the carrying of his lifeless body to a borrowed tomb. On Easter Sunday, with the women, amongst his closest and most loyal friends, we will stand before an emptied tomb and hear again those life-giving words: “He is not here. He is risen.”
My mother, God rest her, used to say she preferred Easter to Christmas. As a child, maybe even as a man, I could not fully grasp that. Christmas seems to bring out the best in people. Goodwill abounds and there is literally music in the air. There is a sense of the world wanting to be right, even when its not, around Christmas and huge efforts are made to ensure families are together, nobody is left alone and that sharing at every level takes place.
The baby in the borrowed stable is a lovable image. Joseph, Mary, the shepherds, the animals and kings, combine to give us a sense of Walton’s Mountain. All is well. A saviour is born and Chris Rea is driving home again (though it will be a more expensive trip now with the way fuel prices are going!!) The Infant seems far removed from the man falling beneath the weight of the cross. The infant’s cries are not mentioned in the gospel, but the cries of Good Friday are well and truly documented.
In fairness to my mother, she spoke the truth and chances are it is a truth we struggle with. Easter is essential if we are to make any sense of suffering, to find any hope in death and any semblance of reassurance for our own journey. Everything about the days to come speaks to us of God’s abiding love for our world and sadly too that the world is an impoverished place when people either don’t hear or choose not to hear God’s call, God’s message – God’s plan.
I remember as a child looking at a test card on television on Good Friday as the station did not broadcast. I am not sure if that was for all Good Friday or just around 3.00pm to mark the hour that is linked with Jesus’ death on the cross. I recall the starkness of the day, the reading of the “long Gospel” and maybe Stations of The Cross in the evening. Fasting too and the length that added to the day remain memories for me. Perhaps there was something in this collective sense of this being a day unlike any other. It was easy to get caught up in the moment, to be moved by it and to recognise it for what it was – special. That is more difficult to do now, as Good Friday morphs into every other day and can all too easily be bypassed or ignored. I am not saying that TV channels should fall silent but somewhere, within what we call SOUL, there remains a call to mark this day and the days that follow. There is a need to see them as days set apart, story-telling days, remembrance days and, with the dawning of Easter Day, hope filled days.
A few months ago, a funeral left the church in the parish where I work, to go to the cemetery. It was a small funeral, just a handful of cars. I noticed a man on a motorbike. He was in the line of cars. As the hearse moved into the right lane for the cemetery, he stopped in the left lane, bowed his head, and held the traffic behind him. I knew then that he was not in the funeral. I lowered the window and said: “Thank you, that was a kind thing to do”. He looked at me and said: “It was the right thing to do”.
Maybe we are being asked now to mark these days in a way that reflects our faith. Remembering Christmas, its songs and joys, its giving and receiving and the birth of the Saviour; we are called to recognise that saviour now and give gratitude for all he said and did in the name of God’s love. It is a call to show respect, to give thanks and to be truly Christian – it is the right thing to do.