Holy Week...How does it Fit?

Dear St. Luke’s Community,

I write this to you all smack dab in the middle of Holy Week. It is Wednesday. It is cold. It feels like winter all over again. Something is blowing in and it’s not simply the next wave of moisture from the Great Lakes. The drama of Holy Week is bursting at the seams, straining to break out and surprise us all over again.

On most Tuesdays I meet with a group of Episcopal clergy-type colleagues and we share lunch and discuss the readings for the coming week. This week there was no shortage of giddiness in that meeting. It was not excitement about Holy Week per se. Nor was it the joy of Easter straining at the boundaries of Lent. It was something else. We spent a good deal of time talking about how hearing the story in this week makes preaching difficult, almost superfluous.

What I pray for during every Holy Week is that we all really get into this story. It is the greatest gift we as the Church, the Body of Christ in the world, have been given. The intimacy of the Last Supper gives way to the tension in Garden, to the courtroom drama of Pilate really trying to let Jesus live to see another day, and the theatre of the absurdity of crucifying God careens out of control. Once the dastardly deed is finally done, then shock takes over and the reality of what life is going to be sinks in with the disciples and a sort of Holy Despair takes over. It seems to me that only then can any of our hearts be ready for the unbelievable to dawn into reality.

Wherever this week finds your heart (at any given minute!), I continue to pray that you’ll continue to try the story on for size. Just as we grow older and our clothes fit, let’s say differently, so too does this marvelous Gospel story fit us differently at each fitting. It may pinch us in places that it has never pinched before. We may delight to find that we’ve gained a little room and better fit around the middle. It seems to me that it’s never a bad fit, it just seems to direct our attention to the appropriate place at the appropriate time. As this week moves on and as the story takes further grip on your days, may you feel comfort in this story not because it always fits comfortably, but rather because it is true, with a CAPITAL “T”.

Peace and Good,

The Rev. Warren Earl Hicks, Rector
St. Luke's Episcopal Church
921 Pleasant St.
Worcester, MA 01602
508-756-1990 (Office)
508-756-8277 (Fax)

Blog Address www.frwarren.blogspot.com