3/30 Holy Saturday

3/29 Good Friday

3/28 Maundy Thursday

3/27 Wednesday in Holy Week

3/26 Tuesday in Holy Week

3/25 Monday in Holy Week

3/24 Palm Sunday

An offering from John Pomeroy

The Passion story tells me several things as I struggle with it every year to discover its meaning.

God is present in a different way I might suppose. God did not prevent the cross, but allowed it so that something more important would come about—a reunion with the human community by being involved with suffering rather than staying aloof, disconnected, apart from it. God does not remain in heaven. My temptation is to fix things—repair the brokenness, but God’s way is to heal and transform instead.

I have to relearn each Lent that the boundaries of life as they appear to me are not God’s boundaries. What I perceive as life and death are permeable boundaries for God. He moves through those boundaries easily, loving us just the way we are, even when we don’t deserve it, even when we ignore, crucify and mock what is new, what can change us.

The final meaning for me is that the Passion story does not end with Jesus on the cross. The Passion is not a tale of a failed prophet who just got a few too many people angry but is instead a message that going to the heart of darkness involves God going me. In my darkest moments of disappointment and loss, God does not give up or abandon me, but instead transforms that darkness into something new. There will be suffering and  death, but there will be something radically new given in God’s good time to me and to you if we see that suffering for what it is: the beginning of the greater gift of life and reunion with God who loves us so much that, “He gave is only begotten son that we might live….”

Prayer

I want to close with a prayer from Paul’s letter to the Romans, a prayer that unites us with one another not only today but across God’s history: God, whom I serve with my whole heart in preaching the gospel of his son, is my witness to how constantly I remember you in my prayers; and I pray that now at last, by God’s will, the way will be opened for me to come to you. I long to see you so that I may share with you some spiritual gift to strengthen you—that is, that you and I may be mutually encouraged be each other’s faith.