A Changed World: Journeying Holy Week
“Almighty God, you alone can bring into order the unruly wills and affections of sinners: Grant your people grace to love what you command and desire what you promise; that, among the swift and varied changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.”
In the last week or so, I have stumbled across a few posts on social media channels in which the subject of change was placed front and center. You might have seen the same meme as you browsed your favorite social media channels. The subject of the meme is an invitation to recognize that we, as human beings, change as we move through life, and the fact that it is a caterpillar and butterfly at coffee simply accentuates the point! As we move through life, we change. Sometimes the change is subtle, and at other times, the change in our lives is more obvious.
The swift and varied changes of the world have a way of dictating how we are showing up in life from one moment to the next. If we are attempting to anchor our lives to something in a world that changes swiftly and in varied ways, we might find it difficult to find a meaningful foothold from which we can reach for the next. It would be something similar to trying to find a foothold in a bed of quicksand only to find that the more we attempt to take the next step the more stuck we become.
Life over the last many years has shown us just how swiftly and varied the change can be as we have weathered the pandemic, and if you are like me, you might be a bit tired of hearing the litany of ways that life has changed. I think it is good enough for us to recognize that the last 2+ years have been years inviting us to allow change to happen and to pivot in order to keep up with the necessities of the day or hour.
The change that has washed over us, however, could be something that was terribly difficult on us as we had to keep abreast of the shifting sands beneath our feet. In order to allow the change to wash over us, we needed an anchor in our lives that would provide us the bedrock from which we could launch into a new journey. It is perhaps this truth that the collect names quite succinctly for us. We needed something in our lives that was not subject to those same swift and varied changes of the world. We needed a bedrock that would be reliable - an immovable object in a world of varied forces.
For many of us, the bedrock we needed was found in God. From years of practice of being in relationship with God, we were able to turn towards God in the face of the swift and varied changes in order to find some stability. For others of us, we were invited into exploring anew the journey of faith and seeking the stability for which we hungered - even if we were not yet to a place of knowing God as that place in which “true joys are to be found.” Each one of us needed the space to continue our journey with or towards God depending on where we were in our own spiritual journey.
Beginning on Sunday, we enter the holiest week of the Christian year. Aptly named Holy Week, we begin a journey from Jesus’s triumphant entry into Jerusalem all the way to the cross. We begin a journey that will invite us to feel the enormity of what God is willing to do for the cosmos. We will experience joy, sadness, anger, grief, happiness, envy, hurt, rejection, relief, sorrow, and more. The journey of Holy Week is a journey in which the swift and varied changes of the world are shared by Jesus.
And, throughout the journey of Holy Week, we also will witness a resolute faithfulness between Jesus and God the Father. We will be invited to witness and to reflect that same faithfulness in our lives as we move through the changes of our lives.
Beginning on Sunday, I would like to invite you to find a way to observe Holy Week in a way that allows you to enter more fully into the journey of Holy Week. In the first part of the week, you might want to consider doing a personal practice of Lectio Divina each day with the Gospel reading appointed for the day. For the latter half of the week, I hope you will join us as we celebrate the Triduum (Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Easter Vigil) at Epiphany. Allow the experience of Holy Week to be a time of prayer, of reflection, and of journeying with God into the way of the cross as a way towards life.
In Christ,
Hunter+
