Reflections on Holy Week

This past Sunday we processed into church (i.e., our living room) from our kitchen, waving our paper palm branches high! And we remembered you all processing into your service also, with likely even more (joyous, of course!) palm branch fights breaking out than in our procession, given the wonderfully large number of children involved. But as we walked through that week in Jerusalem through the Scripture readings, we came to Jesus’ bloody sweat in Gethsemane, Peter’s words of denial, the shouts of the crowd—even our shouts—of, “Crucify him! Crucify him!” How did those crowds—how do we—go from songs of praise and adoration to crying out for the blood of our King? Or rather, how do we not walk in this way of the world and of our natural selves, singing praises when we are pleased with the provision of the Lord, but turning against him when to follow him requires sacrifice, repentance, and no-thanks-given-for-it service?

Every morning, in morning prayer, we recite with Zechariah his words of blessings over his son John: 

Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel; 
he has come to his people and set them free.
He has raised up for us a mighty savior, 
born of the house of his servant David.
Through his holy prophets he promised of old
that he would save us from our enemies, 
from the hands of all who hate us.
He promised to show mercy to our fathers 
and to remember his holy covenant.
This was the oath he swore to our father Abraham, 
to set us free from the hands of our enemies,
Free to worship him without fear, 
holy and righteous in his sight
all the days of our life.
You, my child, shall be called the prophet of the Most High, 
for you will go before the Lord to prepare his way,
To give his people knowledge of salvation 
by the forgiveness of their sins.
In the tender compassion of our God 
the dawn from on high shall break upon us,
To shine on those who dwell in darkness
and in the shadow of death, 
and to guide our feet into the way of peace.

And every evening, in evening prayer, we say with Simeon his words of praise:

Lord, now let your servant depart in peace, 
according to your word.
For my eyes have seen your salvation, 
which you have prepared before the face of all people;
To be a light to lighten the Gentiles, 
and to be the glory of your people Israel.

And here we find a pattern, a holy truth that will, as one of our worship songs puts it, help us “be singing when the evening comes.” We are set free from our enemies! Free to worship him without fear, holy and righteous in his sight all the days of our lives. We are visited by the dawn from on high, our eyes see his salvation—a light to lighten the Gentiles, the glory of God’s people—every day, when we ask our Father to lift our heads and open our eyes. And every day we receive again the charge from the one who loves us with an everlasting love: “Take up your cross, and follow me.” When we find ourselves snarling at the person who interrupted our time of prayer and praise, we are invited to sit at the foot of the cross. When we wake up determined to follow the Lord’s ways of life and peace, and find ourselves so quickly slipping back into our ways of death and idolatry, we are invited to sit at the foot of the cross. Every day we are invited to receive the gift from our Father of the knowledge of salvation in the forgiveness of our sins, but we must come to that knowledge through the cross—through the painful, even horrific conviction that yes, my sins and yours nailed our King to this cross. A verse of our boys’ favorite Easter song, Jerusalem, puts us in the role of the soldiers:

See the king who made the sun
And the moon and shining stars
Let the soldiers hold and nail him down
So that he could save them.

We will be inviting some of our friends here to join us for the Holy Week services, and we hope you will join with Incarnation in yours, for this is an opportunity like none other in the Church year to sit at the foot of the cross. And on Saturday, right at the center of that great Vigil, the bells will come out (five in each hand if you, like our boys, have learned from the best) and we will bust out that glorious verse of Jerusalem:

See the empty tomb today,
Death could not contain him;
Once the servant of the world
Now in victory reigning.

Hannah