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Field Notes From a Religion-Less Christian

Wednesday, April 13, 2022

“I Did Not Retire From Holy Week”

In Holy Weeks past I had such high hopes for a people gathered daily to be immersed in the story of earthbound love that can only lead to death when up against oppression. That the story of salvation weekly draws us to a Sunday celebration – what are we seeking there, the Great Explainer? The Great Helper? – would penetrate in such a way as to lead only to a holiness of Holy Week, an inevitable landing in the days of Holy Week where you could not but wring out of the seven days as much as you could of the One Who Loves with such fury.

But, no. Few Came. Very few. After the Sunday Palms (and why again do we wave them?) on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday few to nobody came to any gathered worship of any kind. Then Thursday and Friday were usually weaker than imagined. Holy Saturday, with all its deep fire and glory, forget about it. It was less than an afterthought but for a few, and then only it seems, out of duty to support the organizer’s efforts. 

Holy Week ended up being Empty Week for me because most seemed to treat it like a relic from the past that was to be appreciated out of respect for the pastor or leaders who care about such things. That, if it was treated as anything at all.

Well, that’s all okay. I did work hard, however, at carving out and naming the cross’s significance, tethering it to the very real account rather than letting it float up and hover above in a mythology. Had you been there you would have heard of Jesus’ compassion and utter defeat. And resurrection you would know not as reversal of that devastation but as confirmation of love as the way of healing (call it the salve, the salvation).  You would have heard the Story in those Holy Weeks. I say that now not as an exercise in comparisons to other tellings. I say it just as fact, that too gives me a satisfaction that I gave it all I could in those years. 

I’m retired from that now, but not from Holy Week. It is Wednesday and we are approaching Jerusalem.