From Pastor Pat: Holy Week, 2017

(Posted April 13, 2017)

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And so it has begun. This last, chaotic week, teetering on the brink of love and light, and the precipice of darkness and corruption. We all know the tale very well. We know the route it will take. We have numbered all the bones of the story.
 
And yet we continue on. We are, after all the People of Hope. We are following the man whose love and acceptance of us broken people has made us want to travel with him. Still we are broken. When the going becomes violent, we cannot bring ourselves to intervene. Instead we hang back as Jesus is dragged off by the authorities. We might scream out, “Oh my God, look what you’re doing to him!” But we don’t stop the arresting officers from their task.

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 As they lead Jesus away, we watch from a safe distance, hide behind a pillar, deny we are a part of his retinue if we are asked, and wait for the cock to crow to remind us what cowards we are. When he drags his cross to the top of Golgotha, the Place of the Skull, we are hidden in the jeering crowds. Some of these people, we recognize, were the very same ones who had shouted “Hosanna! Save us!” when he had entered the City earlier this week. And now the very one we had asked to save us needs saving.
 
We watch from a distance as he is lifted up, his body weeping blood and pain onto the dusty ground. We cannot watch. And yet we must. In these last moments, we listen, listen as one of the thieves raised alongside him asks one last blessing: Jesus, remember me, when you come into your Kingdom. Through his pain, the one who came to save us assures us that we will be in Paradise with him.
 
We are a People of Hope. As we walk away from Golgotha and the Empty Cross, our trust is in God that there will be an Easter morning, a day when we can celebrate together the death of Death, and the triumph of Love over Darkness. So let us wait in anticipation of that promise uttered from the Cross. - Pastor Pat Kriss