Holy Week: Spoiler Alert

Holy Week is upon us again and I have a question. What do parenting Gen Z and Holy Week have in common? Bear with me here. Even if you're not trying to parent a Gen Z teen right now, you're probably aware of some of the anxieties around it. Gone is the school of hard knocks and just rubbing dirt on it, replaced by helicopter parents and participation trophies. Whatever your feelings are on those topics, and I'm sure that this is eliciting some strong responses, they both come from a place of wanting to smooth out the emotional highs and lows of our children; to ease disappointments and to minimize surprises.

If we've been in the church any length of time, there are no surprises in our stories. We know the beginnings and the ends and all of the in-betweens. And we tend to be a little disconnected from the raw emotions of the people who experienced these stories first hand. It's often more comfortable to go through our lives as Christians knowing the words but not feeling them. Someone has taken care of the hard work for us and now we just have to follow the nice smooth path of the familiar stories and we'll get a prize too. We've seen the "spoiler alert" disclaimer, but we've skipped straight to the final chapter anyway.

At Christmas we hear about the shepherds. After being sent to Bethlehem by an entire heavenly host, they met Jesus, Mary and Joseph and then returned to the fields "glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, just as it had been told them." I don't imagine them walking sedately back to their sheep, calmly discussing the baby in the manger. In my mind I see them racing with the unbridled joy and excitement of King David leaping and dancing before the Ark of the Lord with complete abandon. David was making such a spectacle of himself that Michal, his wife, was completely embarrassed. Maybe it's just me, but honestly the Christmas story has never filled me with such deep joy that I felt the need to dance so hard that my family would want to disown me. Familiarity is probably part of it, but it isn't the only thing. I know where this story is going and, spoiler alert, it's going to some hard places. We can't even listen to the Christmas story without hearing the foreshadowing in the gifts of the Magi, like some oh-so-casual reference to needing to deal with a "rat problem" in a cheap murder mystery. Who brings a baby embalming spices, unless they know something else is going on here? Bluntly, we know Jesus is going to die, and die horrendously, so its hard to truly abandon ourselves to the joy of the Messiah being born.

The church calendar marches on and through Lent we're on a long coast down from the high of Christmas to the low of Good Friday. How often do we let ourselves just be during Lent instead of seeing as something to get through on the way to Easter? We know exactly how long it is and what's going to happen at the end. Is there an argument for wallowing in it a little bit? Maybe closing our eyes so that we don't get distracted from the dark of the tunnel by the light at the end of it? At DPC we've been thinking this Lent about the journey itself, rather than focusing on the destination. One of the things I love about the book we're using (Meeting Jesus on the Road: A Lenten Study by Cynthia M. Campbell and Christine Coy Fohr) is the walking prompt included in each chapter. It encourages a focus on what you can learn on the journey rather than what you will find at the end.

And now we're at Holy Week - a rollercoaster of highs and lows that would be breathtaking if we felt each one by itself without the temptation of peeking ahead. We've just come off Palm Sunday, our last real high before Easter. We've shouted "Hosanna!", waved our palm branches and put ourselves in the place of the crowd watching their King ride into Jerusalem (if you missed our Palm Sunday procession, make sure to check it out on Facebook). Have we felt the exhilaration and the excitement? This is the King and surely he's here to finally show those uppity Romans who's boss and to liberate his people. But, yet another spoiler alert, we know, don't we? We know that this same crowd who are lining the streets with their cloaks for Jesus are just a few days from turning on him? "Hosanna!" is going to change to "Crucify Him!" and so the cheers catch in my throat and my branch waving becomes perfunctory.

The disciples go quickly from celebrating the Passover with their teacher and friend to hiding in the shadows, peeking through their fingers, breathless with dread and anxiety as they watch him being tried, beaten, mocked and lead away to die. Jesus told them this would happen but did they really believe that it would? Did they hope against all hope that all the talk of betrayal and death was just another metaphor that they didn't quite get?

Can we imagine the shock, the despair, the horror of the disciples in this moment? Three years of following Jesus. Three years of their lives given to him. Three years of turning water into wine, raising the dead and walking on the waves of the Sea of Galilee. In three hours of darkness on the cross they've lost everything.

How do we usually feel in those days between Maundy Thursday and Easter Sunday? Even if we hold vigil on Good Friday, Easter Saturday is often just another day. Our Messiah, our Savior has just been brutally executed. Tortured for preaching a new kingdom of justice and compassion. Murdered for daring to speak truth to human power. We should be horrified and broken by grief, but, of course, we have the luxury of knowing that Jesus spoke the truth when he told his disciples that he would be raised from the dead. We don't have to spend these days in cold dread wondering if we're next for the cross.

Easter Sunday is the high point to end all high points. Mary Magdalene, Joanna and Mary the mother of James, have accepted that it is over and have moved on to the practicalities of dealing with a dead body. Only there is no body, just a couple of angels announcing that Jesus is alive. The disciples were "amazed", is how Luke puts it, but I suspect that might be understating their feelings a little. After everything they have been through in the last few days, I'd be considering some other words, like flabbergasted, stupefied, bewildered or even astounded. I suspect though, that what they mostly felt was relief and then overwhelming joy. But how often have we responded mechanically "He is risen indeed!"? How many times have we actually felt joy in every fiber of our being declaring that Jesus is alive? As a brief aside, an enduring memory of my grandmother, a Mary herself, is her saying these words on countless Easter mornings with the full conviction of the Marys at the tomb behind her words. The joy of Easter was very real to her and I want some of that too.

So, this year, I'm going to try to journey through Holy Week as if I don't already know the ending; to see if I can't be properly flabbergasted by what Jesus did and what he endured for us and our world. Right now I'm full of the thrill of an unexpected parade, but who knows what is coming next? Whether it will lead to ugly crying or undignified dancing, I'm here for all of it.

Join us for Holy Week at Delmar Presbyterian Church

• Maundy Thursday - 7 pm service at Delmar Presbyterian Church

• Good Friday - the church is open from noon to 6 pm for meditation and reflection with a walking labyrinth to guide your thoughts

• Easter Sunday - Sunrise Service at Thacher State Park Overlook at 6:15 am followed by breakfast at New Scotland Presbyterian Church

• Easter Sunday - 10 am service at Delmar Presbyterian Church

For more information contact us at office@delmarpres.org or 518-439-9252