by CCW | 17 April 2019 16:00
The question comes from the Book of Exodus just after the story of the Passover, the story of the Hebrews being spared the death of the first born of man and beast by daubing the lintels of their doors with the blood of the lamb. It is a sign signifying their relation to the God of their deliverance from slavery and bondage. It becomes the defining event for the people of Israel and one which is remembered ritually. The basic Jewish insight about the sovereign will of God as the defining principle of all reality shapes as well the Christian and Islamic understanding. It informs especially Holy Week, the week of the Passion of Christ and our participation in that Passion.
In the traditional Anglican pattern, we immerse ourselves completely in the reading of all four accounts of the Passion beginning on Palm Sunday with Matthew, then on the Monday and Tuesday of Holy Week with Mark, then Luke on Wednesday and Thursday, and John on Good Friday. There is an intensity to these readings because we are in the Passion. We find ourselves in the crowds, among the disciples, and amid the authorities both Jewish and Roman. We are with Peter as weeps recalling the words and the tender look of Christ upon him in his betrayal of Christ. We are with the twelve in the Upper Room on the night in which he was betrayed. As Palm Sunday makes so graphically clear, we are those who shout “Hosanna to the Son of David” only to turn about and cry “Let him be crucified,” “Let him be crucified”! Such are the contradictions within our own souls. We confront ourselves in all of our disorder and disarray in the events of Holy Week.
If we have hearts, they shall be broken, for only so shall we be made whole. Holy Week is one long continuous service. We need to become aware of our brokenness in order to participate in the redemption of our humanity. Only so can we go from “Hosanna” to “Crucify” and then to the great “Alleluias” of Easter. God and God alone can make something good out of our evil. That is the meaning of Holy Week. Our hearts are broken, too, at the sad spectacle of the great Cathedral Church of Notre Dame de Paris on fire and now smoldering in ruins. And yet there is some comfort in the powerful image of the Cross at Notre Dame shining forth amid the smoke and the devastations of the fire, a presence signifying hope and redemption and restoration.
The dogma is the drama, as Dorothy L. Sayers notes. There are few things more intense and dramatic than the events of Holy Week in which we participate in Christ’s Passion. “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us.” We learn about service and sacrifice in the overcoming of sin and folly. “And when your children say to you, ‘what do you mean by this service?’ you shall say, ‘It is the sacrifice of the Lord’s passover, for he passed over the houses of the people of Israel in Egypt.” The Exodus establishment of the ritual of the Passover shapes the Christian Eucharist and the pageant of Holy Week. The question reverberates throughout the intensity of this week. We look on him who we have pierced as Lancelot Andrewes puts it and we in turn are pierced in our own hearts, convicted and convinced of the love and power of God’s goodness.
Whether or not students or faculty identify with Christianity, the story of the Passion arrests our attention and bids us reflect on the sad realities of betrayal and envy, of pride and presumption, and the callous indifference to matters of ethical principle. The palm crosses are offered to those who wish to take them as a sign and a remembrance of God’s willingness to engage our humanity to bring us joy and salvation. The simple yet profound point and the one which belongs to the joys of Easter is that the power of the good is greater than all evil and death. John Donne’s sonnet “Death be Not Proud” expresses just that sense and sensibility that death has been changed by virtue of Christ’s Passion and Resurrection. In a way, the accounts of the Passion capture our attention and serve to make us free, awakening us to something more and greater than sin and death and sorrow. “Take me to you, imprison me, for I /Except you enthral me, never shall be free, / Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.” Such, too, is the intensity of Holy Week. It is really all about the intensity of divine love.
I wish you all a holy and blessed end to Holy Week and a joyous and blessed Easter.
(Rev’d) David Curry
Chaplain, English & ToK teacher
Chair of the Department of Religion and Philosophy
Source URL: https://christchurchwindsor.ca/2019/04/17/kes-chapel-reflection-week-of-17-april/
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