Friends,
It’s hard for me to believe it, but Holy Week is hard upon us, which means that as soon as we’ve finished cleaning up from the auction and fundraising event on Saturday—something that, no doubt, will tire out several of us—we’ll be going right into the Church’s busiest week for the year.
And it’s going to be great!
There will be a lot going on between Saturday afternoon and Easter, which happens eight days after the Auction. We’ll be busy, but it will be a good and soul-strengthening kind of busy, especially if we allow ourselves the freedom to walk away from the restrictions of modern, rationalistic ways of thinking that lack imagination, don’t recognize metaphor, and that suffer from a shortage of Joy.
During the next week we will be rejoicing as Jesus rides a donkey into Jerusalem; we’ll be gathering to remember Jesus’ final meal before his passion; we’ll observe the sorrow of the crucifixion, and then we’ll rejoice together on Easter Morning with the ancient Easter greeting: “Christ is risen!/Christ is risen indeed!”
“But wait!” You may protest, “what if some of us don’t believe in the resurrection? How can we say ‘Christ is risen indeed’ if we don’t believe in the resurrection?”
And that is where joyful imagination comes into play. I happen to believe that the magic and miracle of Easter are in no way tied to Jesus’ having actually walked out of a tomb all those years ago.
I say this because even if Jesus did, as a matter of historical record, come back to life after spending all day Saturday and parts of Friday and Sunday in a sepulcher, it would mean nothing without joyful imagination.
Joyful imagination takes the resurrection out of storage and puts it to use as a promise of renewal and rebirth in our lives and in the world around us. And if resurrection has been stored in the vault of history or in the cupboard of myth, we still have to claim it’s beauty and its promise through joyful imagination.
The same is true for the other events we commemorate during Holy Week: the Triumphal Entry on Palm Sunday, the Last Supper on Holy Thursday, and the crucifixion on Good Friday. The other days of Holy Week remember events that seem more credible to modern minds, but still, they have no power, no magic, no transformative energy, unless we embrace them with joyful imagination. Until we engage with them on a spiritual level, they remain as myth or as history; without joyful imagination, they have no ability to affect us.
There is legitimate debate around the historicity of the resurrection and the other events of Holy Week, and while those are interesting and stimulating discussions, our opinions do nothing to change what may or may not have happened all those years ago. But we do have the power to change what’s happening now, and if we allow ourselves to be touched by the beautiful mysteries of Holy Week and the Miracle of Easter, the spirit of renewal and resurrection will dwell withing us. It just takes some joyful imagination.
So let us dance into Holy Week filled with sacred, joyful imagination. Let’s pay less attention to history and listen instead to story. Let’s worry less about what is factual and concern ourselves primarily with what is True.
And, after we’ve marched into Jerusalem, and supped with Jesus and the disciples in the upper room; after we’ve wept in the garden and gazed upon the sorrowful mysteries of the crucifixion, let us join as a church family on Easter and proclaim, “Christ is risen indeed!”
God’s Peace,
Ben