The week before Easter is a special time.
This is the week where Jesus enters Jerusalem for the last time. We move in the space of one week from where Jesus is welcomed with shouts of Hosannah by the crowd, to hearing that same crowd shouting for his crucifixion on the Friday, and his death. The week ends in the stillness of the night between Holy Saturday and the dawn of Easter Sunday. “While it was still dark” Scripture reminds us, “Mary came to the tomb.”
It is natural and instinctual to want to rush the discomfort we feel with suffering and death. It is far easier to dance from the shouts of Hosannah on Palm Sunday to the joys of Easter morning.
We want to know how the story ends and that everything will work out for the best, but life isn’t a dance from joy to more joy. We need to stand at the foot of the cross and live with the ambiguity of Holy Saturday and the discomfort of the tomb. To fully know and experience Joy, and for Easter to make sense, we need to know what it is to suffer, to die and grieve. For this is Hoy Ground. A Thin Space, that prepares us for the Resurrection of tomorrow and Easter.
Easter is always an invitation. It is in the darkness of the night and the quiet of our hearts that we begin to hear the small still voice of God inviting us to live into the new of tomorrow. From this we begin to understand that Resurrection is not a past event that happened so many years ago with one person. Rather Resurrection, Easter, is what we are called to embrace each day.
