e-vo for week of March 20

Dearest e-votees-

We are drawing near to the holiest week of the year. My hope and prayer would be that you would lean in as close as possible that you might more fully experience the passion, the emotions and the good news of the empty tomb.

Peace,
Karl

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At the Seder meal (the Passover meal) the youngest child who can read will ask “Why is this night different than any other night?” The rest of the night delicately unpacks that question with song and prayer, food which bears meaning and truth and storytelling.

We might ask just as easily “Why is this week—Holy Week—different than any other week?” We could then gather throughout the week with song and prayer, food which bears meaning and truth and storytelling. That is the plan. Will you take your place at the table?

People take potshots at those who don’t get to church so very often—CEOs (Christmas-Easter only), Chreasters, twice-a-years, etc. I will just say right now that perhaps they might come more often if we weren’t so quick to judge, scorn and ridicule. People have a sense of what others are thinking of them. Perhaps we’re part of the problem, just sayin…

There is something sorely lacking about only showing up for the high holy days or the holiday meals. Suppose you had a child who would hunker and sulk in their room and would only make an appearance at big family celebrations (Easter, Christmas, Thanksgiving, birthdays, graduations, etc., etc.) That child would be all but cut off from the life of the family. So much would be missed between the feast days. Nothing wrong with being part of the feast days but it is not enough. The daily meals of meatloaf and mac-n-cheese and hamburger helper offer relational sustenance as well as meeting bodily needs. Being family is a regular, day-in, day-out, slogging, lingering, sometimes tedious thing. It is in the high holy days and the ordinary times that the family is truly cemented together.

Just as problematic as going from Christmas to Easter with nothing in between is the jump from the celebration of Palm Sunday to Easter with nothing in between. There are important more ordinary days that we need to experience as well to fully be family during Holy Week. Some have tried to do the whole Passion on Sunday morning. That is akin to eating Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter dinners in one sitting—not so digestible. What we need to do is take our place at the table as often as we can during Holy Week.

God will speak to you and through you on Palm Sunday. God will move you and move through you on Maundy Thursday. God’s sacrifice will call to you and draw you in on Good Friday. New Fire and baptisms and storytelling will reignite your faith on Easter Vigil. The empty tomb will seem that much emptier when you have lingered around the stories of how it got full.

Stephen Curtis Chapman has a marvelous lyric in Remember Your Chains: “There’s no one more grateful to sit at the table than the one who best remembers hunger’s pain.”

Come on Easter to take your rightful place at the feast. But allow God to prepare you by lingering in the Lenten fast first.


God, beckon us into your week. Help us linger with family. Steep us in the truth. Give us a bold “Alleluia!” on that holy Sunday morning. Amen.