I spent some time on Thursday morning tidying my desk. If you have been in my study recently you will know that it has become quite a mess, with piles of papers and stuff all over the place. The other day I was talking to a couple about a wedding and every time I moved anything more things slid off the pile falling to the floor. Time for some black bag filing I thought! So if you’ve been waiting for a reply to something it may be that it got buried and has only just come to light.

While I was moving various bits of paper from the desk to the bin, or the shredder if I thought they were confidential, I came across our Christmas letter which we sent out with our Christmas Cards last year. So I found the place to file it and spotted the others. I sat down and in one go read our Christmas letters from 1997 to 2004.

Now this is not something I do very often, I’m not even sure the decision to keep them was that conscious, but it proved to be an interesting exercise to look back over the journey we have been on as a family and individually over the last 8 years. It has been literally life changing, the things that have happened.

Pressures and struggles now look very different several years on. Memories have been triggered of heart warming times and moments shared. Some of the things I have faced have been very difficult and the distance of time hasn’t changed that, but it has shown just how things do have a way of coming together and working out. There have been things that have taken me to the brink ministerially, emotionally and spiritually. There have been occasions when I have been able to rise above the mêlée and see what was going on with a wider vision and of course the occasions when I just got overwhelmed by it all and was wound up.

As an exercise I recommend it. I’m not a natural diary keeper and struggle with finding time to keep the journal I’m supposed to keep for a counselling course I’m doing. But as a snap shot of the journey, a way of looking at some markers that point out where we have been, this was quite thought provoking as a Lenten discipline.

Today in our reading from the Gospel (Matt 21:1-11) we found Jesus embarking on a journey - the journey we call Holy Week. It begins with the palm waving crowd singing songs of praise and shouting hosannas for the one who comes in the name of the Lord. This is Messianic stuff. The crowd are proclaiming Jesus to be the one they have been looking for and are spouting revolution. The Romans could have brought this to an abrupt end right then and slaughtered the lot of them, if they had thought a revolution was really on its way.

The story continues after where our reading stopped. Jesus goes straight into the Temple and picks a fight. He goes right to the heart of things - not the Holy of Holies, the most sacred spot - but to the money changers tables and starts throwing them around. If you really want to annoy someone attack the money, because money is the currency of action; it makes things happen.

Not surprisingly the temple authorities ask him by what authority he does these things. That sounds quite an understatement to me. “What the blazes do you think you’re playing at?” sounds more realistic to me - or words to that effect. He then tells two parables. The first is about two sons, one who says he won’t do what his father asks but does it, the other who says he will but doesn’t. The second parable is about wicked tenants who rebel against their landlord and beat up, even kill anyone sent to call them to order. The implication of these parables is thinly veiled. Those who claim to be faithful to God are not and those whom they would despise are actually closer to God than they are!

They plot to do away with him and Judas gives them the lead they need. Holy Week is a deeply disturbing journey if we are brave enough to really travel it. What we think should happen doesn’t. The one who we would expect to come in great power and annihilate those who don’t measure up actually ends up being crucified and all looks lost. Those who profess undying love and allegiance get scared and run away. The one who touched untouchables and showed compassion to those hated by others was humiliated and executed. He was got rid of; taken out. It looked like evil had won and hope died with him.

But of course that was not the end and is not how it ends. To find out how it does end we all need to come back next week. But in the meantime it is important to travel through this week, to be caught up in the mêlée of it all and even lose our way as we journey to the cross and its apparent despair.

We stand on the edge of the journey that is Holy Week. As we look from our vantage point of 2000 years on we see Jesus entering the struggle and the importance of Jesus entering that struggle. Hindsight does not make the struggles go away, but we get a better view of how they mattered and that Jesus does not stand aloof from them. Decisions we make change the course of the journey we travel. Holy Week and the Cross change how we see God and Jesus’ act of self-giving love on the cross is not just a big visual aid. Rather it brings about a change in how we stand before God. He enters the struggle and life is transformed for ever. Whatever the darkness it cannot overcome the light that is God - even if it might seem to do so at times. Good Friday is followed by Easter. In Christ God touches time and redeems it for ever; everything is changed by his entering the struggle.

Following Holy Week is like re-reading our Christmas letters or journal and diary entries and looking at the journey we have been on, the significant moments where the direction changed, where being part of the struggle made a difference. In Holy Week we see Jesus journey through the struggle, touch time and bring redemption to fruition. He brings about the change and needed to do this because without it time would have been untouched and salvation would have remained a distant dream and fantasy. With his action it is gathered up into the heart of God and life is restored where it had been lost.

This is the mystery that is God and that is the life God gives.

© Ian Black 2005

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