When It's Holy Week and You Don't Feel Holy
I’m sitting on KodIak island over a turquoise sea, my car shaking in 45 knot winds howling down from white mountains. Fresh April snow lathers the spruce and every piece of ground.
The town is locked down. Our one thread to the outside world—a single flight a day---is under attack as a few vociferous people want to shut the airport down completely. There’s no other way off the island. Businesses in our fragile economy will fail. The fishing industry that supports this town is in question. Our shrinking population is likely to shrink further when this is over.
This island, like many places, is suffering. We’re not suffering from the virus—-there’s not a single case here—-but from the fear of the virus. Citizens are shaming each other on social media if they go into a store without a mask. Or walk too close to one another. You know. It’s happening where you live too.
It feels sometimes like we’re all on some cruel carnival ride.
This is what my ride looks like. First there is obsession. I watch the numbers and the news incessantly. I devour every article I can find. I’m throwing multisyllabic epidemiological words around like I know what they mean. I feel scientific.
Then there are tears. When the numbers shoot up, when I see stories from the ER I mourn. I lament. I feel the world’s sorrow.
Then the sun shines and it hits a balmy 48 degrees outside so I recover and then I make plans. I’ll get super-fit. I’ll be more spiritual, spend more time in the Word. I’ll cook amazing meals. I’ll finally get to that stack of new books by my bed. I’ll write all those articles I’ve been waiting to write. I’ll emerge from this pandemic slimmer, stronger, smarter, neater, more spiritual.
Then apathy and exhaustion move in. I curl up with my husband and spend hours watching stupid movies, or too-violent movies, or sappy TV shows. It doesn’t really matter. It’s all a form of anesthesia.
And in between it all I watch the world Co-Vid tracker as if I could save lives by knowing those numbers. Then I start the cycle all over again.
And now it’s Holy Week.
I’m not feeling very holy, to tell the truth. I’m not excited about Easter Sunday.
I have not been following the church calendar with a monastic Lenten devotional every day. Come Sunday, we will watch our church’s Easter service on our couch. It will be simple, short. It will be the best anyone can do under the circumstances. And after the video service, my husband and two sons and I will eat some special meal I’ll fix. We’ll miss the sunrise service. The special church breakfast. Then the rousing worship. We cannot raise our hands together to praise. We cannot put on a spectacular Easter drama and shout-sing “Up From the Grave He Arose,” our voices raising the roof. After, we’ll miss the usual twenty or so laughing and feasting at our kitchen table.
But right now, writing this, I feel a tug of hope. The four of us will sit on our couch in our pajamas and sing with one another awkwardly, if at all. It’s all going to be weird and a little sad.
But it’s going to be more than enough.
Because Jesus already did it. It’s a fact. For every one of us who wants it, He did it:
He died for us. He was buried for us. He rose for us. He killed death for us. He freed us. He fills us. He enlivens us. He feeds us. He gives us breath. He gives us hope. He give us life unending. He loves us. He cracks our hearts open to love the world as He does. (That’s why we weep.)
And HE makes us holy.
“It is finished.”
Do we really need anything more?
(Maybe just one thing more. Maybe in this pandemic we can bury the false god of me-fulfillment and the frantic “I-can-never-ever-do-enough” god of Easter? May these gods never resurrect.)
Christ is risen.
