Wednesday Wonder

It is the Wednesday of Holy Week.

We are inching ever nearer to Good Friday. We are yet so far from Easter morning.

Holy Week gives us an opportunity to think about how the followers of Jesus might have been feeling. Not every Gospel tells the story of Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday as being as close as we now celebrate them, but it often feels like it was only a matter of the week we have come to expect.

Things were so exciting that first Palm Sunday. The story tells us there were many people praising God, waving palm branches and spreading their cloaks on the ground before Jesus. Sounds like a true celebration. Sounds like an uplifting sight and experience. For those in attendance it likely was.

But what else was happening that day? At the other gate to Jerusalem, Pilate the Roman Governor, was entering the city in a triumphal military parade. The power of Rome on display. People were to be appropriately in awe.

These two celebrations represent completely different points of view. Completely different understandings of power. The power of Empire and military might juxtapose with the power of God and the love of people.

The presence of Rome might have overshadowed things a bit for Jesus and his followers. They needed to be careful to not create enough of a stir for Rome to notice. No need for Rome to think that there was about to be a Jewish uprising.

So, the disciples were still riding the high of that day as they move toward the Passover. The Passover is a bittersweet time. They celebrate liberation from Egypt, but they live once again oppressed by a powerful entity. The disciples have no idea how their Passover celebration is about to take a turn. Jesus gives some dire news as they are all gathered around the table. The mood would have shifted immediately.

By the following morning, they will be witnessing the horror of the crucifixion. We may have come to call it Good Friday, but that would not have been in the minds of the disciples that day. Their whole world had tilted off its axis. Nothing was as they thought it would be. The joy of that triumphal entry was gone in a blink. Their friend was gone.

We know the end of the story. We look back as an Easter people. But then, they did not trust that Easter would arrive. They did not trust that Jesus really would rise as he had told them. It was too far fetched to think it would happen.

As we sit in the middle of Holy Week, let us think of those who are in the midst of their own Good Friday horrors and difficult times. All of those sitting in uncertainty, fear, sorrow and pain. Good Friday is only good because we know the ending. While they navigated it, the disciples were lost, alone and mourning.

Let us sit with all those who are lost, alone, mourning, in pain and uncertainty. Let us sit with them until we can all start to see the glimmer of the rise of the Son come Easter morning.