I don’t know about you, but it seems like a good portion of my life is hurrying about from place to place. I hurry to drop a kid off to school. I then hurry into the office to respond to emails that have piled up overnight or to finish a project that is coming up on a (sometimes self-imposed) deadline. After that I might hurry to get home in time to have a quick bite of lunch before then going to pick up one or more children from school, to then hurry to the next after-school activity or evening meeting or grocery store run … you get the idea.
Truth be told, sometimes it’s hard to really stop and recognize why we do the things we do — to focus in on the things that truly matter. In fact, I strongly suspect for some of us even things like worship can sometimes be something we just add to the checklist and then check off the list, and don’t really think too much about what was experienced in worship throughout the rest of the week. After all, there are important things to do.
But now we’re in the Great Three Days — those days where we experience Jesus’ betrayal, death, and resurrection. And these three days are for us a time where we are invited to be still. We are invited to remain at the table, where God’s son prepares a meal for us, and tells us that it’s his very flesh, given for the forgiveness of sins. We are invited to remain in the garden, where Jesus prayed that God’s will be done in the midst of his anxieties. We are invited to bear witness, keep watch, and pray with Jesus. We are then invited to be silent witnesses to the agony and despair on the cross, where the entire world became still with the death of God’s son. In all these things, we are invited to be still — to slow down and see what God has done and continues to do for us in our salvation.
I hope you’ll join us in observing these holy days. These holy days make the promised resurrection that we celebrate even more powerful. We proclaim the empty tomb first at our Vigil service Saturday evening, and then again twice on Sunday morning. And then, the stillness of our sorrow becomes unimaginable joy, where we cannot help but proclaim with thanksgiving the marvelous works of God.
Pastor Chris