Entering holy week in an ordinary way...

Over the past few years I have started to enter Holy Week in an ordinary way.  That is, while I mark it and honor it as a deep part of my journey into the wisdom of the Cross, besides my role as public celebrant during the various worship gatherings of Holy Week (which is a pretty big public role, I agree) I don't engage in many extraordinary spiritual practices.  I used to - used to fast, spend extra time in liturgical prayer and for a few years even went to confession with my spiritual director - but not any more. 

For a while I thought it had to do with growing lazy, but I don't really think that is what drives this more ordinary embrace of Holy Week.  And it isn't just that I've grown older and lost some of my earlier evangelical zeal. No, I think it has  more to do with my experience with the ordinary way Jesus shows up in my life.  Frederick Buechner once wrote:

Jesus is apt to come, into the very midst of life at its most real and inescapable. Not in a blaze of unearthly light, not in the midst of a sermon, not in the throes of some kind of religious daydream, but... at supper time, or walking along a road.  This is the element that all the stories about Christ's return to life have in common:  Mary waiting at the empty tomb and suddenly turning around to see somebody standing there - someone she thought at first was the gardener; all of the disciples except Thomas hiding out in a locked house and then his coming and standing in the midst; and later, when Thomas was there, his coming again and standing in the midst; Peter taking his boat back after a night at sea and there on the shore, near a little fire of coals, a familiar figure asking, "Children, have you any fish?"; the two men at Emmaus who knew him in the breaking of bead.  He never approached them from on high, but always in the midst, in the midst of people, in the midst of real life and the questions that real life asks.

Peterson speaks of this as the work of the pastor - not the big things about the nature or condition of our soul - but the everyday things "that specialize in the ordinary." For 30 years I have journeyed with God as a pastor...

It is the nature of pastoral life to be attentive to, immersed in and appreciate of the everyday texture of people's lives - the buying and selling, the visiting and meeting, the going and coming. There are also crisis events to be met: birth and death, conversion and commitment, baptism and Eucharist, despair and celebration. These also occur in people's lives and, therefore, in pastoral work. But not as everyday items.  Most people, most of the time, are not in crisis.  If pastoral work is to represent the gospel and develop a life of faith in the actual circumstances of life, it must learn to be at home in what novelist William Golding has termed the "ordinary universe" - the everyday things in people's lives - getting kids off to school, deciding what to have for dinner, dealing with the daily droning complaints of work associates, watching the nightly news on TV, making small talk at coffee break.

There was a time when I wanted more than the small talk - I wanted to make things happen in the world - I wanted every worship to be a mountain top experience.  I wanted every day to be Pentecost.  But I think I started to wear people out with all the demands and activities. And I know I burned myself out with all that fretting and planning and doing. So now I sense a different way into the mysteries of Holy Week:  a way that is open to the ordinary - curious and receptive about the small talk - and far less hurried.

This morning, while setting up for Eucharist, my helper asked, "So, um, where is the bread?"  Hmmmm.... I thought to which she immediately whispered, "OMG, I was supposed to bring it, right?"  Well yes I replied but let's find someone who can run an errand, ok?  She quickly took care of business and then met me on the steps to the Chancel during the opening music for centering:  "Ok, we're covered but... when will we bring it to the Communion Table?"  How about at the same time we bring forward the offering I smiled?  She smiled, too and said, "Whew... had to think about these kind of problems before, hey?"

It made me laugh - almost out loud. Because while I never have faced just this exact problem before, I have had to learn how to roll with the surprises.  Like the time I was doing a baptism only to find there was no bowl in the fount.  (Apparently, my secretary had seen the bowl to be washed in the kitchen and washed it - and then made green jello in it for the potluck later that day.  Or the time I was doing a wedding ceremony for some local gang kids and we had to delay the ceremony because the best man had been in a fight with the groom and now they were searching for somebody who could fit into the rented tuxedo.)

As I sat listening to the gorgeous centering music, I thought: "what a human way to start Holy Week - worrying about the bread that was overlooked in the midst of all the other demands in this family's life - like raising two very active children and going to work and cleaning the house and paying the bills."  What a sacred opportunity, too:  we were given a chance to worry or ask someone else in the community to help out - a simple challenge - yet a clear place place where love and trust could be deepened in the midst of ordinary things. 

By the time I read the Passion Narrative - at the closer of worship this year - I could feel that the King of Glory had entered the house in the midst of us.