Holy Week?
On Sunday morning at 5:37 am, I texted the staff that I was not going to be able to attend church due to the stomach virus that I had contracted from my daughter and I was still too weak to lead worship. My fever had broken over night but I couldn’t make it. A couple of hours later our Kid’s Ministry Director, Linda, texted that she had sprained her ankle and her husband would be driving her in to work. Of course we all wondered how the Easter Egg hunt was going to happen that day and were thankful that Annabelle would be there to help lead. As we embarked on Holy Week, one of the busiest weeks of the year and filled with three high Holy days, we wondered if the rest of the week would be as difficult as Palm Sunday was starting out. But we prevailed and people stepped up to help and it was a great day, a little short, but good. I give thanks for Mark Fowler’s willingness to fill in for me. I had just come off of the Youth Mission Trip and hearing him preach every night, so I knew he could do it.
On Monday, we discovered the new Easter banner had ripped through the grommets due to the high winds. I came in to help get the twelve stations of the cross set up. Predictions of rain and up to thirty-six mile per hour winds made us overly cautious and we kept adding stabilizing pieces to our frames to hold them down for the week. After five hours, Randy, Jonathon, Seungrok and myself finally had the stations up! Sunburned, wind battered and tired we were glad that it was over. Presentations that should have lasted five days will probably be sturdy enough to reuse over and over again for years!
But the week got better, meetings went smoothly, plans were made and and only a few more bumps happened. And the bird that Tricia found on April 1st in the sanctuary is gone. Did I mention that? I thought that she was playing an April Fool’s joke on us but both Pastor Seungrok and I saw it flying around in distress. The bungees holding the Easter banner broke and Randy tied it down with rope in a double knot. Then that broke too. Both Pastor Seungrok and I confessed to each other that we had each gone out and tried to fix the Easter banner and that we had been hit by the pole. We will have bruises to show off on Good Friday. And in the middle of all the planning and the chaos that happens every year, we got a lovely letter of appreciation and grant dispersement of eighty thousand dollars from the conference office to help Bixby meet their expenses in this first year of ministry. It reminded us of how great it is to be connectional. As I thought about all the other churches also focusing on Holy Week, it reminded me that St Paul’s church will be worshipping with the smell of smoke over everything. It reminded me that the Palestinian Christians were being denied entrance to the Holy Land sights this Easter season. It reminded me that families are functioning while trying not to fall apart thinking about their loved ones being deployed while our nation is at war. And all the silly little things that have crept up this week seem so trivial. And I am thankful.
The world is hard. Being a Christian proclaiming love, grace and peace in this world is hard. Encountering other Christians who are throwing up barriers to full participation in The Way of Jesus with their list of exclusions is hard. Tonight we will encounter the darkness, sin and death that is so prevalent in our world as we worship at 7 pm. We will remember that Jesus choose the path that led to his sacrifice and on Sunday we will celebrate his triumph over death and despair. And every Sunday after this one, we will continue to proclaim that light breaks into darkness, love is stronger than hate and forgiveness is powerful.
I am so grateful to be on this journey with you and this amazing staff,
