Wednesday in Holy Week

There is a steely determination in the lessons for Holy Week, a determination to complete the work Jesus was called to do, no matter what the consequences. Consider that he hosted a dinner party for his closest friends and followers, knowing two things. One, in only a few hours he would be led away to his mock trial and execution. Two, not only Judas, but everyone around the table would betray and abandon him. And he knew something else; in the disciples’ moment of greatest weakness would be sown the seeds for the strength they would need for the years to come.

We, of course, know the end of the story, but they didn’t. They couldn’t imagine the next hour, much less the next three days. We know the end of the story as recorded in the gospels, but like the disciples, we have no idea what the next hour or day will bring. Our most concrete plans are always conditional. If nothing else, it’s demonstrated by the sudden onset of COVID-19 and stay at home orders that have disrupted everything.

When we left Maui for Walla Walla, the airport was as crowded as ever. The plane was full. Arriving late in the evening in Seattle, we stayed overnight in a nearly vacant airport hotel. The next day we went back to SeaTac for our Noon flight to Walla Walla. The airport was all but empty – very spooky. Spookier it’s become these last few weeks. We had well laid plans for medical appointments in Portland, and family visits in Texas and Virginia. They were not to happen. When will it be over, and what will we do when it is? We have no better idea than the disciples did about what lay ahead of them.

What we do know is this, Jesus is the Son of God, and the events we will remember over the next few days culminate in his resurrection. We know his disciples went forth to proclaim the good news of God in Christ Jesus to the whole world. The writer of the letter to the Hebrews urged that being surrounded, as we are, “by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith…”

There is too much to unpack in those words right now. Suffice it to say this: the sin we are to lay aside is not our moral failing, but our reluctance to follow where Jesus has led. When the text calls him the pioneer of our faith, it means he did more than blaze the trail, he prepared it to perfection so that we might more confidently follow him on it. And on it we will be in the company of a great cloud of others who went before, walk with us, and will follow in our footsteps.

In closing, let us remember in prayer our Jewish brothers and sisters for whom Passover begins on April 8. They are the forerunners of our faith, and among the great cloud of witnesses traversing the centuries who have trusted in God for deliverance, even as the world conspired against them.