The week begins and we see the end of Lent. This week is the centre of our faith story, the middle of everything.
Yesterday, we sang hosannas loud and clear. Kim from Nova Scotia has a little daughter who was delighted by the parade of Palm Sunday at their church yesterday. She described like this:
“We walked around the church, waving branches…I fink we were attending to be trees.”
Thanks, Violet. I think that Isaiah might approve, too.
At my church, we distributed palm crosses. The children collected handfuls of them to wave, and the adults each took, too. After the service, some tourists wandered in to see the church, and they too took palm crosses with them when they went. I wondered what they will do with them when they got home.
When I was a child, we used fresh palms at church. I remember their green smell, and the way they still had enough dampness to them that, even in church, they might spray just a little when you flicked them. The crosses are a bit of a new object for me. They are such a simple, tangible representation of the season’s contractions. The palm of celebration and victory bent and folded into the cross of Good Friday. But it is also the cross of Easter Sunday. It is an empty cross.
Clearing out a Sunday School cupboard a couple of years ago, I found several old bibles, fairly dog-eared and dated, and each had a palm cross inserted as bookmarks. I like that idea – that the Palm Sunday cross can serve as a place-marker, a reminder of where we are – a place of contradiction and fickleness, a symbol of where we stop and rest. We need those pauses this week. We need to attend.
Reading the gospel slowly over the past week, and particularly in the past few chapters, it is the attending women who stand out for me. I usually think of Luke’s gospel as the feminist focussed one, but I’ve been surprised during this read-along just how present women are in Matthew’s telling. We know some of their names, but there is also ambiguity. There are a lot of Marys. But these women were also a part of the story, named or anonymous. Many walked with Jesus. They served him, and they are remembered.
I remember the woman in chapter 26: 7-13, who pour the costly perfume of Jesus’ head. I love that Jesus not only chided his disciples when they questioned her action, but that he announced that wherever the gospel is proclaimed, the story of her action will also be remembered and honoured.
I remember the women in the courtyard during Jesus’ trial – those who questioned Peter. They, too, have a part to play in the story. It is an ambiguous part – they are there to question and to hear Peter’s denial. Another kind of trial before the rooster crows. Another kind of witness.
I remember the women who were at the crucifixion, “looking on from a distance.” Mary Magdalene. The mother of the sons of Zebedee.
And then, the Marys gathered at the tomb.
Tisha McComb, Montreal poet and youth worker at Briarwood Presbyterian Church wrote this poem about the women at the tomb in Mathew 28. She did the Matthew real-along a little differently. She writes: “I started at the end. I began with chapter 28 and I tried to see it with new eyes – as if I’d never heard of Jesus before.” Here’s her poem:
Matthew 28 – Tisha McComb
I started at the end where it began
our tale of Hope and Love everlasting
this side of history
running from the tomb
Our tale of Hope and Love everlasting:
the Son of God resurrected
running from the tomb
trembling with fear and great joy
The Son of God, resurrected,
he met the women on the road
trembling with fear and great joy
and they ran to tell his disciples
He met the women on the road
this side of history
and they ran to tell his disciples.
I started at the end where it began.
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Here are this week’s readings, which take us to the end.
37: Dead End?– Matthew 27: 57-66
38: Risen! – Matthew 28: 1-15
39: Into All the World – Matthew 28:16-20
Leith Fisher adds one last chapter to his commentary – chapter 40 : With Us… Always. I will post a few thoughts on that conclusion a little later in the comments section. I want to take this week slowly. Thanks for reading along.
