Just Keep Swimming...

Holy Exertion, Wholly Exhausted
Holy Week is only seven days long. Eight, if you count Palm Sunday. But for church staffs, it seems much, much longer. The church I serve, for example, had ten services in those eight days. I would never even think of comparing our experience to Christ's, but in terms of scheduling, there are some similarities, at least in the rhythms of darkness, work, and celebration.

Palm Sunday is a big day. It's a day of celebrating. We have parades with palms and an Easter egg hunt, everyone is excited. And the staff is happy. But we know that there is still a long way to go. In the back of my mind through all that celebration was, "This is just the beginning. Everything seems OK now, but the insanity is coming..."

Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday seem quiet, but they aren't. You're working constantly, but things are relatively calm. At the same time, the tension is building. Monday is calm--nailing down the last details of the orders of service and finishing the bulletins. Tuesday is a little more strained: getting ahead on visitation so that you're not overwhelmed at the end of the week, trying to figure out exactly who's doing what for the services and, in my case anyway, working on Powerpoints for the upcoming services. On Wednesday, I began to really absorb the fact that we were looking at seven services in the next four days. That was when I started getting nervous.

If Monday-Wednesday was the calm before the storm, Thursday was when the winds started picking up. It was the first of the four days of intense worship services and, while it was contemplative, I could feel the stress coming to a head. The Holy Thursday worship was beautiful, but as soon as it was over, as soon as we had finished communion and stripped the altar, I started worrying about how Good Friday would come together.

On Friday full panic set in. I spent the morning and afternoon wrestling with my theology of the resurrection, attempting to write a sermon for the Easter Vigil. I rushed to the church to put the final touches on the liturgy and sacred space for the Good Friday service. Ironically, the Good Friday service was probably my favorite worship of all of the Holy Week services. We did a riff on the Veneration of the Cross, and it simultaneously emphasized our role in Christ's suffering and our call to social justice. We involved tactile experience, poetry, Scripture, music, and visual images to bring the crucifixion to life. I felt moved and strangely exhilarated afterward.

Saturday broke the pattern of my journey paralleling Christ's. On Saturday, at least according to Protestant tradition, Christ was dead in the tomb. I would think that would have been restful. My Saturday, on the other hand, was a little crazy. I spent the whole day writing liturgy and putting final touches on the Easter Vigil for the evening.

Sunday was just plain exhausting. The church had four worship services. I attended all of them and helped lead three of the four. I enjoyed the worship and it was wonderful to see so many people gathered to celebrate the resurrection. But by the end of the last service, I was completely worn out. Christ arose, and all I wanted to do was go to sleep.

Never-Ending Story

"Treading water to keep from sinking,
'Cause I'm not one for reaching..." - Jars of Clay

Sometimes in ministry, I think we all feel like we're just treading water, trying to keep moving just to keep from falling behind. Each week you're preparing to lead worship, writing sermons and liturgy, creating bulletins, visiting in hospitals, and running meetings. Through liturgical seasons things ebb and flow, but the Sundays keep coming and the meetings keep appearing on the calendar. This is a marked difference from school. When you're in school, everything builds toward midterms and finals, but once the semester ends, you get a break. But in the church, there are no breaks. Things build up to Christmas and Easter, and other major liturgical seasons and holidays, but a week or less after those big days, you're facing another Sunday; you have to prepare another sermon, another worship service. This rhythm has been called the relentless return of the Sunday, but I'm just beginning to understand what this feels like. Two months ago, I started a new service and I began preaching once a month. And it didn't seem too bad at first, but after dealing with the insanity of Holy Week, the fact that there's a Sunday coming in another three days is driving me a little crazy.

On the other hand, it's a great reminder that these holidays are not ends in themselves. Christmas is just the beginning of the gospel story. Easter is a triumph, yes, but also the initiation of a new challenge: the church is to go out in mission to the world to proclaim the truth of the risen Christ. We can't just say, "Christ is risen, that's the end." We have to say, "Christ is risen, now let's go tell the world!" And that is demonstrated by the arrival of another Sunday. The work continues, the mission continues, the worship continues. We are Easter people. Easter isn't just a day, it's a way of living. Holy Week is a journey, but also a part of the larger narrative, the ever-cycling story we relive each year. Let the story continue.