GroshLink

Holy Week: An Invitation to Walk with Christ by Ruth Haley Barton
Tenebrae and the enactment of faith by Deborah Leiter

both caught my attention entering this Holy Week. Tenebrae and the enactment of faith ends with the below paragraph

I’m profoundly thankful for the childhood services that gave me a glimpse of these possibilities, because it’s not enough for me to hear bits of the story each year. Perhaps it means my faith is that of Thomas’s — I have to see, to touch, to believe. I’m not sure. What I am sure of is that these performative Passion Week rituals help me to understand the central, hard-to-understand events at the center of the Christian faith year by year, and I’m profoundly thankful for that.

Those palm fronds, after all, take on more weight as they are followed by the story reminding me what followed them. And the meal seems more urgent when the bread and wine are accompanied by a consciousness of the snuffing of the candles that will come the next day. And sometimes, just sometimes, it takes standing outside with many others in the dark and the cold to appreciate the true joy that pulsates through my veins with the re-entry into the warmth of the church, the light of the candles, and the echoing of the refrain, sung over and over again. Each year I believe it a bit more: that Christ is risen from the dead. That he trampled down death by death. That he bestowed life. On me, and on all others who have believed, and all who will ask to believe. That He is risen, He is risen indeed. Alleluia.

A friend responded to my forward of Tenebrae and the enactment of faith with words which resonate with me, particularly as I've become more and more grounded in the reality of the God's good creation through the years (FYI:  the growing, exploratory faith of our students/faculty on campus and children in the home have been the greatest blessing in this area):

There are times when I think the Evangelical Church gets too close to Gnosticism, specifically Doceticism. I like having things I can feel and see and taste and smell (as well as hear). And God seemed willing to provide that for Thomas (even though it turned out he didn’t need to touch those wounds, after all).

Praying for God's continued goodness in speaking through His Word, Presence, creation, people, and structural/programatic responses which give praise to His glory this weekend (and beyond)!