5th April 2026
A Lot Can Happen in 7 Days
They say that a week is a long time in politics. And, back in the 1st century, the week we know as Holy Week was definitely one of those weeks. The events of this last week of Jesus' life take up a massive amount of space in each of our four gospels. Holy Week is crucial to our understanding of who Jesus is and what he came to do.
It's worth remembering too that, while we tend to jump from Palm Sunday to Maundy Thursday, Jesus and his disciples lived through Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. During those days, Jesus spent time in the Temple. He baffled Pharisees and teachers of the law and delighted ordinary people with his answers to their questions. He also, in Matthew, Mark and Luke, caused significant disruption by driving out the money changers. He spent time at the homes of friends in and outside the city, eating and drinking. He spent time teaching his disciples, preparing them for all that was to come. In many ways, from Monday to Wednesday, he was living fairly normally... perhaps this is why, when the crisis came, the disciples were so unprepared.
And of course, this is often how a crisis, a tragedy hits us. We pootle about, living our ordinary lives. We go to work. We spend time with friends. We talk to people. We worship. Occasionally we get angry and (literally or metaphorically) turn over some tables. But nobody expects a crisis to hit. In the Middle East, despite all the build-up over the early months of the year, war came as a shock. When we receive a phone call from the hospital, a diagnosis, bad news, we are brought up short. We don't simply take it in our stride. Tragedy, crisis, war, suffering, illness, death - these things are intrusions which break into our lives, stop us in our tracks.
The days from the evening of Maundy Thursday through to dawn on Easter Sunday are known as the Triduum - the Three Days. Liturgically, in our worship, they are supposed to make us stop in our tracks, to step out of our normal patterns and pootling, to be brought up short by the anguish, the horror, the suffering of the cross, to share in the agony and grief of Mary and the first disciples, to feel the strangeness. Over these three days, our worship will not have the normal patterns that sustain us. There will be no comfortable ending to the service on Maundy Thursday or the Hour at the Cross on Good Friday, no words of blessing. We are called to live in the discomfort, to walk the way of the cross, to wait for God's resolution.
A lot can happen in 7 days... and, soon now, the waiting will be over. Something new, something totally unexpected is stirring in the darkness, in the heart of the tomb.
