Renovaré Weekly · March 22, 2024

Were you there?

Lent

Holy Week

LETTER BY GRACE POUCH

A beloved African American spiritual asks,

Were you there when they crucified my Lord?

Why ask this question? The answer is no. None of us were there.

The wisdom of the song is its invitation to imagine the events — one by one — and tremble. Let the humiliation and the horror sink in.

Imagine your Teacher betrayed.

Consider God the Son on trial for blasphemy.

Let his exhaustion and agony into your bones.

Feel a mother’s desperation at a son’s torture.

Consider the fear and bewilderment of those who were sure until now that he was the One.

The Passion of Jesus isn’t a metaphor. It is fact but not merely fact. It is eternal reality. There is a way to hold the story at arm’s length, to compartmentalize the events as critical information to possess, unfeelingly, like a formula. But the Gospels invite us to enter, feel, and know at a deeper level — in a sense, to be there when they crucified my Lord — and to mind the mystery until our hearts respond.

We talk a lot about God-in-the-flesh during Advent. But the week ahead is another annual opportunity to move deeper into the wonder of Divine Incarnation. Christ poured out his life and took it up again so we can be with him — inside the healing, transforming, empowering embrace of Father, Son, and Spirit.

Grace Pouch
Content Manager

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LET’S DIVE IN...

CURATED BY GRACE POUCH

1.

Marilyn McEntyre slows down our reading of John’s gospel account of Maundy Thursday in “The Moment of Divine Encounter.”
2.

This new audio meditation from Nathan Foster on Luke 22—a bonus episode on the Renovaré Life with God Podcast — invites us to the Mount of Olives where Jesus prayed, “Let this cup pass from me.”
3.

Around 380 AD, a Spanish-Roman woman named Egeria (or Etheria) took a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Egeria traced Jesus’ journey to the cross with a group of fellow worshipers, pausing at key places (“stations”) for Bible readings, prayers, and hymns. Her letter to friends back home detailing the experience is the oldest known description of a pilgrimage and gives us a little window into early Christianity and the birth of Holy Week liturgical practice.
4.

The Stations described in the ancient letter mentioned above are an enduring practice that helps Christians prepare for Easter — not only for pilgrims to the Holy Land, but for people anywhere who would like to enter the story with art and movement. John Paul II introduced a variation, the Scriptural Stations of the Cross, to highlight important moments from the gospels that weren’t included in the traditional stations. Perhaps you will experiment with walking through the events in an embodied way — moving, pausing, kneeling, viewing, grieving, praying.
5.

Listen to Mahalia Jackson sing “Were You There?” The song is an invitation to imagine the events of Jesus’ Passion — one by one — and tremble.
6.

Eugene Peterson recommends that we give attention to each gospel writer’s unique reflections on the events of Easter morning in “Resurrection Quartet.”

WORTH QUOTING

I suppose no soul of any sensitiveness can live through Holy Week without an awed and grateful sense of being incorporated in a mystery of self-giving love which yet remains far beyond our span.

– Evelyn Underhill (source)

TO CONTEMPLATE

detail from Deposition of Christ from the Cross
Pietro Lorenzetti c. 1320 (source)

TO PONDER

What is one way you can enter more fully into Christ’s Passion this year? Perhaps a Good Friday service, walking the Stations, a film or an audio series, fasting on Holy Saturday, or something else the Spirit brings to mind.