Acts, Chapter 21 (NRSV)Today in church you will most likely hear the story of the Passion read aloud. In the parish where I will be worshipping, the members of the congregation will be acting out the story in the form of a play. If you've been present for one of these community readings you know both how long the story is, and how powerful the retelling of it is.
We're now in the final week before Easter. The forty days of Lent proper have come to a close and we're in the last bit of the story that leads us to the Triduum. The events that we remember in the proper liturgies throughout this week will retell the story we all know, with all its increasingly difficult details. The whole of Holy Week is observed as a teaching device, much in the same way that the whole Church calendar year functions. We make our way through the seasons, the feasts and the fasts and arrive as different sort of people than when we started. The degree of the difference depends, in my experience, entirely on how much of yourself you are willing to invest in the journey.
The more you can place yourself in the story the more real it becomes. The Jesuits have an entire style of spiritual discipline based on making that happen effectively. And some scholars believe that is why the narrative in Acts, one section of which we read this morning, changes to the first person. For most of the story that we've been reading in Acts, the narrator (Luke) is recounting a series of events that he was apparently not a witness to but which has learned about from people who were. In the parts of the Book of Acts the language seems to indicate that the narrator is part of the story directly.
"We sailed to Jerusalem." "When we arrived, the brothers welcomed us." Is this the part of the story where Luke was actually traveling with Paul and his companions? Is this a part of the story where Luke was given access to someone's travel diary and he, for some reason, decides not to change the way the story is told? And why does the story then abruptly, in all three cases, stop using the first person narrative?
There are multiple answers to these questions. None of them seems to have definitely settled the question. Some scholars argue that Luke was part of the journey and is using his own notes for these sections. Others, believing that Luke was too young at this point to take part in the travel, argue that he is using another person's notes and for some reason decides not to edit the text - perhaps out of respect for the person who originally wrote it. Some scholars believe that this represents a literary convention of the time, a way to heighten the reader's interest. And some, not attempting to answer the why, see in these sections an invitation for the readers of the Book of Acts to enter personally into the story.
I think it's the last bit that catches my imagination this Palm Sunday. The liturgical observance of Holy Week, like the prayers of the Stations of the Cross, are meant to be a spiritual tool to allow us to enter into the mystery of the events that happened thousands of years ago. The ambiguity of the accounts, the rough drawn details, the economy of the narration are all meant to evoke a feeling that we are drawn inward and are walking the paths with Jesus and the disciples. We are seeing, with our own eyes, the events unfolding before us. What we do with what we see is up to the action of the Holy Spirit within our lives. For some of us it will lead to a deeper appreciation of what Jesus has done for all of us. For some it will lead us to consider how deeply complicit we are in rejecting God's dream of who we might become. For some it will spur us to take our faith journey more seriously. For some it will be a moment of healing, for others a time of spiritual crisis.
What will it be for you this year? Are you willing to follow the path that the Holy Spirit is laying before you? Are you going to see it through?
I promise you, that if you give yourself up to living into the story of Holy Week as best you can this year, you will be a changed person by Easter. You may not recognize the change at first, but you will be changed. I have seen this happen to so many people. I have observed it in myself - year in and year out.
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