Dreading Holy Week

To be honest, I don’t always look forward to Holy Week. To be more honest, sometimes I dread it. 

For pastors, Holy Week is about as high pressure as it gets. In addition to the usual responsibilities of ministry, there are extra worship services to plan and lead, extra guests to welcome, and high expectations that our church is firing on all cylinders. Our building is clean, the grounds look good, and the worship services are creative, engaging, and polished. We’ve crafted the perfect setting for everyone, ourselves included, to encounter the crucified and risen Jesus. Back home, Easter baskets are prepared, eggs are hidden, and Easter dinner is in progress—impeccably timed to be ready right when we return from worship. Whew! 

We can (and should) set aside these unreasonable pressures. But these are not the only things driving my ambivalence as I head into this highest of holy seasons. I love the celebration welcoming King Jesus, and I am moved by the tender moments shared at the Last Supper. Yet as the week moves along, my sense of dread builds. The darkness of Good Friday draws near. This is the heart of my complicated relationship with Holy Week, what I want to avoid at all costs: the brutal treatment and agony of the One who has loved us so perfectly. And if that wasn’t enough, Scripture reminds us that he endured it all—the betrayal, abandonment, injustice, and unrelenting pain—for our sake. It’s personal. The guilt and shame threaten to pile up. I can’t watch.

And yet I also can’t look away.

Eleven years ago, my father-in-law passed away. With grief in our guts, we dropped everything and traveled thousands of miles to be there. When we gathered that week for his funeral, I felt a strong sense of dread. I simultaneously wanted this service to end so I could be somewhere (anywhere) else. And there was no other place in the world that I wanted to be in that moment. I imagine that’s what Jesus’s disciples felt as they stood at the foot of the cross—women and men who had loved and been loved by Jesus. All four Gospels want us to know that they were there too, watching Jesus suffer and die (including his own mother!). They could not skip the pain. And because they stayed near, some of these women became the first witnesses of the resurrection. 

This year, I invite you to welcome the complexity of Holy Week—the joy and celebration along with the pain and darkness. Like Jesus’s own friends, we may simultaneously want to be present and to run away—and that’s okay. If we sift through these conflicting feelings, we may find a basic human longing buried underneath. It’s what brings us back to the cross even when the grief threatens to overwhelm us. We yearn to be near the One whose image we bear, we long to behold and receive the Creator’s love made known in Jesus. When we are patient enough to sit with our feelings and embrace that desire, we can check our impulse to flee. We join those disciples who stood at the foot of the cross, some of whom had abandoned him in the garden only a few hours earlier. Their desire for the Savior they loved brought them to the place of pain. 

Time and again I’ve seen that when we learn to stay in those places we dread, they become the locus of God’s mighty work. God grows in us maturity and sure, patient hope. Far from piling it on, God sets us free from the tar pits of guilt and shame. If we flee, we may never discover the power of Jesus’s resurrection. So let us stay at the cross. Linger at the tomb. When we do, we’ll behold the mighty, redemptive work of God. 

Let our hearts dare to whisper the words we sing more often than we pray: “Draw me nearer, nearer, blessed Lord / to the cross where thou hast died; / draw me nearer, nearer, nearer blessed Lord, / to thy precious bleeding side” (“I Am Thine, O Lord,” The Covenant Hymnal: A Worshipbook, #383).