It is hard to see stories that we know well with new eyes. Each year as we approach the beloved stories of our holidays, I try to take on the challenge to listen for what I haven’t heard, to see what I haven’t seen, and to let the old, old story have new life. That always means being willing to stretch and grow. The other day I was reading the introduction to a book by Abraham Joshua Heschel, a profound thinker and theologian. There were a couple of phrases that jumped off the page at me as I read. Heschel’s daughter (also a theologian) wrote in the introduction how she remembered her father often saying: “God begins where words end.” She then recalled an idea and phrase that her father loved that shows up frequently in scripture: “the beginning of wisdom is awe of God.”
Heschel is one of those theologians who speaks from a place of great depth. Like many of his generation’s prophets, early in his career his life was shaped by the rise of Antisemitism and Nazism. As he was abroad trying to secure visas for his family to emigrate with him to the United States (where he had received a teaching position at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati), WWII broke out and the rest of his family became victims of Germany’s murderous Holocaust. Out of that tragedy and loss, Heschel’s writings have always touched me through his powerful vision of a God longing to be in relationship with humanity. He intones words of awe, words that try to step out of their own way to make space for God's presence to claim us anew. He nurtures a relationship with God that moves beyond the words of the familiar story into transformative awe.
We are entering a second Holy Week that is being shaped by the pandemic. We are all carrying a weariness and grief in our souls from all the changes that we have experienced in the last year. We are longing for the return to something that we remember as being so much better and easier and more fulfilling than this present reality… and many among us are becoming impatient. That swirl of emotions may be as powerful a platform as we could be given for us to hear anew the witness of Holy Week. The whole story of our faith is one of moving beyond our expectations and beyond our narrow visions into that place where we might be startled by awe.
Hear again that journey through fresh ears shaped by our current reality: Palm Sunday’s proclamations ring out with a people who are longing for the restoration of Israel. They are hoping to feel in their souls once again God's claim of them as the chosen people. They want to feel remembered as they struggle and complain under a continued Roman occupation. They struggle to see anything positive coming from those who are in power, instead focusing only on a narrative of victimization and oppression. There is even the sentiment that they are willing to rise up in opposition if Jesus just says the word and leads them. That is a narrative that has been familiar throughout history, the story of armed conflict and revolution, the story of might-makes-right, or power over another defines the victor.
Can you hear our story overlaid on that? Consider politics, or religion, or responses to the pandemic, and we can hear lots of language and positions that echo the expectations of the crowds on Palm Sunday. Now stop and listen! The relationship to which God calls us always defies those expectations and pushes us beyond this expected narrative. By Maundy Thursday, we are remembering a new commandment that is offered even in the midst of a story of betrayal – Jesus commands those who would follow him to serve one another and to love one another as Jesus has loved them. It is a command that is easy to skip over until you hear it in a conflicted world. Heschel came out of the despair of the Holocaust to be active in civil rights and anti-war activities with a depth of compassion that responded to an invitation to relationship with God instead of bitterness or resentment. How do we hear that call this year when so much would divide us? Are we willing to gather at Jesus’ table and get out of our own way so that we might be able to love beyond the framework of our expectations or certainties?
Of course, our story continues and by Good Friday our story is one that struggles with grief and the remembering that in the moment of Jesus’ crucifixion and death it seemed like injustice and violence had won. In that moment, their savior and the antidote to the oppression of the world, offered forgiveness and grace from the cross instead of any words of uprising or revolt. The story sounds outrageous if we place ourselves at the foot of the cross with our hope shattered. Perhaps some of the people gathered remember those teachings of Jesus that promised a new future, but my guess is that most of them were tired of people telling them to be patient. Why should they have hope when it looked like nothing had changed? I listen in this moment in time to those who are tired of all that this last year has meant and I hear those same echoes - hope is spoken of but still unrealized. Patience is in as short supply as toilet paper was a year ago. At that cross this year we all are carrying an abundance of grief… but are we listening for the awe? How many heard the Prince of Peace uttering those absurd words of forgiveness in the midst of his looking like he was giving in to the torture of a government that they opposed? Can we hear beyond the words?
Perhaps if we can hear the ways that our story is woven into Holy Week’s confused expectations, if we can lean into the uncomfortable demands, and awkward commands to love beyond what seems possible, if we can stand firm and not change direction or give up hope in the power of forgiveness and commitment to compassion, then maybe we can open ourselves to be touched by the awe of Easter. We are moving again toward that proclamation that God's love wins. Always. This is the message that was startling in the first century and that should still startle. Easter is the climax to a story that should leave us still wondering how we could have missed all the clues… Of course, we are so familiar with that story that we can too easily fail to do anything but hear the words. Our familiarity can prevent us from being struck by the awe that is beckoning to us from all around us.
Holy Week and Easter will look different again this year – but they have always looked different to those who are willing to see with new eyes and to allow themselves to be caught unexpectedly by a moment of awe. This has been a year… and woven into it have been lots of signs of love, hope, and promise in amidst all the struggles. May God bless each of us with the courage to open our hearts and let God's love startle us in some unexpected way this season. Perhaps God does begin where words end…