I recently listened to a talk by Melanie Delva, an east coast Anglican Church archivist who used a phrase new to me: expectancy of encounter. I thought it had a hopeful sound to it and also thought it suited well what I think of Holy Week but maybe also what I believe is something that could more fully shape my life. What if this week I tried to increase my awareness of meeting the suffering, crucified and resurrected Christ? What if I could see him in the other, in my work and play, in my everyday walking around life and in the worship services we will have this week leading to Easter? More than a paying closer attention, expectancy of encounter suggests that I will meet him and the encounters will be transforming, each day again practicing the resurrected life.
Today begins Holy Week. If you would have asked me what that meant even 25 years ago I’m not sure I could have fully explained it. As a child growing up I had no idea what it was even though we had Catholic neighbors and friends. We went to church on Good Friday and Easter Sunday and they had a whole bunch of extra times of sitting on hard church pews in that week and it all started with a strange black mark on their foreheads some four weeks earlier. We were schooled in the Reformation so we had left all of that behind us now for several hundred years. But it was a bit of baby and bath water thing. Too much went down the drain and it's taking us some time to recover. Lent and now Holy Week has been a long time in recovery and we are relearning the liturgies and language we lost back then and are the richer for it.
I recently listened to a talk by Melanie Delva, an east coast Anglican Church archivist who used a phrase new to me: expectancy of encounter. I thought it had a hopeful sound to it and also thought it suited well what I think of Holy Week but maybe also what I believe is something that could more fully shape my life. What if this week I tried to increase my awareness of meeting the suffering, crucified and resurrected Christ? What if I could see him in the other, in my work and play, in my everyday walking around life and in the worship services we will have this week leading to Easter? More than a paying closer attention, expectancy of encounter suggests that I will meet him and the encounters will be transforming, each day again practicing the resurrected life.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Archives
August 2022
Dennis deGrootCategories |