In a meeting with church leaders last week, I offered a check-in question: what part of Holy Week was feeling most resonant with them? 

And more than one of them couldn’t name anything. They couldn’t name a single place where Holy Week mattered to them. They could tell me what they were doing, they could tell me what experience they were trying to create for their congregations, about Easter Egg hunts and noon services, Tenebrae services, community Seders, and a whole slew of important, well-executed programming. But what the week meant to them? There was no time for that. 

I almost skipped the blog this week because I assumed none of you would read it (you might not). But I wanted to take the moment to say this: if you spend your whole week running from meeting to meeting, setting up services, negotiating with an A/V team, trying to track down the black altar decorations you only use once a year, arguing about parking, and trying, in vain, to come up with something, anything to say about Easter that hasn’t been said before – it is still a Holy Week. 

When you’re fried and overburdened and not sure you care about any of it – it is still a Holy Week.

When it feels routine and perfunctory, and more a series of obligations than worship – it is still a Holy Week. 

When things feel dark, and when resurrection seems a lot more than 3 days away – it is still a Holy Week. 

That is the gift of a liturgical calendar: resurrection comes whether we feel up to it or not. The story of God, and your part in it, doesn’t wait for you to be in the mood to act. Life doesn’t overcome death on the day we feel closest to God, life overcomes death on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the Spring Equinox. The week is Holy, and there’s not much we can do about it. 

What a relief. The resurrection isn’t up to us. Whether we are going into this weekend fully present in the mystery and wonder of our faith, or we are going in exhausted from sleepless nights spent wondering if we charged all the mic packs, Jesus is resurrected regardless. 

The Holy Spirit has moved, is moving, and will move in the lives of people this week, whether you fully join in or not. Beautiful things, transformative things, will happen, often in the most unexpected places. Resurrection is sacred specifically because it is a miracle that happens in the place where miraculous things least belong. Resurrection is core to our faith in part because it is the reminder that death itself is not enough to keep us from God. 

It bears to reason that your business, your lack of inspiration, even your burnout or your hurt or the heavy burdens you carry, aren’t enough either. It is a Holy Week, and Resurrection is coming, maybe even for us.