Holy Scripture tells us that the fabric of the world fundamentally changed when Christ died on the cross. The natural world experienced earthquakes, and the manmade world saw signs such as the torn veil within the temple. Despite these tremors radiating out into the world, the mundane persisted. Thousands of miles away people still strived to scrap out a living from unforgiving soil, meals were being prepared, people fell in and out of love, and infants needed cleaning.

We have gone to great efforts to tell the story of our salvation in how we keep time. Easter is not meant to be the anniversary of Christ’s death on the cross, so it is bound by how we tell the story through our liturgical seasons, not by an exact date. This means every year we are subject to a moving target of when we proclaim “Alleluia” from our long penitential season of Lent. We do a lot to make the season meaningful. We have special services, our Lenten programs countdown to our season of hope and joy, and we even color eggs, because that’s tradition and you don’t mess with tradition.

In the background of all of these special events and traditions is the sound of normal day-to-day life. We’ve put a lot on hold in the office, but we all know that we still need to tackle building projects, and we need to prepare to regather in the Church, which takes a surprising amount of work. Outside of the office the world does not know that everything else is on hold. A crew is still working on our heating and cooling units, and I’m not sure if they plan on attending the Maundy Thursday service this evening.

Another reminder that life continues in the midst of Holy Week arrived yesterday in the post. A letter that reads as if several thoughts, conversations, and heaps of anxiety were chopped up and tossed into a salad arrived, and it is overwhelmingly clear that someone needs help, but the how or even the who is a bit more mysterious and difficult to decipher. These don’t arrive often, but anyone who works in Churches has probably seen a few different versions of these letters. Churches, along with other places of worship and public libraries, are often a rare haven for the authors of these letters, and we should not divorce our response to them from our sacred season.

Don’t get me wrong, we are not going to fix the world by showing a little bit of kindness. We are not saviors, but like the tremor or the torn veil on the day of Christ’s crucifixion, we can be signs of hope for a fallen world or a sign of the kingdom to come. Like the quaking ground or the torn veil, we can allow the reality of Christ’s death and resurrection change us, so others can see that things may not be what they seem. Many will recognize us as “the Church” for our Easter services and the baptisms, but I hope they will know that we are Christians by our love.

Blessings,

Nick