Today was all gift.
It’s Holy Week, and as I entered into spiritual formation practices today, it was all gift.
In college, Professor Mark Quanstrom–who is also a pastor–preached an important sermon called “It’s all gift.” Not “it’s all a gift” because the theology is deeper than a transaction. It’s existential. I could not possibly begin to summarize this sermon here, but I can tell you how I experienced it today.
Lent (the 40 days of prayer, fasting, and generosity leading up to Easter) and Holy Week have been a significant part of my faith throughout my life. Unlike Christmas, which is highly celebrated outside of the church, when the whole world focuses on caring and generosity, and when people of all faith traditions and most governments declare it a holiday, Holy Week takes a bit more intention to celebrate. Offices don’t close down. There are not many traditions for the week that exist outside of the church walls.
For these reasons and more, this has made Holy Week more impactful to my faith because it’s not a “normal” priority unless I make it one. And this extra effort recenters and refocuses my faith. It’s like a New Year’s Eve type of feeling, but with my spiritual formation. I tend to be most connected to God and aware of how Holy Spirit is transforming me to be more like Christ through the season of Lent and Holy Week.
Holy Week is traditionally celebrated in a variety of ways:
- Palm Sunday, celebrating Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem as a King on a donkey
- Maundy Thursday, remembering the Last Supper where Jesus introduced communion to us and washed the disciples feet
- Good Friday, honoring the long, bloody road Jesus walked to the cross on which he was crucified and died
- Silent Saturday, the Sabbath day of rest, darkness, and silence as we sit in the unknown with the disciples who didn’t realize what was to come next
- Resurrection Sunday, also called Easter, where we celebrate Jesus’ victory over death and invitation to a new life through believing he is who he said he is
The week itself is a journey of faith. There’s joy and hope on Palm Sunday, with a growing tension and uncertainty up to Thursday. Then Friday is full of darkness, grief, lament, and hopelessness, which we sit uncomfortably in through Saturday. But on Easter Sunday, there’s joy and awe at the miracle before us, and trust becomes a viable option once again.
This week reminds me that faith doesn’t always look a certain way. In fact, faith in Jesus Christ cannot truly exist without recognizing these complex emotions and allowing them to be used as tools for spiritual formation, to make us more like Jesus.
Now back to today–it was all gift.
I visited a local church to walk through their Stations of the Cross, an experiential walk-through of the days before Jesus’ death telling the events that led up to his crucifixion and burial. This church has several services scheduled to walk through these stations in community, but for my schedule those didn’t work. So I went on my own. I called before to see if I could, and they graciously said yes! It was open all week, just without the structure of the services.
When I got there, a church employee gave me the materials to walk through with, walked me to the sanctuary, and turned on the lights. For a few minutes I sat silently, transitioning from the busyness of my day and the distractions of my work into this sacred space before I began to walk through the stations.
All of a sudden, the piano rang out as the pianist for one of these services came to practice. Just she and I now sat in this sanctuary, wandering through Holy Week together. Her melodies gently guided me through the stations as she bounced between piano and organ, stopping occasionally to review a more challenging part of the arrangement. It was all gift. I didn’t know she would be practicing when I went. She didn’t know what time I was coming. And yet, showing up to this church on a particular day and time that worked best for my schedule was met with this gift.
It’s all gift.
As I completed the stations and her practice came to an end, I began to leave the sanctuary when I caught a shadow out of the corner of my eye. Underneath a pew was a leftover palm frond that had been missed in the clean up. This was all gift. I had walked past this same pew three times already, but just now saw it for the first time. And I was unable to attend a Palm Sunday service last week, so I missed out on the traditional waving of the palms and accompanying processional. And yet, here was an unexpected palm frond that wasn’t supposed to be there waiting for me as gift.
It’s all gift.
We so often think God meets us in dramatic, bush-burning, donkey-talking, sea-parting ways, but the gift of God is he sees us in the small, quiet moments. This same professor often said, “God is a gentleman.” He won’t force himself to us, but invites us to him and accepts our invitation as we invite him to us. Like a dance, swaying back and forth, to and fro, God’s grace is always reaching and enveloping us gently.
My desire to abide and remember the events of the first Holy Week were met with God’s embrace expressed through music and palm.
Your desire to meet with God will be met, too. Maybe through the sun peeking out from the clouds at just the right time. Maybe through an encouraging text. Whatever it is, it’s all gift.
Today was all gift. Gift we’ve been celebrating since Jesus’ resurrection, an event that truly began in Genesis 1.
It’s all gift.
