​From the Rector: God’s Story, Our Story

Dear friends,

In Godly Play, the form of Sunday School we use at Incarnation to explore scripture with children, the leader generally invites the group to reflect on the day’s story by asking a few open-ended questions. “I wonder what the most important part of this story is?” “I wonder if there are any parts of this story we could leave out and still have all the story we need?” Perhaps my favorite of these questions is, “I wonder which part of this story is about you?”

We are about to enter the central part of our story, which is also God’s story. Next week we will walk with Jesus through the mystery of his deep love for us, which carried him through suffering and death, and also into new life. Holy Week is full of stories. The thrill of the entrance into Jerusalem. The intimacy of Jesus’ last meal with his friends. The wrenching reality of betrayal. The apparatus of state power pressed into service unjustly. Abandonment, faithfulness, grief. The tending of a loved one’s body. The bewilderment of an empty tomb. The mix of joy and shock at the dawn of new hope and life.

I wonder which part of this story is about you? Maybe you too have known some of these feelings, some of these experiences. Maybe this year a new part of God’s story will take on new meaning for you—and maybe you will discover anew how God’s deep love for you is carrying you through your own journey.

All of our stories are part of God’s big story, the story of the whole universe and how God created us out of love, is present with us in sorrow and in joy, and is working even now to heal what is broken and wipe the tears from every eye. Yet even though this story is one where love triumphs, there is also room in this story to sit and linger in the places where there is pain and injustice. In Holy Week we know how God’s heart breaks with us in grief. God is in Good Friday just as God is in Easter.

We can find ourselves in many places in the stories of Holy Week. We may be the disciples, the onlookers, the crowd. We may even be Jesus himself. Indeed, in a real sense we are Jesus: as the church we are members of his Body, connected to him forever in our baptism, and his journey through the cross and resurrection is our journey too.

Each Holy Week we hear two versions of the Passion story, one on Palm Sunday and one on Good Friday. They can be read in many ways: in parts, spoken or chanted, and so on. This year at Palm Sunday we’ll do what we’ve done in other recent years and have the congregation read the part of the crowd. This can be a poignant experience as we reflect on how we ourselves are complicit in various forms of sin—how we ourselves can betray Jesus. This year at Good Friday I’d like to try another practice, one I’ve experienced in a couple of parishes elsewhere: the congregation will be invited to read the part of Jesus. I wonder how it will feel for us. Perhaps we’ll find ourselves experiencing a slightly different dimension of the story as we reflect on our own identification with Jesus. You can let me know how you experience it if you’d like.

I pray each of us will find God’s story coming close to our story this Holy Week and Easter. I pray we will be transformed more and more into the image of Jesus, and know his love for us more deeply.

In that love,

Stephen