A letter from Archbishop Jeremy Greaves at the beginning of Holy Week.
As I sit to write as we begin Holy Week, things seem pretty tough for lots of people. Perhaps you have your own particular things that are weighing heavily on your heart or mind.
For me, it’s the enormity of the role of archbishop: the weight of office that sits squarely on my shoulders with more heaviness in the past couple of weeks than it has before… but it’s also the relentlessness of the news cycle – the chaos coming out of the US, ongoing wars in Gaza, Sudan and Ukraine, the extreme weather events – drought and flood in equal measure – and, closer to home, the divisive discourse in state and local politics, pictures of rough sleepers’ tents and belongings being loaded into rubbish trucks, vulnerable young people being denied much needed medical treatment, children being sentenced as adults… it goes on and on.
And when things seem so bleak it can seem disingenuous to preach hope and life and resurrection unless we do it carefully. Those things can all ring hollow for people weighed down by so much.
At the recent national bishops meeting in Busselton, WA, Dr Meg Warner led us in a terrific and challenging bible study looking at, amongst other things, reading the scriptures through the lens of trauma.
It was hard work but Meg opened some new insights for all of us.
In response to one of the sessions, one of the bishops spoke of the need to “speak hope with tenderness” at times like these.
When people are carrying such heavy loads, talk of hope and resurrection can sound hollow, especially if our words are not spoken with tenderness and with care. We need to work hard at striking the right tone, at finding words that will be helpful rather than inflict more harm.
In some ways, that is why the journey through Holy Week is so important: walking step by step through it all and not rushing to Easter Day. The slow, mindful journey allows us space and time to “do the work” – the work of grief and trauma – alongside those who walk the road with us.
In the end this work is important, and is ours to do, because the Resurrection for which we wait is not an easy or simple way to new life. Resurrection “tosses out our comfortable hopes for the familiar and rewrites the future in spite of us. Resurrection is God’s alone. Our part in it is the dying part. The rising is all God’s, and the shape of the Risen One belongs to God as well.” (Claiming Resurrection in a dying church p. 11)
“Our part in it is the dying part” and that is the journey of the next week. Resurrection is, as always, in God’s hands and will surprise us once again with how it looks in the world and in our lives.
“Do the work.” “Speak hope with tenderness.” “Resurrection is in God’s hands.” “Trust that, as the 66 books of the bible attest, God can do anything but fail.”
May you know God’s blessings in abundance as your travel the journey of the next few days and celebrate resurrection when it comes.