March Liturgical Madness

        I often refer to Holy Week as "March Liturgical Madness".  I work at a church so my humor is justified and helps with what can be exhausting and sometimes frustrating preparation: deadlines not being met, printer jamming, internet crashing, preparing service bulletins with different music and readings, changes and there is always little drama too! Yet, it is a labor of love. Ask anyone who works at a chruch, they will say the same thing.

      Anyway, our March Madness bracket begins well before the start of Holy Week with preliminary prep beginning on Ash Wednesday extending through Lent. We read the stories. We hear the lessons. We worship. We serve.  We reflect. Lent is a time to work on our spiritual muscles.

     The Lenten journey is a time of spiritual growth and if we are lucky we move from one state of being to another, one point of view to another, or perhaps from one interpretation of life to another...one bracket to the next.  One can choose to sit on the side lines or one can choose to  participate. Participation is risky. You are wide open for things to happen. Your spirit is an open court . So, do you grab the ball and run with it? Or do you dance around with what is your truth only to get knocked down again because you weren't paying atention?

     Lent  is all about the journey.  We journey in Lent through Scripture that speaks to us, through songs that touch our despair or joy and lift us , through prayers that open coversation with God and/or rituals that bring comfort and understanding. Sometimes like Jesus we are in a wilderness all alone.  Sometimes we are in a wilderness within the crowd of our life. Either way we journey on.

     Then we arrive at Holy Week on Palm Sunday and it begins.  With trepedation we approach the final four: Maundy Thursday, Good Friday Tenebrae, Holy Saturday Easter Vigil and Easter Sunday. We know how the story will end but we have to go through the aches and pains; the misery, the hearbreaks and the joys. There is no other way. There is no other way to take up the cross and follow Jesus. There is a Cinderella story here too.  Jesus is that player, the underdog to many, who advanced much further than anyone anticipated.

    ( The term Cinderella story was used by Bill Murry in the 1980 hit movie Caddyshack where he pretends as the announcer to his own golf fantasy: "Cinderella story. Outta nowhere. A former greens keeper, now, about to become the Masters champion." )

     For Christians everywhere our Cinderella story is Jesus. Outta nowhere. A former carpenter, is our Saviour, our King, our champion!

     Slam dunk!